Oxfam’s anti-capitalist hypocrisy
13 July 2023
SUGGESTED
In the Media
Economics
Julian Jessop writes for The Daily Express
14 July 2023
Economic Theory
25 June 2024
Len Shackleton writes for CapX
IEA’s Editorial and Research Fellow, Professor Len Shackleton has written in CapX covering Oxfam’s contradictory corporate stance against capitalism.
Len wrote:
“What is it with Oxfam? This huge international charity, founded in 1942 as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief to help the starving citizens of Nazi-occupied Greece, has over the decades done excellent work in the developing world, or what we must now call the Global South. But in recent years it seems to have lost its way.
“Leaving all this stuff aside, a constant in Oxfam’s public personality for several years has been its taste for full-blooded attacks on the capitalist system, asserting that it’s a rip-off that immiserates the poor – a claim naturally accompanied by demands for massive political intervention and confiscatory levels of taxation.
“In reality, everything Oxfam does depends on the capitalist system. The food and water it distributes are produced by someone for a profit. So are the vehicles to deliver it. So is the equipment it uses to dig wells or to build schools.”
You can read the full article here.
Len wrote:
“What is it with Oxfam? This huge international charity, founded in 1942 as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief to help the starving citizens of Nazi-occupied Greece, has over the decades done excellent work in the developing world, or what we must now call the Global South. But in recent years it seems to have lost its way.
“Leaving all this stuff aside, a constant in Oxfam’s public personality for several years has been its taste for full-blooded attacks on the capitalist system, asserting that it’s a rip-off that immiserates the poor – a claim naturally accompanied by demands for massive political intervention and confiscatory levels of taxation.
“In reality, everything Oxfam does depends on the capitalist system. The food and water it distributes are produced by someone for a profit. So are the vehicles to deliver it. So is the equipment it uses to dig wells or to build schools.”
You can read the full article here.
SHARE
