当贫穷的人始终无法让自己的肚子吃饱，维持体面生活所必需的食物时，问题就变得非常严重了。资本主义作为一种制度，并未解决饥饿问题。事实上，资本主义的原则使得社会中的个人可能无法满足某些需求；这些需求很可能包括对食物的需求，而食物是消除饥饿所必需的。资本主义以似是而非的说法声称，资源（在此即食物）不足以养活每一个饥饿的人。针对资本主义之下的饥饿现象，人们设立了许多机构来对抗饥饿。资本主义社会中此类机构的存在，正是一个简单的证明：资本主义制度不仅未能解决饥饿这一流行性的问题，反而导致了这一问题。另一方面，伊斯兰（稍后将会讨论）呼吁消除饥饿，并将这一呼吁确立为伊斯兰的一项基本原则。据传先知穆罕默德ﷺ曾说：“若某个群体允许其中一人饿着肚子入睡，安拉和祂的使者都将与这个群体断绝关系。”
The becomes problem really serious when the poor actually remains unable to fill his stomach with the necessary food to sustain a decent life. Capitalism as a system does not address the issue of hunger. In fact, the principles of capitalism give rise to the possibility that individuals in a society will not be able to satisfy some of their needs; these needs could very well be the need for food, which is necessary to eliminate hunger. Capitalism speciously claims that there is not enough resources (in this case food) to feed each and every hungry stomach. In response to the phenomenon of hunger under capitalism, many institutions were created to fight hunger. The existence of such institutions within the societies of capitalism is a simple proof that capitalism as a system not only fails to resolve the epidemic problem of hunger, but in fact it causes this problem. Islam, on the other hand (as will be discussed later), calls for the elimination of hunger and makes this call a fundamental principle of Islam. Prophet Mohammad is reported to have said, “Allah and his Messenger will disown a community which allows one of its members to sleep hungry.
尽管美国的经济和财富都有了巨大增长，美国防治饥饿医师工作组（成立于1984年初）得出结论：饥饿在全国范围内已达到流行病般的规模；情况正在恶化，而非好转。他们还认为，现行政策并未缓解美国的饥饿问题56。许多人难以接受这一事实，正如阿迪斯·阿姆斯特朗·杨所指出的那样57。他提出疑问："美国人既然能够生产足够的粮食养活全世界，而且浪费的食物比饥饿者所能吃掉的还多，为什么还要任由人们挨饿？"全国饥饿与贫困中心主任拉里·布朗在其著作《美国的饥饿：不断蔓延的流行病》中总结了美国的饥饿问题，他写道：58
Despite the tremendous growth in the economy and the wealth of the United States, the Physician Task Force on Hunger in America (established in early 1984) concluded that hunger is a problem of epidemic proportions across the nation; it is getting worse, not better. They further concluded that present policies are not alleviating hunger in America56. This fact can be hardly accepted by many, as argued by Ardis Armstrong Young57. He raises the question “Why do Americans allow people to go hungry when they can grow enough food to feed the world and they waste more food than the hungry could eat?” Larry Brown, director of the National Center on Hunger and Poverty, summarized the hunger problem in the United States in his book Hunger in America: The Growing Epidemic58, where he writes:
我们是人类历史上最富有的民族，却仍有数百万人挨饿，为下一顿饭在何处而发愁，我们仍无法从社会中根除这一祸害。
We are the richest nation in the history of the world with millions of people going hungry and wondering where their next meal is coming from and we’re still unable to rid our society of this scourge.
美国并非唯一有人挨饿的国家，但它是富裕工业国家中唯一一个因收入不足而导致营养匮乏的人口比例如此之高的国家。在我们国家，近五分之一的儿童生活在贫困线以下——我们拥有绰绰有余的粮食来解决这一问题——真正的问题不在于美国能否消除饥饿，而在于我们是否具备消除饥饿的领导力。
The U.S. is not the only nation where people go hungry but it is the only wealthy industrial nation where such a high percentage of its population suffers from nutritional deprivation due to inadequate incomes. Nearly one in five children, in our nation, lives below the poverty level—we have more than enough food to end this problem—the real issue is not whether America can end hunger, the question is whether we have the leadership to do so.
布朗结论的唯一问题在于，他认为解决饥饿是一个政治问题，政治领导人可以制定计划来应对饥饿。这种错觉源于这样一个事实：饥饿在20世纪70年代被消除，而这归功于20世纪60年代初采取的政策。当这些政策在里根政府时期被改变或取消后，饥饿又重新蔓延。然而，应当指出的是，贫困和饥饿的存在有其内在、固有的原因，根源在于潜在的经济原则。行政计划、政策、法规以及慈善组织可以缩小问题的规模，在一段时间内抑制它，或将其掩盖起来。然而，这些政策和计划并不能消除问题的根源；因此，一旦它们被取消或削减，饥饿就会立即再度抬头。1981年里根政府从食品券计划中削减了七十亿美元，贫血、肺结核、发育不良和骨质疏松等与饥饿相关的问题便随即卷土重来。
The only issue with Brown’s conclusion is that he thinks that the resolution of hunger is a political issue, where political leaders can instill programs to deal with hunger. This illusion resulted from the fact that hunger was eliminated in the 1970s due to policies adopted in the early 1960s. When those policies were either changed or removed during the Reagan administration, hunger crawled back57. However, what should be noted is that there is an internal and intrinsic reason for poverty and hunger to exist because of the underlying economic principles. Administrative programs, policies, and regulations as well as charity organizations can reduce the scale of the problem, suppress it for some time, or hide it. However, these policies and programs do not eliminate the root cause of the problem; so once they are lifted or reduced, hunger immediately pumps up. When the Reagan administration cut seven billion dollars from the food stamp program in 1981, hunger related problems such as anemia, tuberculosis, poor growth, and osteoporosis crawled back immediately.
资本主义国家政府处理饥饿问题的方式，就像有人发现屋里漏了煤气，却去找一个好用的过滤器来净化空气、滤去煤气，而不是找到泄漏源并彻底修好。一旦过滤器被拿走或无法正常工作，煤气便会立刻充满整个房间！用同样的比喻来说，各种政策和法规被用来过滤饥饿、喂养饥民。饥饿的根源却潜藏在经济制度的基本原则之中：食物相对稀缺。价格决定生产的产量，决定消费的数量，也决定谁能吃、谁不能吃。因此，并不奇怪，牛津英语词典在1971年对饥饿的一个释义就是“一个国家缺乏或短缺食物”。
The way governments in capitalist states deal with the problem of hunger is similar to someone who detects a gas leak in a house and goes to find a nice and good filter to clean up and filter out the gas from the air instead of finding the leak source and fixing it altogether. The moment the filter is removed or fails to do its job properly, the gas immediately fills the house! Using the same analogy, the policies and regulations are used to filter out hunger and feed the hungry. The cause of hunger remains dormant in the basic principles of the economic system: food is relatively scarce. Price dictates the output of the production, determines the amount of consumption, and decides who could or could not eat. It is no surprise then that one of the definitions found for hunger in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1971 is “the want or scarcity of food in a country.”
