What is Charity?

How Moral Signifiers Cover Deep Injustices

We often look at charity as an individual action, the sharing of resources with those “less fortunate” than us. Acts of charity are seen as moral signifiers. It’s those with good or just character that are charitable, otherwise, why would they go out of their way to do something they don’t need to do, something that has a concrete cost on their own well being.

Interestingly, observations have been made of those being the worst off also being the most charitable as they have a more intimate understanding of the needs of others. This is probably parabolic but it gives an interesting insight into how we view charity.

Many social psychologists have also pointed to the idea that giving to others is selfish and is more about making us feel good as opposed to being altruistic.

Morality as the Benchmark

Irrespective of the motivation behind being charitable, the moral heft attached to it remains and not much is written about why the need for charity exists in the first place. Or, where it does exist, it is given an equally moral designation.

Those who need charity are often seen as one of two things, less fortunate or greedy moochers. This is a simplified presentation, but it speaks to the fact that we do have classification as to who is more deserving of our charity and much of it depends on how we interact with those people.

Those given the “less fortunate” designation are often deemed so because of elements that are out of their control. Orphans, those dealing with congenital physical or medical ailment, children suffering famine in a third world country, etc. These are groups of people we might not interact with directly but deal with through the charity based organization that carefully curate what we see to trigger our sympathy.

On the other hand, homelessness, absent this curation and as encountered on the streets, is often seen as a result of personal ineffectiveness. This, even though millions of Americans are one paycheck away from finding themselves in a similar situation. Yet, even with the reality of this precarity, homelessness continues to be perceived as a persons own fault. This is largely due to the fact that although many of us face financial uncertainty, it may be harder for us to imagine ending up with nowhere to sleep and have family or friends to lean on in dire times. But even this is a privilege not available to everyone and it is not hard to see how those “less fortunate” than us can turn to alcoholism or drug abuse in such strenuous situations.

The Need for Charity

None of this is to say that individuals who abuse the generosity of others or the systems put in place to support those less fortunate don’t exist — even though they always represent a near negligible percentage of any population. But why people find themselves in need of charity in the first place remains unanswered. To answer this we need first to ask a few more questions like why do people not have access to life-saving medicine? or education that will allow them to be productive members of society? or even housing that will allow them to contribute without the fear of ending up on the streets? We can go even deeper and ask why is it that some of us are more “fortunate” born to families that can provide us with all those things and others are “less fortunate” needing to put in extra effort starting from a less privileged place to meet even the most basic of their needs? Why is it that we still subscribe to this lottery of life model? Isn’t it this subscription that stratifies us, irrespective of our ability, as less or more fortunate? The term itself suggests the lack of agency, the dependence on “fortune” or even fate.

The need for charity itself then is intrinsically tied to our system of competition and withholding of “fortune”. Fortune that, contrary to what we like to believe, is unearned. But even in the rare cases in which fortune is earned, that is, in the cases where individuals are able to accumulate the capital that was previously inaccessible to them or have been able to utilise the fortune they did have to increase their wealth, this still operates based on an exclusionary model, a model where for one to have more, another must have less, and so, this “fortune” is simply an exchange for the misfortune of others.

It’s this situation that makes charity necessary in the first place.

Types of Charity

This is not to dismiss charity in and of itself or to present charity as inherently negative. But understanding why charity is necessary changes the way we look at it.

This becomes clearer when we look at the types of charity that are out there. For starters, we have the individual type. You, providing change or food for those you encounter as less fortunate or donating old clothes. These are all examples where your decision making is being driven by the idea of use value. That the things you may have in excess off will be better used by someone else.

Next, we have the idea of charity organizations. These organizations are often large bureaucratic institutions who, although provide essential charity services, also end up devouring more than ~30% of charitable contributions to simply existing. This means that instead of the money going directly to those in need it ends up sustaining offices, salaries, marketing material etc. This bureaucratization of charity can become so intense that the purpose of the charity becomes to simply keep itself afloat and its employees with jobs.

The third kind of charity is the corporate type. Here private organizations either directly give to charity or partner with the public to help provide charity. Think of supermarket chains taking donations as you check out or putting out boxes for you to drop off food or clothing donations. These are the most perplexing types of charitable organizations because they already have the tools and finances necessary to solve almost any problem they would like. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, could easily wipe out polio in a heartbeat without any help from the general population. Most supermarkets can easily feed anyone who’s hungry. And any one of these large corporations with unspeakable wealth can build enough homes and eradicate homelessness altogether.

So why don’t charities solve these problems permanently? and why do they present their initiatives as partnerships with the general public when they obviously don’t need any financial assistance?

The answer is twofold. First, most of these organizations engage in charitable activities for image management and public relations. They lean on the perception of charity as a morally just act to woo more consumers.

Second, organizations use charity to defuse the reality that, in our finite world, it is their hoarding of wealth that is the direct cause of poverty and the “less fortunate” circumstances of others. More importantly, without the “less fortunate” and the constant fear of us becoming the “less fortunate” these organizations will be absent of a compliant workforce!

With this in mind, these types of charity organizations become a bit of a farce. The very organizations that dictate how much money we take home as employees then appeal to our humanity to give it back to them so they can give it to someone else, all the while they pocket and horde obscene amounts of wealth.

Many might read this as a need to implement or increase existing redistribution schemes (higher taxes on wealthy organizations and increased social services) to offset the “lottery of life”. But even these initiatives are not enough to ensure any of us don’t end up in a worse situation than we started for losing a job or the economy suddenly crashing. There is also the fact that many countries have these social safety nets and still have moderate rates of poverty. The question then becomes, since we know that the resources to meet our basic needs for life (clothing, food, shelter) are already available, why not just use them? Why wait for government redistribution or charity?