poverty breeds mistrust

British people are six times more likely to mistrust their neighbours because of poverty than racial differences, researchers claim. People living in deprived areas are significantly more likely to be uneasy about each other than those in more affluent areas, regardless of how they look, repudiating the argument that multicultural societies make people uneasy and less trusting of strangers.

Patrick Sturgis, one of the researchers, said:
"Basically it is poverty not race that makes people uneasy and not trust each other. If it were somehow possible to make every neighbourhood in Britain completely ethnically homogenous, it would have a barely perceptible impact on the extent to which the British trust people in their neighbourhoods."

Sturgis said in the last five years immigration has been blamed for a lack of community cohesion and civic engagement, but insisted people had confused poverty with diversity. He added: "In reality, immigrants do find themselves living in poorer areas so we can see how the two issues have been confused."

The study also shows that less volunteering, fewer close friends, lower rates of happiness and perceived quality of life – has roots in poverty.

The hate and distrust that exists in society today is a direct result of the nature of societies past and present. A society in which we must compete to survive, in which our jobs are threatened by other workers, in which we do not feel secure, is fertile breeding ground for racism and nationalism and all the other hatreds that abound. Racism – like other the so-called "hate" crimes – is usually fuelled and ignited by poverty and fear, and therefore cannot be removed until the cause is.

Part of Erich Fromm’s theory is that there is a human need to be part of a community with other human beings and that capitalism is against “human nature” because it denies, and works against, this basic need. Although capitalism continually seeks to reduce us to isolated social atoms the basic human need for community still expresses itself even if in distorted and perverted forms. Capitalism encourages competition between individuals, pitting them against each other in a rat race for power, privilege and prestige. Only a society based on co-operation and community is a sane society as one which properly meets the psychological needs of human beings for a sense of belonging; not just a sense of belonging but a state of actually belonging to a real community.