SPEAKING FROM THE HEART ... 12

SPEAKING FROM THE HEART ... 12

First exploit the masses, impoverish them, gather wealth, then dish out a dole and blazon it as charity with the world applauding you on your magnanimity. This is the feature of philanthropy in a capitalistic order of socioeconomic existence.

Unless the exploitative yoke be overcome, the machinery of social exploitation overhauled and replaced by a more human one where welfare becomes more than a word and finds real meaning in deed, all this so-called charity will remain as a hindrance in the path of social justice in the economic sense.

You do not do charity to the Ganga by drawing water from it and then spraying back a few drops in it by way of decent return. The water belongs to the river in the first place and there remains no more room for ownership of it by any for future charitable dispensation thereof. Same with the earth's wealth. It belongs to the earth and private accumulation of it to monstrous proportions before dispensing the charitable dole is not only unwelcome and evil but a cover-up of exploitative intentions.

This must be made clear to all that they do not need anyone's charity to survive but must be provided for in a human society that was originally designed to cater to the welfare of one and all through cooperative living. The social element was initially prominent in such an understanding and arrangement but later, exploitative accretion played foul with it as wealth fell into the hands of the crafty and the mighty and socioeconomic systems were evolved to maintain the status quo of exploitation. 

We are now educated enough, socially evolved enough to discern, to detect the lie involved in the entire narrative of charity of the rich to the poor. The question arises -- why at all plunder the wealth of all and stockpile it to your individual advantage before dishing out the dole for the disadvantaged to settle your ruffled soul? Why at all create such brutal economic inequality by amassing wealth thus? Why not reduce profit, give quality and share in the equal joy of all rather than steal through legally sanctioned means and through methods unsanctioned as well to reduce people to poverty and then attempt to rescue them with your published charity with the limelight shining on your 'messianic' self?

What we need is awareness, enlightenment and a just system whereby inequalities may be optimally reduced without requiring these pretentious programmes of charity that have become the justification for initial plunder of people's wealth.

Written by Sugata Bose