Charity and its Discontents

It is a no-brainer to ask whether you should help the needy around you because the answer is a
definite yes, but to proclaim organised charity as the solution to global poverty is an altogether
different matter, a misconception at the very least. Philanthropy, in general, leads us to see charity
as a form of altruism, and seldom do we realise that it often veils from us the real, burning issues of
social justice. With more and more people, especially millennials starting to regard charity as the
most effective medium of social change, it is high time we debunk this capitalist misconstruction.

To begin with, charity, when presented as a solution to poverty, tends to promote political quietism
by fixing our attention on a merely contributory, passive scheme of things, far away from socio-
political and economic causes of the very poverty we are trying to resolve. Such charity that
requests individuals to use their money to procure necessities for people in desperate need,
ironically keeps them blind to the system that determines how those necessities are produced and
distributed in the first place. It provides us with a sense of satisfaction for doing whatever we can
for the betterment of the world, while destructively redefining the ‘whatever we can’ of each of us,
and keeping us ignorant of the fact that global poverty is a direct consequence of deliberately
unequal resource allocation. Whilst appealing to our compassion and offering easy contentment, big
charity cleverly hides from us the faulty system that we need to actually replace. Believing that our
social responsibility is over if we just donate an amount because it is the most we can, is just a way
to vent our moral dilemma while passively supporting exploitative policy at the same time.

Many a time, when an alternative, in the form of socialist policy is placed on the table, it is ignored
with disdain, stating its impracticality in comparison to the ease with which organised charity can
function and thereby become the strategy with better prospects of actually helping poor people.
While we debate the intricacies and effectiveness of socialist reform, the problem with capitalist
philanthropy goes even deeper than the ancillary disagreement about the best way to improve the
lives of the global poor. The central problem is the bourgeois morality that constitutes capitalism on
which the persuasive appeal of charity is based. The personal desire to create a better world
becomes an imperative to donate to charities. In this approach, big charity is perceived as an
exchange between a well to do philanthropist and a victim of abject poverty, where the donation of
money by the former is the sole way to lift the latter out of peril, no questions asked. This projects
the affluent section of society as the most potent and possible saviour of the poor, whereas in reality,
it is the actions of precisely those that keep the majority of the world eternally poor.

We must ask ourselves why the necessities we so kind-heartedly donate are initially withheld, often
mercilessly from those whom they are intended for. It is only then that we can see the big picture,
that of poverty being built into the very scheme of capitalism, and corporate charity as a means to
keep our eyes myopic to the very fact, all the while reducing emotional interactions like compassion
to meagre transactions, and undermining genuine human needs by the commodification of
necessities, which forces billions of people to drown in poverty, thereby generating a need for ever-
multiplying charitable organizations in the first place, in a seemingly chain reaction.

If we are to break this dreadful chain, rather than asking the affluent minority to guarantee the basic
sustenance of the poor majority, we should be questioning the existing economic system that cares
to attend to public misery only if such addressal seems profitable. Rather than rooting for an
individualized culture of donation, we should boldly challenge and uproot the institutionalized
plunder that is capitalism.