Is Charity Good?

Of course it's good. Using one's own money to donate to a charity that helps alleviate the burdens of others can hardly be labeled as bad or evil, now can it? Charity in itself is good, it's just the necessity of charity that's evil.

Oscar Wilde wrote in his 1891 booklet "The Soul of Man under Socialism": "It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property." Without diving into the weeds of deontology - the theory that the morality of actions should be judged by whether the action itself is right or wrong - versus consequentialism - the theory that the morality of actions should be judged by their consequences, I must say that I essentially agree with Wilde's assertion. If we agree (and I do) that private property is the main cause for the existence of poverty, it's kind of insulting and immoral to use a small slice of that property to donate to charities of the capitalist's own choosing.

It's important to make a distinction between personal property and private property; it's okay and necessary (for now) to own the things we personally use and consume in order to live a dignified life, like a house, food, a toothbrush, a mobile phone. That's personal property and is perfectly fine. Private property on the other hand is when a private person or company owns the factory that makes mobile phones, not for use but to make profits. Or when one person owns 100 houses to rent out in order to make profits. This capitalist configuration makes it so that the overwhelming majority of people are obliged to sell their time, their labor to the owners of private property. And because of the inherent power these owners have over the rest of us, most of us aren't truly free.

Most defenders of capitalism know this all to be true, and they'll readily admit that capitalism is far from perfect. Yet, so they argue, it's the best we can do, it helps the most people. They also are, in their rhetoric at least, fierce proponents of charity. That's, as far as I'm able to discern, because of two things: 1) their awareness of the fact that capitalism breeds poverty and will always leave scores of people behind, and 2) because they reduce everything to the individual and are allergic to any systemic analysis. They believe, as Margaret Thatcher said, "there's no such thing as society," there are only individuals with each their own individual responsibilities, failures, merits and achievements. So should charity to be seen and acted upon individually, and taxation - the systemic method under capitalism - should be seen as theft.

So, in capitalism we're left with two classes, both of which feel wronged. The capitalist feels like he's stolen from by the government, and feels that he or she can make much better decisions about where to spend the capital. And the workers feel stolen from by the capitalist because of the knowledge they're never paid the full value of their labor as a consequence of the capitalists' need to make profits. Asides from all the other problems with private charity, like the fact that it reduces its recipients to the objects of the donators' commiseration, that the donators get to decide which charities are worthy of that commiseration, and that they often donate as a form of evading taxation (which makes the deontological argument moot, by the way), it is unnecessary, or it should be.

The division of society in a class of owners of private property and the rest, makes for a network of unproductive relationships where the whole is less than sum of their parts. To illustrate this, consider an abusive relationship compared to a healthy one. Let's say a man and his wive make dinner, splitting the tasks, spending an hour each, and compare that to an abusive husband who spends half an hour angrily demanding dinner, cussing and whining to get his wive to spend an hour and a half to make dinner. Which dinner is better, and which eaters will enjoy the meal better? I know the answer to that question, and I suspect you do as well.

Poverty is the main driver behind criminality. No, wait, not poverty but inequality is the main driver behind criminality. When everyone's poor, or when everyone's rich, there's no theft. Theft occurs when there's poverty right next to great wealth. Now, you can say this is because of jealousy, or laziness, or a deep sense of injustice, I don't really care. What I care about is that there's a real easy solution to take away the cause of most of the crimes, and that's to get rid of the divide between the classes. Make the workers also the owners. Extend democracy into the places of production. It's really simple and I haven't been able to find a single rational argument against the worker coop. Anyhow, I'll leave you with the full audio book of "The Soul of Man under Socialism." Mind that it's all over the place, discussing philosophy, economy, sociology and much more. The main thrust of Wilde's argument is that socialism sets us free, as it liberates us from the necessity to work and live for others, and start working and living for the betterment of our society and ourselves. It's only 2 hours short and I recommend it to anyone.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy!