- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Dave Spart says...

Posted by: Red Deathy ( Socialist Party, UK ) on June 28, 1999 at 17:10:30:

In Reply to: doesnt do a lot for charity posted by Gee on June 28, 1999 at 14:11:23:

: Lets discuss that. Starting with why it would be wrong for some people to decide they shall choose to help some other people.

1:Charity makes the recipients beholden, specifically we can look through history to the Nineteenth C. wherein 'the undeeserving poor' were not given relief, or otherwise were bul;lied by their oh-so chairtable patrons.
2:Charity is the capitalists' social conscience, to make up for the fundamentally anti-social character of their system. Charity steps in where the market fails.
3:Power, it makes reipients dependant upon patrons, and it relies on the continued success and largess of the patrons.
4:If the problem is worth dealing with, then surely it cannot be right to leave it to individual whim to deal with it- it requires a social problem.
5:'Feel Guilty', all this horror is your fault, pay the hippy tax and you will be absolved. It inhibits action. It obfusates the causes of problems, and inhibits and understanding of their nature.
6:PR and tax breaks- our robber masters sometimes dig into their disgusting piles of wealth, and hand out some of their small change (robbed from the very poor they claim to be helping) and make a big deal of their largess.

Look at where chairty is called in- shools and medicine, the very most necessary social structures of our soicety,a nd the ones the market *cannot* supply.

Charity- Don't Do it!



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