A Critique of The Truly Disadvantaged: A Historical Materialist (Marxist) Perspective

Scholars such as William J. Wilson, public policy analysts, politicians, media personalities and journalists have, in recent years, turned their attention to the pervasive and growing poverty, permanent unemployment and inequality in American society. They have noted the disproportionate occurrence of these phenomena among African Americans-especially women and children-and in the inner city ghettos of the former centers of industrial production. At the same time, they have either ignored or severed any connection between the deepening poverty of one section of society-whom they have called the underclass -and the vast accumulation of wealth among the capitalist class