Post-Capitalist Philanthropy
Description
Benjamin Life:
"Looking beyond even the most innovative evolutions of impact investment, we discover the emerging field of what might be termed "post-capitalist philanthropy"—approaches that direct capital not toward ameliorating problems within existing systems but toward creating structural conditions for new economic arrangements. This approach recognizes what decolonial theorist Arturo Escobar terms "pluriversal design"—creating conditions for multiple economic models to coexist rather than imposing a single universal framework."
(https://omniharmonic.substack.com/p/beyond-narrow-optimization?)
Characteristics
Benjamin Life:
"Post-capitalist philanthropy manifests through several emerging practices:
Non-extractive finance networks like the Boston Ujima Project and the Buen Vivir Fund create funding mechanisms that ensure communities retain control over assets rather than losing autonomy to investor demands. These models invert traditional power dynamics by making capital providers accountable to communities rather than vice versa.
Systemic investing approaches like Transform Finance explicitly target the underlying structures that create inequality rather than addressing their symptoms. These investors ask not "What social problem does this venture solve?" but "How does this intervention change the rules of the game that create social problems in the first place?"
Reparative capital flows acknowledge historical extraction and seek to repair rather than perpetuate harm. As articulated by scholars like Catherine Berman and Rodney Foxworth, these approaches recognize that financial returns often represent historical extraction from communities of color and indigenous peoples, requiring intentional reparative allocation.
Movement-accountable investing recognizes social movements as drivers of systemic change and allocates capital in service to movement strategies rather than imposing investor priorities. Organizations like the Chorus Foundation demonstrate this approach by funding movement infrastructure rather than specific programmatic outcomes."
(https://omniharmonic.substack.com/p/beyond-narrow-optimization?)