Tackling the Poverty of Nations: Why So Many Are Poor and What We Can Do About It

This book is partly autobiographical and partly theoretical. When I came to Adams Mission Station in South Africa in 1949, I was taken aback by the surrounding poverty and resolved to do something about it. There seemed little that could be done at the agricultural end, but rural residents were trekking temporarily to the cities to bring back money - "reverse mercantilism" - and so many were going that the city slums were overcrowded and heavily unemployed - requiring "parallel commodity money" to create jobs without inflation, and "distributional reform" to prevent "inadequate demand" unemployment. When this had been done, a return to "rural development" was required, through "export promotion" to bring money into the rural areas through "farm development", "rural station development" and "diversification" to create rural settlements. The combination of these measures - reverse mercantilism, parallel commodity money, income and land redistribution and rural development - can promote reduction in the poverty of nations, as required by the title. A necessary parallel measure is "parallel commodity money", to achieve development and job creation without runaway inflation and deflationary crashes, which can cause poverty on a large scale despite all the above.