PHILANTHROPY: PRAISEWORTHY OR PROPAGANDA?
CHAPTER FIVE
Last chapter we ended with a question:
‘Despite the fact that there is a public call to bring about greater equitability in wealth redistribution, every policy to bring it about tends to be dismissed by neo-liberal ideologies as unworkable solutions that can only end in authoritarianism and the Gulag. For some reason, philanthropy comes out as the only viable means of patching over the harm caused by the selfish pursuit of material wealth. The question is, why?’.
From the positive perspective, it could be because, where philanthropy is concerned, money is being handled by those with a proven track record of making it work to produce value. Whereas governments are known to waste money on unnecessary bureaucracy, the philanthropists are people who have revolutionised retail, or brought computing to the masses, or built rockets that can land on platforms out at sea. Who could be better placed to use money responsibly and build a better future?
Advocates of philanthropy also cite autonomy as another advantage. This line of reasoning was adopted by Matthew Bishop (author of ‘Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World’) “They do not face elections every few years like politicians, or suffer the tyranny of shareholder demands for ever-increasing profits, like CEOs of most public companies. Nor do they have to devote vast amounts of time and resources to raising money, like most heads of NGOs. That frees them up...to take up ideas too risky for government, to deploy substantial resources quickly when the situation demands it”. In short, they answer to nobody and if their heart is in the right place nothing can stop them putting life-changing sums of money to good use”.
(Image from wikimedia commons)
But, since these are life-changing sums of money the philanthropists are being trusted with, there needs to be assurances that their hearts are, indeed, in the right place. The best way to ensure things are done properly is to have transparency and a democratic process. The problem is, there is often neither transparency or accountability. The World Health Organisation’s head of Malaria Research, Aarati Kochi, compared the Gates foundation to a cartel, claiming the organisation was “accountable to no-one other than itself”. And Dr David McCoy, adviser to the People’s Health Movement”, reckoned “it also operates through an interconnected network of organisations and individuals across the NGO and business sectors. This allows it to leverage influence through a kind of ‘group-think’ in international health”. From this perspective, ‘philanthropic’ organisations have zero transparency, are accountable to nobody, and are really just an excuse to transfer power from the State to billionaires. As Peter Kramer, a critic of the Giving Pledge, said, “it’s not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide”. Given that these are often some of the most ruthless exploiters of competitive behaviour and its negative effects, one has to wonder if unaccountable billionaires working without transparency really can be trusted to serve the public’s interests.
The cynical way of looking at philanthropy is to view it as just a PR exercise whose purpose is to justify some having so much to begin with, while throwing token amounts of money at those enduring the negative externalities that inevitably rise when we compete to gain more by whatever method we can get away with. Where the ‘Giving Pledge’ is concerned, there is no legal obligation to do anything. Signatories merely say they will give away half of their fortune; signing the pledge places them under no enforceable commitment to actually follow through on their promise. Now, if there were transparency, so that the public could see what was being donated and where it was going, that might ensure the pledge is indeed honoured. But, guess what? There is no transparency. So how can we ever know what was given away or for what purpose? Really, then, there is nothing to prevent the Giving Pledge from being a PR stunt intended to placate a public grown sick and tired of the excesses of the rich and the gross wealth inequality fueled by a greed is good culture that has brought such harm to people and their communities. As activist Slavoj Zizek put it, “charity is the humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation”.
Also, when it comes to the establishment of charitable organisations, there are reasons for taking such action that do not necessarily count as altruistic. You see, by setting up such organisations, the ultra-rich can take advantage of tax loopholes as money is passed through them.
Such was the case of the foundation set up by the Walton Family. These five Walmart heirs have a combined net wealth of over $139 billion, meaning they have more money than the bottom 40 percent of Americans combined. An independent audit determined that the Walton Family Foundation-built “at almost no cost to themselves” was “exploiting complex loopholes in order to avoid billions of dollars in estate taxes”.
(Image from wikimedia commons)
As to how much of that $139 billion fortune actually went to charity, the answer is...0.4 percent. That is such a paltry amount, it is hard not to agree with Peter Joseph of the Zeitgeist Movement who said, “what they are really doing is bypassing state funding in favour of their own interests. Moving money to charity foundations, effectively consolidating wealth in the hands of private interests rather than government, is a logical method to keep things ‘in the club’ of private business power”.
Conclusion
Philanthropy and charity are either the most viable way of dealing with the problems we are facing, or they are just a PR stunt amounting to a band-aid for problems whose systemic root remains deliberately unaddressed by those with vested interests in retaining the status quo. Obviously, one's own political ideologies would influence which of these possibilities seems most plausible. Really, though, I suppose all we can do is wait and see if the philanthropist’s pledges really do bare fruit and build a better tomorrow.
REFERENCES
“The New Human Rights Movement” by Peter Joseph
“The Survival Manual” by Mark Braund and Ross Ashcroft