Performing Philanthropy from Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates

Abstract

In ‘Performing Philanthropy from Andrew Carnegie to Bill Gates’, Alisa Zhulina traces the history of mass-scale, institutionalized philanthropy from the Gilded Age to the present day and the critique levelled at it by nineteenth-century theatre. The article argues that what was once a humanitarian cause became, in the hands of rich and powerful industrialists like Carnegie and Rockefeller, a cultural weapon in propagandizing the values of unbridled capitalism. In order to shed light on the contradictions of modern philanthropy, the article analyses Andrew Carnegie’s essay ‘The Gospel of Wealth’ alongside Bernard Shaw’s response ‘Socialism for Millionaires’ and his play ‘Major Barbara’. Carnegie posits philanthropy as an alternative to the socialist equitable redistribution of wealth. Shaw dramatizes how capitalists performatively create the effect of giving back to society, while weaponizing philanthropy for the control of public policy. As an act of generosity, however, philanthropy can be transformed into a resource for building a different future.

Notes

1 For an analysis of the importance of the theme of the ‘tricks of the governing class’ across Shaw’s oeuvre, see Bernard F. Dukore (2012).

2 The Krupp Foundation Research Fellowship through the Minda de Gunzburg Center of European Studies (2013–14) has supported the research for this project.