Tuesday, February 09 2010 - 05:12 PM
Eliminating the need for charity
It is often asserted by those who occupy the right side of the sociopolitical spectrum that “Charitable works are best left to churches, private individuals and ‘munificent’ corporations” that “Government need not be involved with that which is charitable”; and that “Were liberals to give up their demand for progressive taxation, then [reactionaries and capitalists] would fill the gap by way of private charities.” But, assuming that our otherwise and terribly self-centered “conservatives” truly possess such philanthropic tendencies, would it be so much as possible for private charaties to assume the politcal states’ role regarding charity? I say – no it would not be possible.
In an effort to demonstrate the validity of my belief, I should like to remind the readership of Hands Across America which managed to raise, if memory serves, some twenty-five million dollars toward a very temporary and minor alleviation of domestic homelessness and human hunger within sub-Saharan Africa (an admittedly noble endeavor). But, nobility notwithstanding, even if such an event were to be replicated each and every day – 365 days per year, it would manage to raise but roughly 9.1 billion dollars per year. To put it another way, a similar Hands Across America event held each and every day for an entire year would collect slightly more than fifty-percent of the present, annual allotment for all federally-funded social welfare programs – including Medicaid, all job-training programs, AFDC – Aid For Dependent Children, subsidized housing, Head Start, EBT – Electronic Benefit Transfer, etc. Put still another way, were a similarly “successful” Hands Across America event to be held each and every day for an entire year, the monies raised would fail to come close to the amount needed to fund these social welfare programs. And it would still leave the issue of human hunger within sub-Saharan Africa as well as that of the rest of the Third World completely untouched.
So paint me cynical with respect to our right-wingers’ incessant suggestions that “Charity is best left to churches, individuals and corporations.” Indeed, paint me distrustful of even their rhetoric. For I believe it to be nothing more than a part of what they need to say in order to further their ultimate goal of defunding government to the point to “…where we can drown it [government] in the bathtub.” —Grover Norquist.

Now then, in proceeding from the above-listed and largely worthless liberal critique to a far more valuable Marxist critique, we find, once again, that were we workers – as a class – not robbed of the bulk of the economic wealth that our labor power and/or our intellectual power produce throughout the course of working lives there would exist no need for charity – be it private or governmental. And that, to begin to lay the pre-political and pre-industrial foundations for the eventual establishment of an equitable society – a socialist society is likely to be the only way in which we can realistically hope to actually end all forms of human suffering. After all, humankind already possesses the capacity to do so.

Yours in revolution.
Guy R. Marsh
Lancaster, 93536
Member-at-large (since 1990):
Socialist Labor Party of America (est. 1890)

(Note: As per usual, the following sort of comment posts directed to this thread will be deleted; those containing childish or otherwise offensive material; those whose content consists of more than fifty-percent cut-and-pasted material; and those containing video clips – regardless of whether or not they might also be accompanied by any amount of original writings [the embedding of URLs or “hotlinks” within comment posts that serve to lead readers to video clips will be accepted as long as said posts also contain original writings of no fewer than fifty words]. I thank you all.)

The body of my work here thus far as ""Cybertariat".

The body of my work “here” as “Redflag”

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