Oscar Wilde on charitable remedies prolonging the disease
anecdote · essay: The Soul of Man Under Socialism ·
retold in 3 talks
Wilde argues that charity is part of the disease, as it alleviates the evils of private property without reconstructing society to make poverty impossible.
As told 2
“It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property.”
“their remedies do not cure the disease they merely prolong it... the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
point of impossibility
×1
charity as ideological function
×1
humanitarian capitalism
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Its cast and sources
populated by
alongside works
Every retelling 2
Wilde argues that charity is part of the disease, as it alleviates the evils of private property without reconstructing society to make poverty impossible., illustrating knowledge vs. truth,vacuous pan-humanitarianism
Žižek quotes Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism at length: people sentimentally try to cure poverty by keeping the poor alive or amusing them, but this merely prolongs the disease. The proper aim is to reconstruct society so poverty is impossible., illustrating humanitarianization,charity as perpetuation of the system,communism vs. social reform