philanthropy and lists

Dear all:

About two and a half years ago, I first wrote to WSN to ask for help on a paper criticizing a popular argument in philosophy, that we had a duty to aid the victims of absolute poverty entirely parallel to our duty to pull a child from a shallow pond. I called the analogy "The Fallacy of Philanthropy" and believed it was harmful because it obscured systemic causes of poverty.

Many WSNers responded to this and my later requests for help with very useful suggestions about what to read about the causes of hunger and poverty: Frank's Crisis, Lappe, Collins, and Rossett's latest edition of World Hunger, writings of Philip McMichael, Michael Maren's The Road to Hell, and many others. Out of this has a come a more finished draft which has been resubmitted to The Canadian Journal of Philosophy and may well be published there. The paper is an amalgam of slightly technical philosophical argument that the analogy between poverty and duties of rescue is inapt and argument that the political economy of agriculture creates and recreates hunger. I am hoping to expand the discussion within philosophy to more radical responses to hunger than aid to its victims.

If any of you would like to read the paper I can send a Word (or other) file with the text. Please reply to me directly if you would like to see it.

On another note, I participated recently in an exchange that occasioned considerable criticism from other list members. Perhaps, indeed, the discussion was inappropriate. Still, I hope that I am not the only one on this list who regards scholarship as seamlessly connected to practical activism. I am with those who believe that the list should discuss both the problems of capitalist world economy and the solutions to these problems.

Paul