Trayvon. Trayvon. Trayvon Trayvon Trayvon. Trayvon.
What the hell, people. What the EFFING EFF.
In good news, Leah Hunt-Hendrix is awesome. I can’t wait to read her book on the “genealogy of solidarity.” And she’s stirring things up within philanthropy among individual and institutional donors. Go Leah!
I’m back. The past few months have been a blender work-wise, but I’m back to blogging.
And thank you Albert Ruesga for inspiring my return. Your most recent post on White Courtesy Telephone, “Steve Jobs, the Meaning of a Nonprofit, and Moral Imagination,” crystallized a lot of the things that have been troubling me about sector agnosticism. As arbitrary as the tax code is on some level, the designation “not-for-profit” captures something essential about certain forms of collective action.
As much as the lines between sectors are blurring, I predict that non-profits won’t go away entirely. There’ll always be a sphere of action that is fundamentally opposed to commercial motives – as much as contemporary life in These United States is geared to make us think of “democratic capitalism” as the state of nature, unearthed and made real.
I mused last time about a progressive theory of wealth accumulation. I’ve also complained about the paucity of our theories of human behavior. At the Venn-diagram intersection of these two is a progressive theory of human frailty, of fallibility. Novelists get at this, screenwriters too – but in the political sphere, conservatives have staked out this territory as their own. In one prominent right-wing worldview, progressives believe in the perfectibility of man, that the application of reason can lift humanity out of the benightedness of religion and into a land of rational justice – while conservatives, grounded in Judeo-Christian teachings, see man as fallen, as having original sin, and therefore never being perfectible. On this view, social engineering, attempts to order society to perfect man, are not only doomed to fail but fundamentally misguided due to the fallen nature of humankind. Better to preserve traditions that have emerged organically. (Hello, antebellum South.)
But I believe there has to be a progressive theory of human frailty that is not about fallenness but about compassion and empathy. Such a theory doesn’t have to have the particular elective affinity I’m about to describe, but for me it dovetails with atheism: this is all there is, so dammit if we hadn’t better treat each other right. ‘Cause we’re all we’ve got.
Anyway. To me this is the soil from which a democratic philanthropy grows. Visions of wealth accumulation and human frailty, reclaimed from partisan clutches, put in service of human flourishing in the here and now.
So thank you, Albert, for stirring my (slumbering?) moral imagination.
I had a friend in college whom I met again while about to enter grad school. He’s one of the book-smartest people I’ve ever met, just brilliant at making connections among all sorts of diverse intellectual traditions and disciplines: computer science, philosophy, literary theory, evolutionary biology – it was all one big playground for his mind. And he said the darnedest thing to me when I described my nascent career in philanthropy. This was more than ten years ago, so I have to paraphrase, but the gist was, “I thought about being a professional do-gooder, but then I realized, much better to get rich and then direct the funding to what I think is important.” Of course, that imperative to donor-directed giving is all the range now, but what struck me was the sequencing: smart, progressive people should get rich, and then use that power to do good.
I think about that conversation often, because it’s becoming clear in the current 99%/1% discussion that progressives have a real ambivalence about getting rich. Not being rich, getting rich. Put another way, what is the progressive theory of wealth accumulation? (Separate discussion needed about tech wealth and the cult of Steve Jobs.)
The libertarian economist Tyler Cowen responds to progressive blogger Matt Yglesias’s post on this topic, and the comments on Cowen’s post are well worth browsing – much more light than heat than is usually the case in comments sections.
For me, what it’s about is this: under the current, rigged set of rules, those who succeed the most are rewarded inordinately, all out of proportion to their level of achievement. It didn’t always used to be this way: the ratio of pay between CEO and worker didn’t used to be so absurdly high. (There was a very interesting piece in New York magazine a few weeks back about how Mitt Romney is to a degree behind this change, from his management consulting days.) But these days, if you hit the jackpot, the multiplier effect is astronomical. That’s wealth that could have been distributed differently, more broadly. And it used to be, under good old red-blooded American capitalism. But the game is rigged in a way that rewards the 1%, kind of whether they want it or not. Don’t hate the player, hate the game? I dunno.
To me, this starts to get at the heart of the discussion, and opens up some space to think about the role of philanthropy in helping to promote certain framings and certain incentives. Not sure what that looks like yet, but I picture a small flame in a room full of gusts of hot air, and the need to cup your hand around it so it doesn’t get snuffed out. What does a positive, progressive theory of wealth accumulation look like, and where does philanthropy fit in the picture?
Had to choose a Beatles song title for this post title….
I’m kind of baffled by the fervor of the mourning for Steve Jobs. I mean, I’m writing this on a Mac, and we’ve gradually, consciously migrated to pretty much all Apple products over the past few years, but come on, people, he’s a corporate CEO. I thought these guys were meant to be the enemy – not genius/visionaries/etc./etc./etc. It’s interesting how ambivalence about success and wealth get transmuted when it comes to technology, particularly Internet technology. As if creating the tools for organizing absolves you from scrutiny.
Anyway, it’s notable that this outpouring should be happening the same week as Occupy Wall Street. Because so many of the quotes circulating on Facebook from Jobs are about defiant, damn-the-torpedoes individualism. “Think different,” don’t accept the inherited structures, stick to your singular vision no matter what, civility and protocol be damned. There’s become a romance to a kind of individualism that borders on solipsism – only I matter, my point of view is so singular that I must be heard in all my uniqueness, etc., etc. (Yes, I realize this is ironic coming from a blogger.)
Occupy Wall Street – whose statement is extraordinary and merits scrutiny, including critical scrutiny – is about not accepting inherited structures, but articulated in a much more collective, inclusive mode. Rather than cloaking their methods in mystery and parceling out information in cultish semi-annual rituals, these folks operate in the open and organize without hierarchy, in public. It’s the difference between rejecting inherited structures in favor of more of the same (accumulation of wealth), but for me, and rejecting inherited structures in favor of something different, for the rest of us.
It’s odd and perhaps telling about this moment that two models of social action, of being in the world, that are superficially so similar and yet ultimately so opposed should co-exist – even within some people’s minds.
Let’s appreciate Jobs’s contribution, but ultimately put it in its place. He made a tool. What matters is how it gets used. The medium is sometimes NOT the message.
“As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe”
So goes the front-page headline in today’s NYT. The gist is that Millennials around the world, from Spain to Israel to India, are rising up in direct protests within regimes that were meant to have afforded democracy. “They are taking to the streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box.”
All right, it’s time to review the difference between procedural and substantive democracy. Procedural democracy means that the rules are in place that can guarantee fair outcomes, substantive democracy means that fair outcomes do happen. It’s no accident that procedural democracy is the version that people have in mind when they talk about “democratic capitalism,” as the NYT article does. The heart of procedural democracy is free and fair elections. (Don’t get me wrong – this is a huge achievement in human history. The voting booth is like a pew, you should be reverent and grateful in there.) Freedom of expression, freedom of religion. But that’s basically it.
It’s a sham. When the outcomes don’t go your way, that is. Substantive democracy means that the rules point in a certain direction. (You know, toward justice.) There’s an analogy to dimensions of human rights. Just as democratization has generally meant the installation of procedural democracy, the most progress on human rights has been on civil and political rights – the right to vote, etc. But many human rights advocates have been pushing for while for a further dimension of human rights: economic and social rights – the right to a living wage, health care, etc. These are part of substantive democracy.
Again, don’t get me wrong – go procedural democracy. One thing at a time, gradualism, politics as the art of the possible, etc.
Except, bullshit. That’s what the people on Wall Street and in the tent cities in Israel and Spain, and the hunger striker in India are saying. Bullshit. Why wait? Justice now, economic and social rights now, substantive democracy now. Especially when the capitalism side of “democratic capitalism” is so manifestly rigged. Makes the other side feel rigged too.
Who are we to say any different?
This has to be the most bizarre case of “I told you so” ever, but here goes.
Interesting piece in the NYT (hat tip to Bowen Chung) about a speech at a Tea Party convention where Sarah Palin (!) trotted out an coherent (!!) set of ideas (!!!) that actually make sense (!!!!) and some of which I agree with (the ! key just broke). As I wrote exactly a year ago today:
I think the privileging of local knowledge is a bipartisan issue, or a cross-cutting cleavage, one that elements of left and right can agree on.
From the right: lefty-liberal plans for social engineering are based on the fallacy that human nature is perfectable, and subject to rational planning and persuasion. But the truth is man is flawed by nature (or by original sin), and top-down approaches don’t take into account local realities. “Unintended consequences” are the inevitable byproduct of social engineering, and can be avoided by greater reliance on market dynamics. It’s hubris and folly for a central government to try to plan an economy, much less dictate cultural norms that have developed idiosyncratically over time in local communities. As Ronald Reagan said, “The ten most dangerous words in the English language are, ‘Hi, I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” (Quote from this New Yorker article, toward the end.)
From the left: the corporatization of culture, food, and everyday life are a homogenizing force that threaten to erase the diversity that make our communities and nation great. “Grassroots community organizing” is a way to empower everyday people to make their voices heard and have a positive impact on the conditions of their lives through obtaining changes in policy, whether local, state, or federal. To be a locavore is to reject the evils of factory farming, which is an environmental disaster, an animal-welfare nightmare, and a public-health time-bomb. Eat local, know your farmer, avoid GMOs, celebrate the diversity of a specific place.
What they agree on: Top-down solutions are bad, bottom-up initiatives are morally and practically preferable.
Now comes that word that Sarah Palin argued, at a Tea Party event, that there’s a permanent political class, that it’s in the pocket of big business and big government, and that “corporate crony capitalism” is choking economic and political progress in this country by keeping small business down.
I doubt that as the author goes on to suggest, these are signs of a political realignment, but geez, wouldn’t that be something?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to deal with the pigs that just flew out of my, um, symbol for the Democratic Party.
[post title/song title in honor of the great Steely Dan concert we went to last night.]
Last time, I was fretting about the counter-majoritarian nature of philanthropy, coming to the conclusion that maybe it’s not such a bad thing. There are such things as democratic failures, and it can be good to have a corrective element in the ecosystem – albeit not in a dominant position.
The latest kerfuffle in the nonprofit space is about the for-profit company GOOD buying the non-profit social network Jumo. People have fretted about it, said “get used to it,” said, “actually, there’s something more interesting going on over here.” There are valid points made in this discussion about getting beyond the superficial discussion of tax status.
But the real issue is remembering why there’s a “nonprofit” sector in the first place (however you want to label it). And that’s because there are some things for which there are no “natural” markets. Robert Kuttner pointed this out years ago, that the “markets” for health care and labor are fundamentally different from markets for other kinds of commodities because the former are about human beings and the latter are generally about physical objects. Human beings have a unique moral status, so it simply doesn’t work to treat them like any other widget, no matter what the textbooks say. Those markets will always be different and always inherently political.
It follows that there are areas of human endeavor where market dynamics will not function in the same way. Think of it like the upside-down mountains in Avatar whose magnetic field throws off conventional instruments. Our basic assumptions about how markets function – rational actors optimizing utility defined in terms of immediate material gain, etc – are called into question. Our tools – our business plans – don’t work in the same way; input A, instead of generating output A, leads to output Q. Behavioral economics helps here, but there’s something more needed.
I’ve written about the imp of the perverse, that dark impulse that leads people to do things against their own self-interest. And about how our theories of human behavior are just so boring.
The problem is, there are just some areas of human endeavor where money isn’t the point. The profit motive isn’t enough to motivate action. Something more has to get people to do it. And that something else is like a flame; it can grow, it can spread, but it can also go out. It may endure as embers, waiting to be rekindled, but its going out spreads a chill, dims light, causes the huddled crowd to disperse.
The [insert a better word for nonprofit] sector is where that flame is kindled. My mentor Jeff Weintraub points out that what gets called “civil society” or the third sector actually has two components: civil society, the realm of private business for private gain, and political society, the realm of collective action for collective gain that is not as all-encompassing at the state. Political society is where advocacy happens, where organizing happens, where (shudder) political parties exist. We conflate civil society and political society – however we label them – at our peril.
I haven’t read The Help, but I’m interested in the discussion surrounding the film’s release. I think of Colorlines as my go-to place for acute, well-informed critique on the politics of race and racial equity. So it’s intriguing to see a take there by Akiba Solomon, timed to the film’s release, that quotes as “the best review…I’ve read so far” a piece that appeared in…Entertainment Weekly. That’s remarkable! Colorlines seal of approval on a piece of critique that appeared in as mainstream a publication as you can get.
That’s no knock on Solomon. As a longtime loyal EW subscriber, I had been pleasantly surprised to Martha Southgate’s on-point rebuttal of the film’s presumption to tell the story of a key element of the civil-rights struggle from the perspective of those who were ultimately on the sidelines. Money line from Southgate: “the structure of narratives like The Help underscores the failure of pop culture to acknowledge a central truth: Within the civil rights movement, white people were the help.” The point that needed to be made gets made in a place where a sizable part of the film’s audience is likely to see it. Nice.
Now, there are several layers going on here, obviously. (And I promise one of them has to do with philanthropy.)
And it’s that last point that resonates with the concept of philanthropy. Sometimes the gift of voice is the gift that keeps on giving, well beyond the giver’s intentions or frames of reference. Ultimately, giving voice to the disenfranchised and then stepping the hell to the side, may be the best thing a philanthropist – whether an individual like the Skeeter character in The Help or a foundation making grants – can do in some situations. Once again, the Beatles get it right – “help! I need somebody, not just anybody” – there are good ways and better ways that donors can be…wait for it…The Help.
Carl Schramm, head of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, has a piece in Forbes arguing philanthropy exists to advance and perfect democratic capitalism. In response, Albert Ruesga, head of the Greater New Orleans Foundation, laments that if this is why foundations exist, “could there possibly be a better reason for dismantling the private foundation as an institution?” Ooh, CEO throwdown!
Less flippantly, what’s going unexamined here, I think, is the term “democratic capitalism.” My guess is that Schramm sees that adjective, which goes unexplained, as significant. Capitalism within the context of a democratic system presumably is different than unmodified, raw capitalism. But here’s where I think the difference lies. My hunch is that Ruesga’s image of democracy and Schramm’s may be different in one significant way.
As I’ve written about, and I owe this insight to my mentor Jeff Weintraub, in one respect democracy and the “free” market are fundamentally at odds. The invisible hand of the market aggregates the individual pursuit of self-interest into social welfare (or so the story goes). But this aggregation is strangely delicate. Try intentionally to generate social welfare, and the aggregation falls apart. This is some of the thinking behind mistrust of government.
Do you see what’s going on here? To avoid suboptimal outcomes, you have to give up the ability to consciously pursue the collective good. So the free market is really unfree, in an important respect.
And democracy is actually, in one version I happen to like, about a community consciously defining and intentionally pursuing the collective good (what Tocqueville called “self-interest properly understood”). Which is the opposite of letting the free market operate through the individual pursuit of self-interest. So democracy and the market are in one respect fundamentally at odds.
This is if you define democracy as I just have. It’s sometimes called “participatory” democracy, and associated with Isaiah Berlin’s vision of “positive freedom” – the freedom to do X or Y.
But there’s another version of democracy – a “procedural” one, associated with Berlin’s other vision – “negative freedom,” or freedom from X or Y. This version of democracy is not about the outcomes but about the rules and fair play – freedom of expression, and free elections. There’s a lot to recommend this version! And its achievement and sustainment are to be celebrated.
But for many people, I assume Ruesga included, it’s not enough. “Democratic capitalism” based on procedural democracy and negative freedom is sadly perfectly compatible with high levels of inequality and unjust economic outcomes. In fact, it probably encourages them. But for a vision of the good based on positive freedom and participatory democracy – what you might call social justice – “democratic capitalism” would need to look pretty different than it currently does to make that phrase other than a cruel irony.
And whether philanthropy can contribute to that effort – or whether the most it can and should aspire to is supporting “democratic capitalism” as Schramm might have it – is the real question. One of two, you might say.
Philanthropy is often about solving problems. Which sounds future-oriented: make a better tomorrow.
But sometimes the problem is loss: a way of life, a community, is falling apart, and needs preservation.
Is there a nostalgic mode of philanthropy?
Historic preservation, cultural continuity – is this inherently conservative? Or is there something progressive in fighting the worst tendencies of the day? We’ve become accustomed, in the current political discourse, to think of fighting the future (demographic change, diversification, growing immigration) as hearkening back to a distant past (the 50s). But what if there’s a way of fighting the future, of seeking to conserve, that’s about preserving elements of the current social contract that deserve to endure? (Like, I dunno, Medicare.)
Everything old is new again, but some things that were new deserve to become old – and constant.
Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen’s well-reviewed new movie, is about a struggling author whose first novel is about a man who runs a nostalgia shop. The arc is that the writer has to learn to live in the present – by understanding that every age has a time about which it’s nostalgic, so there’s no point living in the past. But is that the lesson? Or is it that there are elements of the past that are worth preserving, even against the tide of the constantly new.
What’s different about the current moment is we have more power to preserve than ever. Our Facebook accounts, our cameraphones – this blog – capture moments, feelings, thoughts, that were once ephemeral. I wonder if the artists of this new medium will be the nostalgists, the ones who find a way to extract the solid core from the swirl of data and hold on to it, even for a little while….