The true face of charity

This phenomenon is one of the most odious subjective manifestations of the class structure of the present society entirely based on economic and social inequality. The rich like to speak about how much they spend on various kinds of charity, trying to present it as an indication of their generosity, humanism and social responsibility. And the bourgeois press is always ready to chant the praises of the good people that care so much about their neighbors who, by some strange accident, happen to be poor or suffer from some physical deficiency. However, charity can be nothing but hypocrisy, a make-up on the ugly face of capitalism.

First of all, most charity has nothing to do with philanthropy, being a kind of business. The consequences of every donation are well calculated, and the background activity of establishing the rules of the game to maximally increase the profits has always been the other side of demonstrative charitability.

A different aspect of the same: the more charity, the more exploitation. The rich never give away something belonging to themselves - they pay from the other's pocket. To give $1000 to the poor, they take a cent from each of a million of other poor, and thus they get ten thousand dollars, with $9000 of pure profit. The actual proportion may be even more in the interests of the rich.

The same holds for charity on the international level, including any kinds of economic assistance, grants, or humanitarian help. The activities of A.Hammer and G.Soros can serve as the most illustrative examples. The basic idea (beside the direct profit) is to re-orient the economy of the countries receiving help to quite certain ways of development, so that these countries would become dependent on the products and investments of their richer partners.

There is also a subjective aspect of uneasy conscience. A bourgeois often understands that their wealth is gained by wrong means, depriving many people of what they actually deserve. Sometimes the ruling classes have to defend themselves against the public accusations of that kind - so, the rich feel more self-assured having a couple of picturesque cases of charity in the store. Such "counter-examples" are the only weapon of the bourgeoisie in their spiritual fight with themselves.

However, a simple comparison of the styles of life of the rich and the poor they help speaks against the sensibility of such arguments. Thus, a "new Russian" may spend on a family rest somewhere in Hawaii a sum that would be enough to fully support a thousand ordinary Russians for a few years. An evening dress of a millionaire may cost the price of the normal clothes for a hundred people or more. A dinner in a high-rank restaurant may overweigh a good meal of many poor people in sum. Is there a rich man or woman who would live exactly like those they boast to help to?

The most disgusting are the charity actions and campaigns of different sort. When a few millionaires have fun "in the interests of the poor", when they spend their money in an auction or a charity reception, saying that the receipts will be used to help the poor, there is only one question: why not simply collect the money they have spent on themselves and the organizers of the charity action? - it would be a much greater sum, which could really help the people, or assist in creating new social conditions, where there would be no poor at all.

Well, there may be persons among the rich who sincerely want to be of help for the others. However, the very organization of the capitalist society prevents such people from being too generous and devoid of self-interest. There are very strict social norms governing the behavior of the representatives of different classes, and the deviations from the "accepted" life style would result in a kind of caste ostracism, undermining the well-being of the disturber, so that any further philanthropy would quickly become economically impossible. Capitalists have to behave like capitalists to remain capitalists - that's all. It is only the complete social reorganization that can make poverty a recollection of the past, thus eliminating the very word "charity" from the vocabularies of the world.

See also: Plagiarism, Authors and pirates