• The road to hell . . .

• The road to hell . . .
I raise the question about altruism to argue that it does not really contradict the idea that we all try to act in our self-interest. While some people may still confuse self-interest with selfishness and strictly material advantage, that just isn't the case. We've known forever that it's very hard to put a price on most of the things we hold dear: art, community, learning, love, respect . . . bread and roses, the Wobblies used to say. The fact that we can't always measure these goals in terms of money in no way diminishes their actual benefit to us. What's curious is that sometimes we ascribe to such motives a sort of moral superiority or even selflessness that can lead us to miscalculate our own self-interest, and to misread our neighbors'.

To say that we act to our own benefit is not to be cynical at all. Rather, we can see that the help we give each other is not random, whimsical, or extraordinary, but something we are highly motivated to do. What's more, our altruism stories can keep us doing good work even when the payoffs seem unlikely or frankly impossible in our lifetimes; a recognition that we are social animals; that we depend on both our neighbors and the folks who came before us.

That said, there are a number of risks inherent in relying on altruism.

Obviously, an uncritical idealism may also keep us doing lousy work even when the payoffs are destruction. The Halliburton wars spring to mind, but we could think of dozens more examples, everything from oppressive sex policy to the drug wars. Here I'm assuming for the sake of argument that some of the perpetrators actually believe in their cause. Most often, the cause is just a way to mobilize cheap labor for the bosses' agenda. Sometimes folks go along willingly, waving to the cheering crowds as they march off to murder; but the heroic drama often obscures the underlying coercion.

DeTocqueville's take, so many years ago:

When the world was led by a few powerful and wealthy individuals, these liked to form for themselves a sublime idea of the duties of man; they were pleased to profess that it is glorious to forget oneself and that it is fitting to do good without self-interest like God himself (500).

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"We all know that conscience itself may be deluded; may be misled . . . into acts which an enlightened conscience would forbid." James Madison (Faigman 22).
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More broadly and more dangerously, altruism stories push us to focus on motives rather than results. We seem to care a lot about whether George really, truly believed Saddam was stashing atom bombs for Osama, or that he himself is Jesus' apostle of democracy for the Mideast. But Junior's beliefs are irrelevant. The guy butchered tens of thousands of people for no benefit to anyone but war contractors and his own election prospects. (Nor does it make any difference, in terms of our political judgments and choices, whether Bush and his surrogate daddies and his business tycoon pals killed legally or outside the law. They killed people for their own private gain. That's murder.)

More common to our personal experience are managers who might act like or really be swell people. We like to think their virtues will prevail over strong personal and institutional interests, but most of the evidence runs the other way. If the enterprise is corrupt, if its mission is to take advantage of people, how can the people who run it be or do otherwise? They mold the institutions to their likeness. That still leaves room for middle managers, and the rank and file for that matter, to want to do the right thing. Just like the rest of us, middle managers have to choose, Which side are you on? But at the end of the day, intentions don't really matter. What's important is results. Are you helping or are you stealing?

During the Nazi occupation of France, Resistance fighters were quite clear about "the impossibility of collaboration: even if the occupier, as a person, possesses every good quality, he is a cog in a machine designed to destroy France" (Burrin 193). Much much earlier another guy said, by their fruits you will know them, and that's what we have to hold them accountable for.

I myself ooze good intentions from morn til night: orphaned elephants, starving peasants, children maimed by landmines, I sympathize with them all. And it warms my heart every time I write a check for these causes-- so much so, sometimes I have to hold myself back. Some of my neighbors run races for medical cures, collect box tops for needy families, staff soup kitchens every Thanksgiving. Without them, there would be a lot more suffering in the world. Some also become the strongest grassroots advocates for systemic change, to combat the forces that churn out these tragedies year after year. But others of us are content to do our part, to expend X% of our time and resources, to nail down our claims to be good people. The poor are always with us, that man also said, so maybe we don’t have to think too hard about the sum of our efforts. It’s enough to mean well.

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“Mother Theresa was asked at the end of her life whether she was discouraged because after decades of caring for the dying and destitute in Calcutta littled seemed to have changed. She replied, ‘No. God doesn’t call me to be successful. God calls me to be faithful.’
“History will decide whether George W. Bush was a successful president. But he was faithful. He had a charge to keep and he kept it” (Towey).
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Evidently, when we're choosing leaders, it's also enough for them to mean well. We can't really know for sure what they are thinking; what we're really looking for is signs and wonders, the stigmata of purity of heart. Too bad these are totally easy to fake, and not just by Walmart's community do-good program. How many times have our hopes been hijacked by the "I feel your pain" slicksters?

What we most need to know about a potential partner or leader is how he’ll act in the likeliest futures. Is he going to help us or betray us or just cause a lot of grief along the way? We can check that person's track record, where available, but even that is far from an ideal guide. Past actions reveal understandings and priorities, and results reveal competence. But we see only fragments of what other people do (especially if they are professionally secretive or deceitful). It’s hard to see specific behaviors from the perspective of the actor herself. Does the ex-general or ex-terrorist adopt new tactics as a party leader, or does violence remain a central part of her toolbox? Junior Bush’s religiosity reads differently in the context of his party-animal reputation and lifelong search for replacement daddies, than if he’d grown up in a typical fundamentalist family. But who knows for sure how he thinks?

As the Resistance looked at the Nazis, we also have to look at what institutions our prospective partners serve, and whose interests those institutions serve. Here, too, we have to use judgment; Halliburton has a very different relationship to the Pentagon than a platoon leader in Afghanistan. Halliburton has a different relationship to the U.S. government than I do.

We can also help ourselves by laying off the double standards and preconceptions. In the early 1930s some U.S. progressives admired Stalin for his apparent skills and determination, the "vitality" of forced industrialization, and the "scientific" results in terms of increased production, relative equality of women, etc. (Kutulas 46-50). In the early days, invasions by the U.S., Britain and their proxies gave plenty of cover for Soviet terror. Stalin kept right on killing, though. His murders were not all invisible; the fans just didn't want to see them. Well, who does, really? But our business is too important. We can't stumble around with our eyes resolutely closed.

It's not easy, but usually we do have enough data to help us decide who to partner with, so long as we look at real past results rather than claimed intentions, in light of the challenges we expect in the future.


Altruism stories can sabotage relationships with our peers, too. When we begin to see ourselves as especially selfless and idealistic, it gets pretty easy to see the other guy as weak, selfish, and senselessly cruel. Denying our own self-interested behavior, we come to believe our neighbors are very different, even monstrous, and we constantly misunderstand their motives. There were scathing letters in the paper about some poll showing that a quarter of U.S. Muslims applaud suicide bombers; the scandalized letter writers didn't mention the much larger percentage of citizens who cheered when Halliburton started blowing up Arabs who had no connection to the 9/11 murders.

Possibly rich people find it especially easy to feel that altruistic glow, insofar as we don't have to fight every minute for the scraps off some other rich person's table. We are a generous species. For those of us who have forgotten who paid for our good fortune, it's easy to start wondering, what's wrong with those other people, that they need so many handouts?

A consciously grand generosity can hobble even the most ambitious helping projects. So long as we help others primarily out of a sense of charity, or duty, we miss the great opportunity to pool our goals and interests with the people we help, in order to bring lasting change. I see how hard my friends work to stop our wars or to save far-off rainforests, and how hard it is sometimes to translate that dedication to challenging injustice in our own communities; how hard it is still for rich gringos like me to develop partnerships with unionists and women and people of color. The great tragedies upset us, but figuring out how to deal with folks on an equal basis can be even more distressing. How much of the vast outpourings of aid to victims of tsunamis and hurricanes and ethnic wars in the early years of this century have created stronger inter-class and international bonds that can forestall these disasters the next time around?

(As for that orgy of sympathy for the Virginia Tech massacre victims back in April 07, the candle-lit prayer vigils, the teary notes on the 'net, many from people who would shoot you rather than give up their guns, the Tennesseeans among whom promptly passed a law letting anyone carry guns into public parks, just to show no damn mass murder is gonna deter the members of the National Rifle Association from their pursuit of their God-given right to fondle weaponry-- I'm certainly not one of those prudish killjoys who'd call call the wailing gunsters obscenely self-indulgent, or compare them to the scrupulous Nazi cited above, whose "completely self-centered sentimentality . . . placed him under no obligation to take any action". That would be mean.)

Finally, I have to say that it would be hard for me to trust someone who claimed to operate purely from generosity and idealism. I know that there isn't any pure anything, so this person would be lying to me and maybe to herself.

More importantly, to stay in a struggle for decades and generations, we have to be very sure of our goals, and also of the interim rewards everyone needs. What's going to keep us going if the revolution doesn't arrive next week? Anyone who denies or doesn't understand his own interests is going to flake out as the struggle intensifies. He is not to be trusted.


• Frankly, m' dear, I just don't give a damn. Then there are all the slackers who just don't care. You know, the folks who don't vote, don't attend the hearing, don't send money no matter how many emails we send them. They are the bane of every organizer. Don't they understand how urgent __________ is? Perpendicular to the axis of good and evil, we have the race of the Apathetic.

Very often we talk about them when we explain how some urgent political work is impossible because no one cares. Really we know better. We know that "they" might be afraid, might have many more immediate problems to contend with, may not believe their participation can make a difference, or may simply not trust us as partners. A lot of groups recognize these possibilities, and don't let them derail important campaigns. At the same time, it's very hard to build democratic power when the people most affected stay in the background. All of these barriers can be overcome, but not easily. Let's focus on removing the barriers, rather than using that sad old mantra of apathy as an excuse.