Wachtel concludes that "Poverty persists because it derives from a low-wage labour market", and this market is of extreme utility within a capitalist economy. 65

Anti-Poverty Strategy

If adherents of the critical perspective are correct in their argument that the primary cause of poverty is not located in any real or presumed incompetencies of the poor, but rather stems from the incapacity of the capitalist economic system either to generate sufficient decent jobs or to distribute them evenly across the labour force, what then constitutes a sound anti-poverty strategy? Clearly, such a strategy would alter the economic structure in a fundamental way. To help clarify what the nature of such a strategy would be, let us look at one alternative that would necessarily be rejected.

Adherents of the critical perspective would reject as inadequate what Henry Levin calls the "welfare capitalism perspective".66 Adherents of this perspective call for government intervention in the economy to eliminate the secondary labour market through means like massive state job-creation programs and legislative measures to reduce wage differentials in the private sector, e.g. through improved minimum wage laws. According to Levin, the welfare capitalism perspective:

accepts the basic framework of monopoly capitalism while requiring the state to compensate for the failure of capitalism to equitably fill such human needs as employment, health care, education, and income maintenance.67

In Canada, the proposals of the social democratic New Democratic Party are heavily imbued with this philosophy.

While not rejecting the substance of these reforms, socialists like educational economist Levin criticize them as partial and inadequate, as "merely an attempt to address the symptoms of the problem rather than its cause", which he identifies as capitalist economic institutions.68 On very practical grounds, the present inflation/unemployment crisis of Western capitalist economies calls into serious question the capacity of North American governments to actualize the welfare state ideal --particularly in the expanded form suggested by those who see it as a solution to poverty. Moreover, given the vested interests of the capitalist class in maintaining the conditions for profitable accumulation, it can be expected that sweeping welfare state measures- would be subjected to overwhelming pressures from this class, including attempts to erode, co-opt and wreak them. Finally, as Cy Gonick points out, a fundamental problem with this approach is that within the context of class society, a social democratic party attempting to carry out such a program through parliamentary means: