‘Capital’s charity’

The facade of charity discreetly (yet blatantly) pervades the social form of the early 21st century. Charity has become ubiquitous in contemporary capitalism. It is an inculcated moral concept, a symbolic representation of ‘the good’, accepted without question. And yet charity as a social form is not a ‘mode of existence’ (Bonefeld, Gunn and Psychopedis 1992: xv) that exists in capitalist society, but rather a form of capitalism. There have been few attempts to understand and interpret the manifestation of the present-day social form of capitalist charity, but through an open Marxist approach, an alternative understanding of charity emerges. This piece advocates three nascent and interconnected narratives on charity: the first considers the state form; the second the commodification and fetishisation of charity; and the third looks at charity, volunteers and the wage labour relationship.

The form of charity is a plethora of interconnected practices, with no definite beginning and end, reaching well beyond the realms of this polemic. The intention here is to unsettle the accepted, taken-for-granted notions about charity in society through an exploratory, critical discussion. The critique that flows through this polemic considers how the social form of charity has become indelible within capitalist reproduction in the 21st century. Charity has become subsumed into the state form today as an extension of the welfare system. Today, charity forms relations in a way that is less threatening and less antagonistic towards capitalism. Charity is fetishised and consumed as part of the spectacle of capitalist reproduction, which may be considered to be more selfish rather than selfless ‘altruism’. Charity itself, rather than struggling against capitalism in a transformative way succeeds only in a struggle that reproduces impoverishment and inequality. Charity reinforces our alienation: as the dispossessed, self-realisation and inherently, our own freedom, are denied to us. The alienating wage labour relationship is perpetuated through the form of charity, epitomised through the ‘free’ labour of volunteers. How charity separates and reinforces the very antagonisms it is reproducing against, as a subsumed and cosseted social form, is the basis of these three interrelated narratives.

The state form is a fragile mediator, enforcing capitalism’s ongoing reproduction of separation in unity. It is also an enforcer of charity. Charity has become subsumed by the state; it is legitimised, embraced and promoted as a guiding social principle. In order to operate as charities, organisations must be registered and approved through the state in line with legislation, ticking all the prescribed boxes necessary for becoming a capitalist charity. Through capital’s charity, the ‘joy of giving’ and ‘helping others’ is presented as a movement towards addressing social problems and improving the social form. The state, in this respect, is promoting the redistribution of impoverishment, as charity is formalised and inequality preserved. Although charity is a form of struggle, it is neither radical nor anti-establishment. In its present form, it doesn’t negate capitalism but helps people to limit their creativity and acquiesce to the prevailing ideology. If charity did not exist, social problems could become worse, sparking dissent (in the form of theft, strikes and riots, for example), as the impoverished rally together and gather their voices. In such a situation, a response or rebuke would be necessary on the part of the state form, expressed through political and, no doubt, police action. The reproduction of charity transforms such action. Charity cannot prevent such things from happening, but can appease them, since anger and discontent can be channelled through charity into social action– action for capital, rather than against it. Charity appears as an alternative to, but is also a medium of the state. In discussing the history of capitalist accumulation, Roberts discusses how ‘“pauperism” was one means amongst many for the continual subordination of the working class to both the wage form and the rule of law’ (2002: 108). The word ‘pauperism’ here could easily be substituted for that of charity.

Political perspectives on charities have altered significantly in the last thirty years, as they have become subsumed into governance as a medium of change. The financial position of the state is precarious, confined within ‘the limits imposed by the contradictory form of accumulation of capital on world scale’ (Bonefeld 1993: 3). However, the flow of financial capital through the state form cannot be easily disregarded, as today ‘the total income of society passing through the hands of the state has reached levels much greater than income going directly to private capital as profits, interest and rent’ (Harman 2009: 112). In recent years, charity illustrates one of the ways in which the state has attempted to displace the economic crisis. The current recession has seen the state rely more on the voluntary sector and charities in a shifting of responsibilities from the state to society, as a consequence of poor decision-making by the former. The state promotes the familiar form of charity as an apparent social remedy. As Slavoj Žižek suggested in a lecture to the RSA (2009), charity has become the ‘human face’ of capitalism. The voluntary sector has been promoted and marketed heavily in recent years as an integral aspect of Cameron’s political manifesto the ‘Big Society’, introduced in the election campaign of 2010. The Conservatives actively encourage ‘charities, social enterprises and private companies to get involved [in creating] our Big Society’ (Cameron 2011). However, the big society ideology has been subject to extensive (and it would seem ever increasing) criticism recently, especially since funding restrictions in the voluntary sector (and the welfare state) were introduced. In a speech from early July 2012, David Robinson, a voluntary sector activist and founder of the charity Community Links, commented on his disillusion surrounding the ‘big society’ concept since its inception: ‘It’s not how I understood the [big society] promise on the table at No 10 on that May morning two years ago. Then it was admittedly vague, but vaguely hopeful. Today we see it for what it was – as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike’ (Robinson 2012). The outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has also attacked the behaviour of the state through the rhetoric of big society, labelling it ‘aspirational waffle designed to conceal a deeply damaging withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities to the most vulnerable’ (cited in Corman and Helm 2012).

Thus far, a clear manifestation of this ‘Big Society’ has not proved forthcoming. Indeed, the concept itself appears redundant and lost in the devolved local Labour governments of the UK, as Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have not embraced Cameron’s apparent ideal. In the updated publication ‘The Compact’, guidance on the effective development of the big society is awash with the hyperbole of partnership, empowerment and social enterprise, which advocates ‘social action over state control and top-down Government-set targets’ (HM Government 2010). The irony lies in the fact that by its very nature, the big society is a state target in itself. A target which, it would seem, has had little discernible impact in England. Policy has developed little, with the exception of the Localism Act (2011), and there is a lack of consensus among volunteers and community groups as to how the big society can be understood in terms of legislation and governance. A recent survey published by the Third Sector Online (2013) reflects this, also citing supporting information from 2010 that demonstrates that ‘57% of people had not heard about the big society agenda and, of those who had heard of it, 36% said they “knew very little about it”’. Government intervention continues as it attempts to rationalise the purpose of the welfare state; and as its big society flounders, David Robinson’s hope perishes. Alcock (2012) suggests that the big society has ‘largely remained a political slogan, rather than a theoretical departure from existing forms of public action … intended to appeal to anti-state sentiments’ (Alcock 2012: 10-11). Charity and volunteering have become pawns to the state form, adopted as a smokescreen, an act of positivity and potential, but an act which seeks to misdirect and distract us from the destructive welfare reforms being enforced.

State responsibilities have been extended to the charity sector, as it has become a key strategic element of capitalist governance rather than an effective resistance against its repercussions. Charity has become cosmetic, an aesthetic element of governance in the reproduction of the state form. The growing discontent and antagonisms in society pressure the state into reforming its approach, in this case through big society rhetoric. As a result of the inception of state reforms for the trade unions in the 1980s, they became somewhat less threatening; today, charity is undergoing a similar process, as the state tries to displace antagonistic threats through transforming charity.

The present government continues to attempt to obfuscate problems within society through the legitimisation of charities and welfare reform, whilst antagonistically cutting funding and therefore, ironically, rendering Cameron’s ideals redundant. The capitalist form of charity is a prescribed and contrived social form. The state’s presentation of the basic connotations of charity as a good, moral and positive element of our society has reduced the panoptic of charity to something to be consumed politically and economically. Charity, through its enforced association with state paternalism today, has become political waffle: it is the ashtray on the motorbike of state restructuring. The state only succeeds if there is no longer a struggle, if charity is accepted as the best way to rid society of inequalities. Thus the continuing struggle is for charities to keep moving against: against the positive notions of the state, against capitalist charity, against the antagonisms of impoverishment and dispossession.

To some, however, the social form of charity has always been seen as derogatory, limited and unnecessary, rather than as something transformative. Clement Attlee, the British post-war prime minister, described charity as a ‘cold grey loveless thing’ (Beckett 1997: 63) in his 1920 book, The Social Worker. We know that ‘the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual … it is the ensemble of the social relations’ (Marx 1998 [1845]: 570). These social relations are separated, ‘a separation which is completely posited only in the relation of wage-labour and capital’ (Marx 1973 [1858]: 489). Such separation creates the dispossessed, the consumers and the commodity form. Charity is a form that expresses historical specificity in Britain, although its displaced struggle and its limited ability to transform the social form is as apparent today as it was to Attlee in 1920. Just as ‘labour is the source of wealth, so is poverty of labour. Banish poverty, you banish wealth’ (Chadwick 1836: 501). Impoverishment and inequality are inseparable from the capitalist mode of state reproduction, the continual reinforcement of separation and the pauperisation of the alienated labourer. Attlee considered charity to be based on these inequalities: the rich man’s caprice, the poor man’s poverty, and subjective notions of the deserving and undeserving. This is a perspective reflected through the form of charity today, as people make choices as to which charity should receive donations and which should be ignored. Charity is not autonomous: there may be an aspect of choice in terms of which charity to give to, how to give and what to give, but the charity itself is corralled by the capitalist mode of reproduction. The repercussions of fragile capitalist reproduction, with the continual exacerbation of inequalities and instability, persist today. For Attlee, it seems, antagonisms such as the class relation, the wage labour relation and the money form were (and remain today) determinants of the social form of charitable giving. Of course, it is unreasonable to expect society, the insubordinate wage labouring masses, to give (whether financially or via volunteering) to a multitude of charities; but perhaps the real question is, why give to any at all? Oscar Wilde suggested that the community ‘should restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence and the like … on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises … Charity creates a multitude of sins’ (Wilde 2001 [1891]: 128). Charity perpetuates the need for charity itself, reproducing its current form through capitalism, rather than struggling for the decomposition of the present social quagmire and the reforming of a society in which charity, poverty and capitalist reproduction do not exist. This is the displacement of struggle. This is why people give, why capitalist charity exists: through donating, volunteering and the ‘branding’ of charities themselves, charity continues to recreate the sins of capitalist inequalities.

Charity is also a cultural concept; it is consumed and reproduced as a commodity, part of the spectacle, a social event. In the reproduction of ‘“cultural capitalism”, one no longer sells (and buys) objects which “bring” cultural or emotional experiences, one directly sells (and buys) such experiences’ (Žižek 2009: 139), like the experience of the charity form. Charity has become part of the fetish: through the commodification of labour power and the resulting wage received in the money form, fetishism, the ‘material relations between persons and social relations between things’ (Marx, 1983: 78) is illustrated. Present-day examples of Žižek’s ‘experiences’ that come to mind include participation in apparently life-affirming events such as marathons, or ‘races for life’, in which registration fees are paid and money raised for specific causes. There are also the so-called charity treks and adventures, such as walking to Machu Picchu to raise money, realising a cosmetic contribution that helps capitalism survive through charity.

Through the experience of charity, the contradictions of capitalist reproduction are given an outlet, a social expression in an ‘acceptable’ and permitted way, which doesn’t undermine capital, but is itself antagonistic. The experience and interaction with charity is typically a mediated relation, one which can be understood as ‘interpassivity … delegated “passivity” … or delegated consumption’ (Pfaller, 2003). In giving to charity, we displace our own struggles from ourselves to the charity; the relation is one of trust, but also one of interpassivity. The consequences of our charity (be they donated money or commodities) are not realised by us as donors: we are helping in a capitalist way, and contributing to reproducing our own dispossession. The direct act of giving charity to its recipients is a delegated relation. Through the culture of consumption, we are consuming charity as an ideal (alleviating poverty) or an experience (trekking at Machu Picchu), and therefore charity is the mediated social form, the struggle to displace struggle. Charity is still struggling against capital, but it is not undermining it. Fisher relates interpassivity to the Disney film WALL-E, and suggests that ‘the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume with impunity’ (2009: 12). Charity can be conceptualised in a similar manner. In and through its battle of attrition with capital, charity represents our displaced struggles, while we continue to unquestioningly consume the mediated form of cultural spectacle presented to us. Charity provides the consumer with ‘a straightforward promise of reassurance’ (Spence 2010: 101). As consumers, we are congratulated by society for our selfless altruistic acts, without questioning the consequences or processes on which charity itself is grounded. Thus we seem to render ourselves less selfless and more selfish individuals, unconcerned with the true consequences of our giving, which perpetuate capitalism. Through spectacular charity events, as well as being recognised and congratulated for our participation, we inadvertently ingratiate ourselves into the contrived social form via our supposed achievements. We struggle, but our struggle is only helping capital. Through this spectacle of consumption and the ongoing reproduction of capitalism, the form of charity has become a struggling mediator in and against (but not beyond) impoverishment, and an illustration of our antagonistic existence through separation in unity. Through such interpassivity as a society, we are diminishing action and promoting passiveness, as our struggles are continually displaced.

So what of the reproduction of the charities themselves? Surely in their capitalistic form, they engage with the wage labour relation? Charities have paid employees, but they also have substantial numbers of volunteers, who participate and contribute for ‘free’. We know that labour power is the source of all value in capitalist reproduction, where the struggle begins and ends; and as such, it is the only element that can speak against and question the form of capitalist reproduction. Capitalism continually reconstitutes its mode of reproduction in its ongoing attempts to control the power of labour. Labour power itself is commodified and fetishised, and on the flipside, commodities and ‘fetishisation [are] the containment of the power of labour; defetishisation is the overflowing of the power of labour, the scream of negativity’ (Holloway 1991: 77). It is a self-reinforcing dialectic, but one that is illusory, ‘where the real world is replaced by a selection of images … which succeed in making themselves regarded as the epitome of reality’ (Debord 2005 [1967]: 19). One such spectacular ‘reality’ through which fetishised labour power finds expression is charity. According to Daly, ‘capitalism is a system that seemingly allows for all kinds of individual expression and innovation but only to the extent that it creates a kind of monotheistic attachment to the system itself’ (2008: 33). Through volunteering, such an attachment can be demonstrated. Volunteering for charity can be considered a way in which self-realisation can be achieved, in which creativity can be unleashed, but only within a socially accepted, capitalistic mode of reproduction. Through volunteering, we are reproducing our alienated form. The volunteer must still engage with the capitalist mode of reproduction, and receive a wage, pension or state support – a monetary income of some kind outside of the charity relation. Volunteering may be a struggle for emancipation, a small detraction from the wage labour relationship, but it is a restrained one in capitalist charity. The capitalist form of charity subverts any possibility of our volunteering struggle succeeding. That is not to say that volunteers do not derive a personal benefit from their activities; but through engaging with the fetishised form of charity volunteering, there is the potential for manipulation and exploitation. Volunteering was another element of Cameron’s ‘big society’, encouraged as a means to embellish CVs and stimulate the economy, and to give young people the opportunity to gain experience in the workplace. But in reality, it succeeded in promoting free labour power and introducing the discipline and culture of work in capitalism. In volunteering for charity, even though the labour power is devoted to the socially constructed notion of altruism, the volunteer is actually dedicating themselves to the displaced struggle, the accumulation of money, consumerism and the redistribution of poverty. And although volunteering is a symptom of discomfort with the passivity of the social form, representing an obvious desire for change, such changes cannot be achieved through the reproduction of capitalist charity.

This polemic has sought to unsettle notions of how we understand charity as a social form. The state, and the fetishised commodification of charity and of labour through volunteering, reproduce the particular capitalist social form of charity. Charity is a limited struggle in and against capitalist reproduction, as it consistently tries to negate what it is simultaneously creating. That is not to say that all charity is negative, or in the words of Oscar Wilde, degrading and demoralising. Neither is it entirely useless and ineffective: people do benefit from the reproduction of charity in its ruptured, socially prescribed present form. However, to participate in charity is already to participate in the displacement of struggle, in struggles that are mediated in a way that is never completely transformative.