must present itself as a respectable force that can manage society in an orderly way, that controls the masses rather than helping them to self-determination and self-rule. By conceding reforms from on high, it perpetuates the dependency of the working class confirming the powerlessness of working people rather than liberating them from external controls .... Herein lies the ultimate difference between reformism and socialism. To the moderates, reform means the bestowing of things -- higher wages, pensions, social services -- on a mass of people who are kept dispersed and impotent. What matters to socialists is not simply the extension of more and more of these "things", but the sovereign power of workers to determine for themselves the conditions of their social life.69

The anti-poverty strategy which is compatible with the critical perspective on illiteracy is, in the short range, to support the struggles of working people for increased political, economic and cultural self-determination, and in the long range, to help translate these into a movement for socialism. As Levin points out, a "permanent, stable, and democratic solution" involves going beyond welfare capitalism to a socialist state:

In such a state, the capital would be socially owned and managed with goals of equity in participation, employment, and social welfare replacing the motive of profit maximizing and private capital accumulation.70

In activating such a strategy, adherents of the critical perspective join what Paul Belanger identifies as the world-wide effort to:

reinstate illiteracy and literacy training projects within the historical context of a complex phenomenon: the collective advancement of the masses. This will be a formidable task, involving, as it does, the majority of humanity which can neither read, nor compute how the wealth of the few is based on the poverty of the majority.71