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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines Kawakami Hajime's evolving theories of poverty. Kawakami's critique of poverty shifted from a moral-humanist one to a Marxist, historical-materialist version. Although seemingly contradictory, I argue that both are in fact compatible in terms of Kawakami's and Marx's thought.

Paper long abstract:

The early 20th century Japanese economist Kawakami Hajime made it his life goal to reconcile morality and economics. He strongly believed the newly introduced field of study could be put to use to solve pressing moral problems of the day, most notably poverty. His first major attempt to harmonize the two came in his 1917 A Tale of Poverty, a highly syncretic and original work that drew from a broad range of thinkers including Bernard Mandeville, Kumazawa Banzan, and Jesus. But while the very readable A Tale of Poverty won popular acclaim, it was criticized by Japanese Marxists for, among other things, failing to grasp the nature of capitalist exploitation. Kawakami thus returned to the drawing board for his 1930 A Second Tale of Poverty in which he fully adopted the Marxist-materialist line that only by abolishing capitalist social relations could “moral” issues like poverty be truly solved. Indeed, the work seemed to be a refutation of his earlier goal of reconciling morality and economics in general. But on closer inspection, I argue, this is not at all the case. Namely, the main reason for this is that Marx’s materialist framework simply makes reformed class relations its main strategy but does not ultimately preclude the possibility of a transcendent morality. I argue that we can interpret Kawakami’s works on poverty, together and in unity, in a similar vein and see them as a bridge between morality and materialism that is also apparent in Marx’s writings.