Abstract
For more than ten years, Prof. Rob Reich has lamented that foundations have been allowed to be “subsidized,” unaccountable, opaque, and powerful – as he and others conceive of foundations and their environment. This lament is presented in his recent book, which positions its purposes on five pillars: (1) philanthropy is repugnant to democracy as described; (2) philanthropy is an “artifact” of the State; (3) foundations are opaque and unaccountable; (4) donor intent and perpetuity are subversive; and (5) the charitable deduction is a “subsidy” with no redeeming value except possibly as a tool to justify reining in foundations and philanthropy. However, each pillar leaves out critical elements and analysis, and the vacillation between theory and practice without noting the switches or fully presenting either creates confusion. Those pillars are intended to support two possible roles – and only two roles – as acceptable for foundations in democracy: discovery and advancing pluralism. However, their positioning neglects important chronologies and histories and suffers from other missing substantive analysis that also does not sufficiently support restricting foundations to these and only these functions. Finally, there seems to be a disconnect between overt objectives, actual presentation, and implicit purposes, which contribute to substantial concerns about critical gaps and missing information and perspective about foundations, philanthropy, and democracy. Ultimately, the theory and its presentation are too confusing, incomplete, and nuanced in part because they neglect substantive ways in which foundations and philanthropy are not only not repugnant to and not failing American representative democracy but are actually consistent with it and even exemplars of it, which is a topic for another day.
Highlights
For more than ten years, Stanford Prof
The book positions its purposes as structured on five pillars: (1) philanthropy is repugnant to democracy as described; (2) philanthropy is an “artifact” of the State; (3) foundations are opaque and unaccountable; (4) donor intent and perpetuity are subversive; and (5) the charitable deduction is a financial subsidy with no redeeming value
While the pillars may appear to be made of marble, there is more than enough papier-mache to undermine their structural, weight-bearing integrity such that the roof does not remain aloft
Summary
As the book’s subtitle decrees, it begins from a place in which philanthropy is and has been presumptively failing democracy as described in the book[1] (5, 136–137). The early, context-setting pages of the book invoke from hundred-year old characterizations of specific foundations of the time – not philanthropy as a whole as the book’s subtitle suggests. The book invokes Machiavelli warning against the pernicious effect of “‘works that appear merciful’” and beyond condemnation becoming “‘cruel and very dangerous for a republic’” (108–09), which is only a short step away from Orestes Brownson’s declaration in the 1850s that philanthropy is Satan’s “favorite guise in modern times.” It is one thing for donors and those who work in philanthropy to internalize these observations as admonitions towards humility and care, which they should. Nor does the book present the most meaningful arguments that support places for foundations and philanthropy in democracy or America’s representative approach to it. The reasons for its absence emerge in implications that the book may be less about critiquing philanthropy and foundations and perhaps more so an attack on America’s representative democracy
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