Do Capitalist Governments and Charity/Churches/Rich People give welfare ?

[tradeunionsupporter]

Do Capitalist Governments and Charity/Churches/Rich People give welfare and food stamps and unemployment and help to the Poor because they care about the Poor or do they have a agenda ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state

[Book O'Dead]

I can't remember who said it but it goes something like this: "Capitalist philanthropy is stealing wholesale while giving back retail."

[Railyon]

Suppressing open class revolt is where it's at.

I don't doubt that individuals give welfare because they care, but at the material level they give away what they first took from the working class.

[The Jay]

Some people care about the poor, so they act outside their economic interests. It's not a positive aspect of Capitalism because it requires people to act in an un-Capitalistic manner. Actually, there are some out there that would say that such philanthropic actions de-stabilize society and do not let the market do it's job. To get a better idea of that view watch this:

There are three parts to this. I recommend all of them.

+ YouTube Video

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

I concur with previous with previous comments, I'm sure some individuals act out of a sense of duty or kindness or whatever...doesn't change the unjust system that allows them to be in that position to begin with (able to be wealthy with poor people to donate to)

[tradeunionsupporter]

Thank you for your answers.

[tradeunionsupporter]

I agree Welfare exists to stop Class revolt.

[Regicollis]

It has been said that welfare is the price the capitalists pay to avoid a revolution. I think there is a lot of truth in this. The European welfare states were expanded during the Cold War when there was an actual alternative (albeit a poor one) to the capitalist system. After this alternative disappeared the price to avoid revolution has gone down and thus the bourgeoisie has been able to cut the welfare state.

In some countries the capitalist class have realised that they can profit from government programmes like free education or free health care which provides them with a skilled work force. Government programmes can also provide capitalists with artificial "markets" that allows them to siphon public funds to their own profit.

Although I think the main reason for charity and welfare is avoiding revolution individuals may have many reasons for giving to charity. There may be religious reasons, moral reasons or people might simply do it for their own glory (like founding a museum and naming it after yourself).

[tradeunionsupporter]

I agree with all of your posts.

[znk666]

Some rich people do it just because they want to help,but majority just wants to suppress revolution.

[Engels]

This is one way of looking at charity:

The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it…

Basically, people are genuinely moved by the misery they see around them, and mistakenly look to piecemeal solutions such as charity to remedy the conditions engendered by capitalism.

However, if they actually wanted real change they would need to reconstitute society in a manner so as to make poverty impossible. For Wilde, they do not see the root cause of the misery they see around them; their altruism is misdirected and may even be an impediment to lasting change, i.e. socialist revolution.

[Sea]

They don't give. They patronize.