The economic trajectory of the charity is suddenly of interest because of the cuts to human services and a move to dismantle the state and trash its role in the maintaining of what’s left of social democracy.

Charity began as a Christian duty of citizenship, both a material offering from those with plenty to those in need, but also an offer of Christ-like love; something akin to aroha. The church itself, via nuns and monks, gave alms and succour to the poor.

With the advent of capitalism, the very rich gave some of their money to the poor or to support good works done by others for a number of reasons: the limits of private consumption, to continue the concept of Christian charity, to feel good – the poor can be interesting, grateful and sometimes irascible, to flirt with loss, to have control of things at the community level and to avoid revolutionary fervour.  The administration became formalised with the creating of charities so that others can add to the coffers of the rich. So you get the Bill Gates Foundation and the like. The state plays ball by giving tax free status to the work of the charity and a tax credit to those who donate.

The NGO charity enters the scene, doing some of the governments work and being paid to do so by the state. This becomes unstable when the entrepreneurial charity spawns profit making companies which donate profit back to the charity, but can also use the model to avoid tax. And then there are multinational charities with a specific expertise setting up and seeking government and sometimes private funds in a variety of countries. A false yet competitive market begins to operate. With charter schools, but also with some health and other initiatives, the relationship with the state provider of similar services becomes tetchy and ideological, for the new right is intent on dismantling the state, with the very rich (with various fancies in mind), wanting to establish and have control of company towns and city states and colonies in outer space or they have the impulse to comfortably bunker down as the planet dissolves.

Diversity becomes a contested model with the private provider arguing that they are filling niche needs. At the same time new right ideologues are rubbishing the diversity established by the ‘woke’ bureaucracy as they administer what’s left of the social democratic state.

On the Left, the anarcho syndicalists are also wishing to radically change the nation state, advocating instead a federalist model, with local control of the commons and the tax take and mutual aid groups providing services. In some ways they mirror the new right but with a different, communist goal in sight.

The only clarity in these puzzling times is to peer with a Marxist eye at the relations of production and to see who owns and/or controls the means of production. If the charter school is owned and run by a co-operative of parents, teachers, students and support workers, leaving the state to provide funding and to monitor overall standards, well and good. If not, forget it. Same with everything else.

This new model could replace the charity model which is increasingly fraught with contradiction.