Sustaining Mother Capitalism

The true purpose of private grant-making foundations is to sustain and advance the very system of democratic capitalism that gave birth to them. So says an article in Forbes, The Capitalist Tool. On a related note, I just now gave a presentation on major gift fundraising to representatives from workers centers. Afterward, an attendee introduced himself, said he was an undocumented worker in charge of major gifts for his worker center in TX. Did I have any advice? I said, "Ask the wealthy what you can do for them." In other words, as in the Forbes article, advance and sustain the narcissism of wealth. Hear the travails of the wealthy, before talking about your own petty problems. It is not that easy being rich. My friend from the worker center thanked me and asked if he could call me if he ran into any walls.

Comments

[tom matrullo]

Is the model, then, that Capitalism, sensing through the quake under its boots that something might be amiss, quickly entrusts a bundle of benjamins to some trustworthy, benign souls, then relies on their can-do, highly motivated savvy to fend off whatever ills would otherwise harm it? Private Foundations as apotropaic fifth columnars? or blood cells at the ready? Capitalism knows it has HIV, but knows how to cure it, by throwing the right amount of capital at the right shamans? Behind this is some Masonic, Orphic, or barbarous ritual involving fat white males getting naked and bloody? Some bowtie, amulet and handshake? What's the frequency Kenneth?

[Curator]

Somethign like that. And more. Schramm writes that

the industrial capitalism of a century ago was in a rough transitional stage. It was raising the country's productive capacity while generating harmful, self-limiting effects that threatened its own rapid growth. Living and working conditions for urban laborers were often truly dreadful. Many people could not afford to buy the goods they were laboring to manufacture. Unrest was common.

Thus foundations like the Sage performed a necessary service. They took the rough edges off the capitalism of their time. Their efforts helped democratic capitalism advance to its next stage in the U.S. without the serious setbacks that occurred in other countries--such as large-scale labor revolts or descents into fascism, communism or state socialism.
So private philanthropy functioned like a narcotic, a social palliative, much the way television functions today.

[Tom Matrullo]

Few would accuse television of being a philanthropic phenomenon, just as few would consider that the true purpose of philanthropy is "to sustain, refine and advance the very system of democratic capitalism that gave birth to them."

These quaint tropes had me thinking that Schramm was a writer from a former time - that it was a piece from yore.

Particularly intriguing: the leitmotiv that only Forbes could sustain in our day of "self-limiting" where the term apparently means "harmful to the other" - rapine, exploitation, fraud, whathaveyou:

"raising the country's productive capacity while generating harmful, self-limiting effects that threatened its own rapid growth."

Only a Forbes tool would have the Kabbalistic ingenuity to view Capital as so all-encompassing as to be incapable of harming any other - there is, clearly, no outside of Wealth Bondage here, there is only Kapital. When it fully self-realizes its true form by raping all that is, it is self-limiting.

There's some mystick shite going on here. This could be the long lost petite dead cat scroll of the Mystic Bourgeoisie.

[Phil Cubeta]

Corporations and their top managers and owners have a significant responsiblility to optimize and allocate people, planet, and profits. If profits kill all the people who labor or purchase the products, then profits will ultimately fall, along with stock prices, and bonuses. If the planet becomes so toxic as to prohibit human life, outside of bubble domed enclaves for the owners, again, profits will fall, bonuses will fall, and those inside the bubble will join those asphyxiating outside the bubble domed community. In these difficult calculations, a corporate or personal foundation enters as a gesture of good faith. We who live and die in service to Wealth Bondage rise to raise our feeble cheer. Only the super-rich, per Ralph Nader, can save us! Thank God they have arrived just in time at the airport headed to Nairobi to save the most lives at the lowest cost per capita. All lives have equal value, as Gates notes, but the cost of saving one differs based on the state of the society and prevailing exchange rates. After all of this, who are we as Worker-Schmucks to expect special treatment or entitlements? The country and states are broke. Philanthropy is increasingly international. Our owners are now Global Citizens, and in a flat world we die on the streets as in Calcutta. Ford Foundation may provide a pauper's burial, maybe.

[Keith Whitaker]

Well, I guess I have a somewhat different view. I agree with the tenor of the above comments (to the degree that I understand them) that Schramm's piece represents a prime example of "wealth bondage." After all, it doesn't seem to me so much to succor "rich people" as it does to flatter "democratic capitalism," by which he seems to mean, along with Pangloss, "this, the best of all possible worlds." However, for my part, I am struck by all the idiosyncrasies, partialities, peculiarities, and evidence of personality that become memorialized in foundations--the very opposite of capitalism's effects in its proper sphere. I wonder if such an effect--as contrasted with capitalism's workings--serve as a much needed relief to the great capitalists who set up these foundations? Money is liquid. Foundations are concrete (if sometimes a bit thick too).

Keith Whitaker, www.wisecounselresearch.org

[tom matrullo]

Mr. Whitaker, I'd welcome some examples of the memorializations you mention. What strikes me above all in Schramm's "argument" is the bland confidence he brings to a system that, as far as I can see, makes the wheel of Fortuna look like Newtonian computations. Is there indeed some whacko line of fetishes, idiosyncratic stylin' or cargo cult curios peculiar to Private Foundations? The ones I've seen have had a kind of dignified mausoleum look.

[Keith Whitaker]

Dear Mr. Matrullo,

You're correct, private foundations have not taken the leap to such stylin'. (Though your comments make me think perhaps there's a business opportunity for a new line of philanthropic advisors: foundation style consultants.) But when we look at what they do (which is necessarily hard to see, since they're, well, private), the individual differences become pretty evident. They may not say so, but most focus on specific geographies (sometimes very specific) that relate more to their founder's lives than to an objective prioritization of need. While almost all of them have bland and general statements of purpose, in practice they usually give to specific organizations connected to their trustees. Little kids and cuddly animals do well in this regard. Then there are their processes (how they consider grants, how they decide, when they pay, etc.), which vary wildly from foundation to foundation. And I'm not even touching the family dynamics that color the 60,000 or so family-controlled foundations in the U.S. In general, what I've found, is that the more you listen to what foundations say, the more you get that mausoleum feeling. The more you look at what they do, the more idiosyncratic they seem. I think this peculiarity is a good thing. But this observation is the same data that the philanthropic consultants use who go out there and say that foundations must clean up their act, get more efficient and effective, and generally turn themselves into "businesses." That's the spirit of capitalism, which I think is just as much in tension with the work of foundations as it is supported by them.

Keith Whitaker, www.wisecounselresearch.org

[Phil Cubeta]

The philanthropic style consultant niche is already filled admirably by The Countess Apraxina. This post by Albert should go into some kind of Philanthropy Blogger Hall of Fame. http://postcards.typepad.com/white_telephone/2006/07/public_relation.html#tp

[Phil Cubeta]

One foundation, Tom, founded by a high tech mogul, and named for his deceased dog, has as its mission, "that no dog should be homeless." Another set up by a hotel heiress devoted billions to the keeping of her lapdog. Another heiress without benefit of foundation left $100 mil to a tiny poetry magazine which has rejected her poems but did so with kindness. Soros has been a figure to reckon with through his Open Society foundation. Much of the current political frameworks can be traced to the ideas funded by a number of small private foundations, like the Olin Foundation. A case can be made that private foundations can provide a yeasty element of diversity amidst a growing popular and commercial mono-culture.

[Phil Cubeta]

By the way, for those who do not know Keith Whitaker, he is the author with Paul Schervish of Wealth and the Will of God, as well as an experienced provider of philanthropic counsel.
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=127089. It is hard to pass time in that world without knowing Wealth Bondage and Fortune's Wheel. The market for wisdom services is volatile, I have found. Or maybe it is just flooded - so much wisdom, so few takers at any price.

[Tom Matrullo]

Thanks for the very interesting account of the tensions within Kapital and Mad Money, Dr. Whitaker. Fascinating stuff. I don't find support for Schamm's view, but didn't expect to. I'm learning here.

Phil, as it happens one of the Foundations you mention - or one very much like it - maintained a small furry creature in the style to which it was accustomed not far from our dumpster.

Your mention of the Olin Foundation quickly led to a black Randian who devoted his life to defending us against the perils of socialism, and to a Foundation that brought together Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz while funding The American Spectator, architect of bilge.

I see no difference between Helmsley and The Bradley folks - they're all about their pet obsessions, they have no capacity for thinking beyond "I've got mine," and what they imagine to be philanthropy is in fact a kind of malodorous zombie commando operation from beyond the grave. In fact, I see no way to connect USian Republicanism or Conservatism with what the liberal tradition conceives as philanthropy. Do you?

[Albert]

Tom, I think there are many traditions at work in so-called "organized philanthropy." Still, it has always struck me that even the most allegedly liberal foundations appear to be, at their core, profoundly conservative institutions, silent in the face of sweeping citizen-led movements in North Africa and the Middle East and unwilling to chastise the captains of capital because they're too busy clinking glasses with them at some seminar in Davos.

[Kat Herding]

When the Robber Barons hit the American scene, they were accounted gauche and uncultured nouveaux riches. The nouveaux bit was to distinguish them from the truly cultured - which, term, let's not forget is joined at the hip with AGRIculture, a la the landed gentry of the House of Lords, etc. Cornelius Vanderbilt reportedly added TEN lumps of sugar to his tea at the few exclusive gentlemen's clubs to which he was admitted, which occasioned much tittering among the natural denizens of High Society. But his real sin, like that of Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford and Stanford (to name but a handful) was having no LAND: no farms and plantations. It became a real problem for the New Rich, in remedy of which they funded B-Schools and Foundations. It was a brilliant strategy, as now, we prostrate ourselves at the feet of these greasy newcomers. Just a little, you know, context.

[tm]

Kat,

Isn't that you under "Independent Foundations"? Hmmmm....

[Tartal Vignos]

Perhaps foundation philanthropy is a ground of contestation between right liberals and left liberals, and capital C Conservatives don't really enter into the debate? And the idiosyncrasy of particular personalized foundations is a result both of that disengagement and the agonizing.

[Tartal Vignos]

Behind this is some Masonic, Orphic, or barbarous ritual involving fat white males getting naked and bloody

I object to having the AFL-CIO characterized so provocatively. It's counter-productive. Literally.

[Phil Cubeta]

Capital C conservative philanthropists with foundations? Maybe Philanthropy Roundtable would be a good place to meet such? http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/ Or, would one want to say that giving big and being a Capital C conservative are ill-aligned? I would hate to believe that. We will have to give big and activate big if we are to conserve, for example, our Constitution, Bill of Rights, the rule of law, sound money, and the basic workings of a democracy.

The problem with democracy is the demos, and the problem of plutocracy is the plutocrats. Even to conserve a sound Plutocracy and to put it on firm ground for many generations requires a supine, miscued, and deluded electorate. Philanthropy has a role to play there even on the most Machiavellian analysis.

My own work uplifting the morals of America's Wealthiest families is one example of a Conservative Philanthropic Initiative, funded by Wealth Bondage. I am working now on a framed diploma for those I train and certify as Wise and Virtuous. Keith Whitaker (please don't tell him this yet) is under consideration as an Adjunct Morals Tutor, as demand rises briskly. If we really get swamped, I hope to enlist Paul Schervish. I am able to personally certify 200 students a day, but once I hit 25 per hour, the arm gets sore swinging the incense censer. It is hard work but unless we do certify philanthropists as to virtue and wisdom we will never manage to conserve Plutocracy without incident for another 1,000 years.

[Phil Cubeta]

You may ask why each person of great wealth does not certify himself or herself as wise and virtuous. They could, but it would not be credible. That would be a self conferred credential. Thus, they donate to Wealth Bondage, and they in turn contract the Wisdom and Virtue Certification process to me. Applications are screened as to the size of check enclosed. The bigger the check they give Wealth Bondage, the Wiser and more Virtuous is the applicant, pending other information, if any, found on their police blotter. Minor offenses, like fraud or financial malfeasance in high office, are not material, but we do frown on sexual improprieties as tending to call Wealth Bondage into disrepute.

[Jon Husband]

Kat,

Isn't that you under "Independent Foundations"? Hmmmm....

That is the picture I've seen on her Facebook profile .. maybe she works at the CoF in marketing, saving them from worst practices ?

[Tartal Vignos]

Philanthropy Roundtable seems loaded with right liberals - they have a prize named after William E. Simon, and the most recent prize winner was Charles Koch.

My earlier question was not implying that Capital C Conservatives do not or should not engage in philanthropy, but that it was not a field of contestation for them, unlike for right or left liberals, but that the result - weird giving agendas - turns out the same, on the one hand due to personal eccentricity, and the other, sectarianism.

[Phil Cubeta]

Who are some of the Big C conservatives you admire and what are they doing with their giving that you consider exemplary?

[Tartal Vignos]

The Joseph de Maistre Foundation would be one example, if it existed.

These categories are so mutable. A right liberal professes unfettered free markets, a left liberal professes fettered free markets; a Big C Conservative professes fetters of a different kind than the left liberal professes, and the communist professes an unfettering of a different kind than the right liberal; yet the communist unfetterers are bonded with the Conservative fetterers in a shared hostility towards free markets, and the right liberal unfetterers share a love of markets with the left liberal fetterers.

It's enough to unfasten one's mind.

[Phil Cubeta]

Thank you that does help. From Wikipedia on de Maistre: Émile Faguet described Maistre as "a fierce absolutist, a furious theocrat, an intransigent legitimist, apostle of a monstrous trinity composed of Pope, King and Hangman, always and everywhere the champion of the hardest, narrowest and most inflexible dogmatism, a dark figure out of the Middle Ages, part learned doctor, part inquisitor, part executioner."[9]

Isaiah Berlin in his Freedom and Its Betrayal notes that many view his writings as "the last despairing effort of feudalism...to resist the march of progress."[10] but Berlin argues that Maistre imposes "an official legitimist Catholic framework upon what is really a deeply violent, deeply revolutionary, ultimately Fascist inner passion" which rejects what it sees as the shallow optimism of the Enlightenment.[11] According to Berlin, his fundamental doctrine is that nature is red in tooth and claw[12] and what really fascinates him is power.[13]

Amongst those who admired him was the poet Charles Baudelaire, who described himself a disciple of the Savoyard counter-revolutionary and claimed that Maistre had taught him "how to think."[14] Maistre also influenced the 20th century monarchist Charles Maurras and the counter-revolutionary political movement Action Française. The American politician Pat Buchanan has described Maistre as a "great conservative."[15]