Is it any wonder that charity as almsgiving became a word of shame? Is there any wonder that accepting aid becomes demeaning? If individualism and self-reliance are supreme values, dependency implies disgrace. Large numbers of people who are eligible for public assistance refuse it because their pride—their belief in individualism and self-help—prevents it. "I'd rather starve" is a statement sincerely felt by those to whom being able to stand on one's feet is more important than anything else. (Another variant appears in ethics courses in the questions about the man who steals a medicine to save his child's life, rather than let her die because he can't pay for it. Is the pharmacist culpable for not giving the medicine away in those circumstances? How could such circumstances exist in the first place?)

The asymmetries of the human condition, the mismatches of needs and resources, wants and abilities, s and power, are corrected in three ways: by self-interest; by rights guaranteed by the state; and by philanthropy.

Welfare Issues

At the turn of the century there was an intense intellectual struggle to shift the burden of responsibility for such conditions as poverty from the individual to the society. The struggle has broadened to become a principal theme of contemporary society; it continues to be one of the main agenda items of political parties. As many commentators have observed, the argument has shifted attention from individual responsibilities to individual rights: Where past generations made claims that were too great for many individuals to meet, many in the current generation make claims of rights that exceed the ability of the state to provide.

In 1895, C. S. Loch of the Charity Organization Society in England said this:

The truest charity often lies in the righteous fulfillment of duty, whether personal or public; and next to it must often be placed that charity which is vigilant to see duty done.... Charity that helps others to do their duty is the most genuine and salutary.

The best way to help people who have neglected their responsibilities to themselves and to their families is to put them back on the right track, to call them back to their duty. There is an assumption that among any number of people who are idle, some are idle by choice. They are perhaps supported by others—not by relatives or friends, but by strangers. Some are idle by birth defect, accident, or lack of opportunity; others are idle by self-indulgence. One approach is to deal with the problem presented by the idlers (some of whom don't want our help) by trying to reform them; another is by trying to reform society. In American history, one can read about the debate under the heading of the "Social Gospel" movement in the religious literature, and in the histories of the reforms of progressivism in the political literature.

One can read about this debate more currently, too, in the pages of To Promote Prosperity, for example, a study of domestic policy by the Hoover Institution, and in Beyond the Waste Land, a wide-ranging critique and "democratic alternative to economic decline . . .'by the three most interesting economists of the left in the United States—or any where today' " (according to John Kenneth Galbraith). The Hoover Institution excerpt that follows deals only with the issue of poverty and welfare; the page drawn from Beyond the Waste Land is the authors' outline of their proposed agenda of reform.

TOWARD WELFARE REFORM

Welfare reform is urgently needed. But to achieve reform there first must be widespread agreement on the general principles that shape and govern the welfare system. The following four principles seem eminently reasonable:

1. Most people can and should take responsibility for supporting themselves and their families. In the absence of physical or mental impairment, individuals should perceive that society expects them to support themselves and their families, and this perception should be reinforced by the operation of the welfare system.

2. Short-term help should be available to many; long-term help should be reserved for a few. A humane welfare system is one that readily provides temporary and emergency help to those in need. A responsible welfare system is one that provides permanent help to only the very few who cannot support themselves.

3. The welfare system should not encourage the breakup of the family. Family members should not find it in their economic self-interest to dissolve the family unit. One of the reasons why families exist in every culture is that there are economic advantages to specialization and division of labor within the family. The welfare system should not undermine these advantages.

4. The goals of the welfare system should be achieved at minimum cost. As with every other social goal, it is in our self-interest to find the most effective ways of operating welfare based on these principles.

(Reprinted from To Promote Prosperity: U.S. Domestic Policy in the Mid-1980's edited by John H. Moore, with permission of Hoover Institution Press. Copyright 1984 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University.)

AN ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS

I. Right to Economic Security and Equity

1. Right to a Decent Job

2. Solidarity Wages, Comparable Pay, and Equal Employment Opportunity

3. Public Childcare and Community Service Centers

4. A Shorter Standard Work Week and Flexible Work Hours

5. Flexible Price Controls

II. Right to a Democratic Workplace

6. Public Commitment to Democratic Trade Unions

7. Workers' Right to Know and to Decide

8. Democratic Production Incentives

9. Promoting Community Enterprises

III. Right to Chart Our Economic Lives

10. Planning to Meet Human Needs

11. Democratizing Investment

12. Democratic Control of Money

13. Promoting Community Life

14. Environmental Democracy

15. Democratizing Foreign Aid IV. Right to a Better Way of Life

16. Reduced Military Spending

17. Conservation and Safe Energy

18. Good Food

19. A National Health Policy

20. Lifetime Learning and Cultural Opportunities

21. Payment for Home Child Care in Single-Parent Households

22. Community Corrections and Reduced Crime Control Spending

23. Community Needs Information and Reduced Advertising Expenditures

24. Equitable Taxation and Public Allocation of Resources

 (Samuel Bowles et al., p. 270)

I chose these two examples, despite their incomparability, because they are current and because they reflect sharply contrasting perspectives. I chose them, too, because each of these positions seems to me to be further from the middle than close to it. More extreme positions often have the advantage of showing how the consequences of ideas work themselves out as they are carried further toward their implied conclusions.

The struggle implicit in "self-help," as discussed earlier touches the most sensitive nerve of the philanthropic tradition. The continuing public policy debates are carried on, however, largely without reference to the philanthropic tradition, or in ways that simply draw on it for ammunition (by both sides). The issues are so important that they are considered broadly political—the Hoover Institution underwrote one study and the Progressive Alliance inspired and supported the other—yet there remains great difference of opinion about how directly ideas developed with philanthropic resources should influence political decisions.

The Dynamic of Philanthropy

The section on the "dialectic" of philanthropy stressed the tension between paired ideas and values. There is also a dynamic visible in the tradition, one that struck me first in reading about the early religious expression of these ideas.

The response to particular suffering amid widespread suffering probably meant that emotional sensitivity to the needs of others was a gradual but profoundly significant development. Two kinds of response may have appeared over the centuries: first, a spontaneous reaching out beyond the family, clan, or tribe to defenseless strangers; then a move to make that response more reliable, less quixotic.

My working hypothesis is that there is an inherent tendency in philanthropy to move from the spontaneous to the planned, from the impulsive acts of individuals to the organized acts of groups. That dynamic imposes order and reason on a powerful but notoriously unreliable emotion.

There is certainly anthropological evidence that I don't know about that would help to support or disprove such a hypothesis. The history of religions might reveal, in its study of tithing, how the voluntary gift was transformed into the coercive power of a tax. Philosophers could help me out of my confusion about the question of free will and its place in the voluntary act. Historians will correct my reading of the emergence of the Poor Laws in England, a still confusing history for the layperson of public and private, coercive and voluntary measures to cope with economic and social change. Political economists and others working on problems of the poor countries of the world are trying to find ways to link relief and development, to build on acts of mercy to create the means to avoid recurrent tragedy.

The modern expression of this dynamic is expressed in language more familiar in western Europe than in the United States: from "sentiment" or "privilege" to "right." The accepted interpretation of modern history among Europeans who hold such views sees the emergence first of basic political rights followed by equally valid basic economic rights.

My hypothesis is intuitive and tentative; what it seeks to provide is a framework for discussion of certain central issues for philanthropy: what should be voluntary and private, and what should be the role of the state. You should also bear in mind what I have passed over, and thought too little about as yet: how things sometimes flow in the other direction.

Gathering and Dispensing Organization, Leadership, Participation

There is another inseparable pair we should always keep in mind but seldom do: fund raising and grantmaking. Those are the most familiar aspects of two much more complex forms of philanthropic activity: Organizing determines the purpose; recruitment brings together the people who make things work; fund raising is essential to both.

There has been much less attention paid to the organizational aspects of grantmaking: Edwin Whitehead is only the most recent millionaire to claim that giving money away is more difficult than acquiring it in the first place. But planning and organizing are essential aspects of bringing resources to bear on problems. Without them there will be harm done rather than good, and certainly there will be waste rather than efficiency.

Organization requires leadership. The problems of leadership are important because the genius of American philanthropy—and of modern society generally—is organization.