This is a book of radical thought on the concept of poverty. It argues that poverty, if thought of as a knowing instrument, acts both as a standpoint from which we can see our times more clearly and as a powerful affirmative force for change. As its conceptual reference point it takes the Spinozian concept of potentia (power), which refers to the creative life force - that force which is able to produce itself - and develops an understanding of how in Marx's reading of Spinoza this concept is assumed to be the very composition of the intellect and of the knowledge which derives from it. Margherita Pascucci draws on the work of Antonio Negri and Gilles Deleuze to establish the importance of analyzing the potentia of poverty as a knowing instrument.