The Political Economy of Charity Under Capitalism

Charitable and philanthropic organizations are often framed as complements to state and market provision amid welfare retrenchment. This article advances a political-economy analysis that treats charity not as a remedy for social failure but as a constitutive element of contemporary capitalist welfare regimes. Drawing on heterodox political-economy scholarship, it argues that poverty and food insecurity are systemic outcomes of capitalist accumulation and labor precarity. Charitable responses typically address these conditions through discretionary assistance, depoliticizing their structural causes while stabilizing existing institutional arrangements. Comparative evidence from the United Kingdom and United States shows that the growth of food banks has coincided with welfare state retrenchment and the privatization of social provision. Although charity is frequently praised for innovation and welfare pluralism, this analysis demonstrates how such dynamics can reinforce donor power and weaken democratic accountability. JEL Classification: B52, P16, L31, I32.