2. For the Human —
the contributist theory
“It is better to give than to receive” because human dignity is found in the act of giving. To give at once asserts one’s true independence and one’s desire to co-relate — one’s capacity to love. This is, perhaps, the central and only point — we must remember that, at our core, we find fulfillment not just in being loved, but in the act of loving.
From this idea directly follows a second, which is just as consequential. If we find fulfillment through orienting ourselves toward others, then all anti-social desires (the desire to cut oneself off from others, to cut others off from oneself, to hoard, and to leech) are thus actually disorders, which are harmful not only to others, but to the self. The contributist position is that those with such disorders can and should be healed of them, and so reconciled. When we speak of the right to give, rather than the obligation to give, we are speaking about this human right to be healed, to be reconciled.
In this way, contributism shifts us towards a more holistic and rigorous understanding of success and health than capitalism’s economic lens provides, on both a personal level and a societal level. The contributist’s measure of a human’s well-being is not simply their net worth, but their ability to contribute and participate — a human who cannot give is a human in need of rehabilitation. And the sign of a society in decline is not a low GDP (otherwise, we would all see America as the pinnacle of societal health), but when it cannot adequately provide its members with the right to give — to contribute constructively to their community. This means that the contributist sees the economic lens as not wrong, but limited — analogous to the perspective of a doctor whose knowledge and practice is limited to one part of the body. If the actors within a society cannot see its health beyond its economic condition — if they can only articulate its health in terms of the riches of its production, the force of its commerce, and the self-interest of its members — then they are in danger of missing important diagnoses, prescribing the wrong treatments, and ultimately, looking on helplessly as the health of their society swiftly declines.
Ironically, capitalism and socialism are each often denounced by their opponents for the same reason: the hoarding of resources (the capitalist’s aim) and subsistence on charity (the socialist’s shame) are both criticized because they represent an actor’s failure to play their fundamental role as a participant in interdependent community. What often goes unnoticed by critics and supporters alike is that both systems unknowingly produce the “tragedy of the commons” that they aim to avoid, because they assert and protect their participants’ right to take. The contributist understands that a society (and an individual) can only truly affirm itself when it instead asserts and protects the right to give.
As we will discuss, by diagnosing and addressing the human in their full humanity, rather than reducing them to their role as an economic actor, contributism can be seen as a more caring and careful doctor, one who chooses to take a “view from above” — seeing and addressing in whole where these other social systems only see and address in part. And with this broader lens comes not only new theory, but also new strategy: new ways of acting that can lead to more fulfilled lives, and new approaches to policy that can lead to more fulfilled societies.
Read next: 3. A parable —