24 Apr American Philanthropy, pt 3 (yes, i skipped pt. 2)

I keep an eye on the Philanthrocapitalism webpage for inspiration. They don’t disappoint. Today, i read The Rich Versus the Rest? – a post responding to the recent push in England (and also here in the U.S.) toward a cap on tax subsidies for giving. In London, there were reports that the wealthy were using the deductions as a way to skirt taxes even as they donated to charities that “don’t do a great deal of charitable work,” so the BBC reported from Downing Street. The indictments stem from a confidential study of HM Revenue that found that many multimillionaires were paying less than 10% tax rate (or even not paying at all) because of charitable donation deductions, reports The Telegraph.

Then again, today’s Telegraph reported it:

…has learnt the Treasury is “looking seriously” at a plan to retreat over plans to tax charitable donations by the wealthy – another policy attacked by traditional Tory supporters and backbench MPs.

Much of the frustration (both in England and here in the U.S.) actually stems from the de-democratization of social service and the fact that some of the wealthiest people in these parts of the world are not paying a dime to taxes (see de-democratization). A recent push for the Buffett Rule, a tax plan proposed by Obama in 2011 that would place a 30% tax on those who make more than a million dollars a year was scrapped. The White House reported that the new tax law would effect only 55,000 taxpayers.The real idea stems from the notion that households pulling in that much money should not be paying less in taxes, proportionally, than those with so much less. It died in April through a Republican filibuster in the U.S. Senate. (For a comprehensive overview of the kinds of savings that are trickling up through benefits in tax codes, see Ronald Brownstein’s article, A Path to Reform).

But it’s the other argument about philanthropy that i’m most interested in – the one about de-democratizing social services. Actually, that’s a very polite way of saying that the rich and superrich have found the best way to maintain their power.

Gramsci wrote, in 1917, “Filantropia, buona volontà e organizzazione” (Philanthropy, Good Will, and Organization) for  L’Avanti!, (Forward!, the daily Italian Socialist Party newspaper). In the article, he exhorts his readers to beware of bourgeois philanthropy. In his view, the society should be socratic by nature, arriving at truths together – finding their purpose through dialogue and discourse. In a socialist culture, there is freedom of thought from which arrives cultural institutions that society, as a whole, desires. One where each and every person is both teacher and student. Philanthropy, he points out, is another avenue through which the rich hold their power – through which they demand a kind of continuation of hegemony (he goes on to expand on this at length in the Prison Notebooks, with regard to education more directly).

Gramsci’s argument, then, is against the power that bourgeois philanthropists wield over the proletariat and over society itself. For him, there is an imperative that civil society be built through solidarity, not through the “good will” of a few who will offer just enough concessions that the masses are placated.

As a counterproposal to philanthropy, let us offer solidarity, organization. Let us give the means to good will, without which it will always remain barren and sterile. (transl. in Crehan, 2002: 73).

His arguments, 95 years later, still ring true. The arguments that philanthropy and civil society should be managed privately because of the unwieldy nature of democracy or mass-inclusion in decisions about how best to support society, particularly in this economically volatile time, smacks of an elitism that can be held only by those who imagine themselves the saviors of the world. Their “good capitalism” somehow gives them a kind of moral advantage that demands their Messiahnism – their sacrifice of privilege that invokes even more privilege.

Who gets to hold them accountable?

 A note and plea: I (and another scholar, David Faber) have been unable to find an original copy of Gramsci’s article. The date given in most publications that cite this article is 24 December 1917, but the only article catalogued for him that day in Avanti! is ‘The Revolution Against Capital.” This blog post was only made possible by piecing together bits and pieces from several books and papers – and really, most of them use the same chunk of the article. Any help finding the original would be very much appreciated.