Since the 19th-century thieving capitalists have used philanthropy to pose as social saints, to shape society in their image and to create confusion about the nature of capitalism. In 1998 Bill Gates’ company Microsoft was charged with illegal practices, and Gates, the world’s richest person, was condemned as a ruthless monopolist. A mere four years later, after launching a charitable foundation, Gates was praised as a generous philanthropist. The media lauds Gates for his compassion. He presents himself no longer as the scourge of mankind, using patents and intellectual property laws to acquire and increase his wealth, but now as humanity’s benefactor, even its saviour because of his perceived charitable giving. The ruling class have even re-invented war as philanthropy, now calling it “humanitarian intervention”.
Frederick Engels long ago explained charitable giving by the wealthy:
“The English capitalist class is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying, ‘If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen…this I purchase with my subscription of twenty pounds for the infirmary!’ It is infamous, this charity of a Christian capitalist! As though they rendered the workers a service in first sucking out their very life-blood and then placing themselves before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when they give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them!”
Members of the working class are the only true philanthropists by producing a surplus that is taken by the employers instead of being used to meet human needs. Marx pointed out in Capital, value is not created simply by owning something, but only through the application of human labour. By owning the productive forces - i.e. the factories, the land, the mines, and all the science and technique that is necessary to utilise them - the capitalists appropriate all that is produced by the working class. Only a fraction of the value created by the working class is then paid back in wages. The rest, what Marx termed “surplus value”, is divided between the capitalists (as profit), bankers (as interest), and landlords (as rent). As companies grow bigger and bigger, so do the profits that can be appropriated by their owners. Thus for every billionaire, their wealth is based on exploiting the unpaid labour of millions of workers. That a handful of these billionaires decide to give away some of their amassed fortunes should come as a surprise, when you consider that there is absolutely nothing else they could do with such money. There are only so many mansions, yachts and private jets, that one person can buy. Once their bellies are full of caviar and champagne the only options facing these billionaires are to a) invest the money as capital in order to receive more money; b) pass their fortunes down to their children; or c) give the money away to “philanthropic” ventures.
What right have a handful of individuals such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Mark Zuckerberg to decide the priorities in tackling the many social problems of the world, whether it should be healthcare or education, or in industrial production generally? Surely these decisions should be made collectively, as part of a democratic process involving everybody? We must also ask ourselves whether it is necessary that in order to eradicate poverty and diseases we should rely on the “generousity” of such wealthy individuals to donate some of their vast fortunes at these problems, in an unplanned and uncoordinated way? Surely, no-one can seriously be suggesting that social problems will be solved in this manner, at the whim of a single person. If this wealth was socially owned and democratically planned, we could make tremendous advances, far surpassing what is currently achieved. We must question if the attempts to “eradicate poverty” and “create a more equal society” can ever be achieved by the charity of these billionaires? We must ask: what causes poverty? Why is there inequality? Poverty does not exist due to a lack of education, or a lack of hospitals. Just ask the millions of people in the USA without access to healthcare, in a country that contains some of the world’s finest, best-equipped hospitals.
Poverty and inequality are in fact fundamental features of the capitalist system, and are a necessary result of an economy based on wage labour. Since the vast majority of the world’s population do not own their own means of production, they are forced to sell their labour power, i.e. their capacity to work, as a commodity to the capitalists, i.e. those who do own the means of production. The value of this commodity is determined more or less in the same way as for any other commodity, i.e. with reference to the socially necessary labour power required to reproduce the worker (and their family) at a certain standard of living. This standard can be raised or lowered as a result of the class struggle, but generally the “going rate” tends to sink to that just necessary to keep workers alive.
We need to expose philanthropy for what it is — a means to deceive and confuse workers. Before a wealthy benefactor can give away his wealth, he has to first accumulate it. Capitalists fight for profits on two fronts. One is against their business competitors. The other is against their workers, the source of their wealth. Marx and Engels noted in the Communist Manifesto, “A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.” If any were to denounce capitalism, and make the case for socialism, they would quickly find themselves ridiculed and ostracized. A society in need of philanthropists is one rooted in inequality. The writer Balzac argued that behind every great fortune lay a great crime. This does not mean that the fortune-maker, in his personal make-up, is disposed to depravity. No, his actions may very well be driven only by the soundest business principles. But no one accumulates billions with clean hands. There is no reason to demonise members of the capitalist class as individuals, on account of their great wealth for in the final analysis, the issues raised by their private fortunes don’t go to the personal and moral qualities of their character.
Following in the footsteps of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, to-days philanthropists believes in a special form of democracy, otherwise known as plutocracy or an oligarchy. Social engineering by these elite philanthropists is not compatible with real democracy. The real issue is that philanthropy does not actually change the most fundamental inequality in our society. It is no more a solution to poverty or inequality as a blood transfusion is a solution to a severed jugular vein. No amount of philanthropy or charity can solve the basic problem in society: the theft of most of the value produced by the working class by a tiny capitalist class. Even though workers run the assembly lines, drive the trucks, stock the shelves and build the homes, it is their employers who profit. Recirculating a proportion of that stolen wealth back to the poorest and most vulnerable in society does not solve the basic issue: that the fruits of our labour have been stolen from us.
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