Poverty (n.) is social. It is not absolute but is reflective of relative social status. 'Placed next to a palace, a little house shrinks to a hut. In that hut its inmate is increasingly uncomfortable, dissatisfied, and cramped within his four walls'.
Poverty (n.) is where the contradiction of private property shows its most glaring face — which is why its critique starts from misery, where political economy started from the wealth of nations.
Poverty (n.) as not having is not a mere category but a most dismal reality: today the man who has nothing is nothing, cut off from existence in general and still more from a human existence.
Poverty (n.) as not having is the most despairing spiritualism, and also a very positive having, a having of hunger, of cold, of disease, of crime and of debasement.
Poverty (n.) is no crime, but it is fearfully inconvenient.
Poverty (n.) is a more fruitful source of house-rent than the mines of Potosí ever were for Spain.
Poverty (n.) makes bread cheap in peasant countries, not productivity: part of the producers' surplus labour is given to society for nothing.