Charity vs Sharing

Today I went and helped out at the BBQ for the Homeless/Forgotten Workers that is put on by the Wobbly Kitchen and some other informal groups on the 2nd and 4th Sunday of every month.    It made me think a lot about what the difference between sharing and charity is.

One of the things I like about this BBQ is that it is out in the park and set up as more of a party.  Those cooking and serving food interact quite a bit with those coming to eat and all of the people serving take a break and get some of the food as well.  To me it seems a lot more like a "sharing" of food and other resources, but I couldn't put my finger on what exactly the difference between charity and sharing is.  So of course, I asked Facebook.


My friend Nick said "Sharing in my mind is more of a two-way street than charity."  To me that didn't seem quite right.  I feel like if I share something and expect something else in return it is more of a trade or transaction than real sharing.  There is some aspect of mutuality though.  And I think Margaret's comment: "Charity entails a power differential - the "haves" beneficiently bestowing upon the "have nots." Similar distinction between Serving and Helping."   I think she hit it just right that there is a feeling of equality between people who are sharing as opposed to folks that are engaged in offering charity.  Even with that I felt like there was still something I couldn't quite put my finger on. 


To me part of what sharing is about is not feeling diminished afterwards.  You can share an umbrella with something and never give anything up.  When people engage in charity even if they have a lot of money at the end of giving there is a feeling that they have less than they did before.  Realizing this made me feel like I was getting to something but I still feel that you can "share" food, where you might by definition have less food at the end than you did at the beginning, but you don't feel like you "gave" food, you can feel that it was shared.


The key I think is contained in my good friend El Barto Grande's comment: "Charity is something the [C]hristians do. Sharing is something [S]ocialists do."  Perhaps it is because I was sharing all this food at the BBQ for the Forgotten Worker with the Wobblies, but that really rang true for me.  And I don't think it is just a matter of syntax.  


Handing someone a bowl of soup can only feel like charity if you recognize that soup as yours and that now you have given it away to someone else and now you have less soup and now are poorer.  If you recognize that the riches of society were built by many hands before you and with you and that without the richness of the whole we would all have nothing, then the soup is no more yours than it is mine than it belongs to the guy on the corner than it belongs to the President.  The richness of our country (of our world) is a result of the work of so many hands that to claim any of it as our own and therefore ours to give in charity to someone else is preposterous.

To bring it to another example, many feel that welfare benefits, such as cash assistance, rent assistance, food stamps, etc are charity to the poor, others feel that they are unearned wealth.  Who truly creates that wealth though?  And what person creates that wealth on their own.  Even if we accept that someone like Steve Jobs earned all of his wealth, what of the teachers who taught him the basics?  What of the roads he traveled on to get his goods to market?  What of all the people who grew the food that nourished him?  What of the police that protected the places he lived and worked and created?  Are not all these public goods part of the wealth creation machine?  Without a society that includes all of these goods there could be no millionaire, there could be no wealth and there could be no soup.  And there could be no society with out all of the individual people within it, so we can never give the money, or soup, as charity, we can only share it.