Crowdfunding by any other name

We have all become used to reading about the heart-warming cases of strangers coming together to help someone in need through crowdfunding. This month in Manchester, a campaign raised more than ￡3,000 in 12 hours to pay for a memorial for a loving father who had asked his family to forgo a funeral after his death from acute myeloid leukaemia to save them from the financial strain. Both the appeals and their success stories regularly populate our social feeds. It is amazing to know that your small contribution, when aggregated with those from others, has the power to achieve something transformational. 

We like to think of crowdfunding as a modern invention, and if you attend any fundraising conference these days there will likely be a talk on the subject, but it is actually a practice with historical roots. From war bonds to fire prevention, collective funding has delivered a wide range of public good. One surprising example comes from 1885, when government sources failed to provide funding to build a monumental base for the Statue of Liberty, a newspaper-led campaign attracted small donations from 160,000 donors to build one.

But I would argue that we don’t need to look to the past to see the far-reaching impact of crowdfunding, as we see and are recipients of its impact every single day. 

Whether it’s the Scottish government planting 22 million trees in 2018 to help tackle the climate crisis or the Fire Service in Northern Ireland rescuing a record number of people in 2017/18, we crowdfund incredible acts of human bravery, medical breakthroughs and transformational services through our taxes every day. 

So why don’t we celebrate tax?

It is an incredible triumph of human imagination that has allowed us to build a system that through proportionate contributions from all citizens enables us to achieve things that no individual could do alone. So why is it that we’re more eager to read stories of the failures of the NHS or mismanagement of council funds than we are to celebrate the positive power of taxation?

I believe part of the answer to this question can be found in Anand Giridharadas’s book ‘Winners Take All’. At a talk of his I attended earlier this year he claimed there had been “a hostile takeover of social change...rather than being dealt with by governments...social problems have been vacuumed up by the winners of global capitalism”. He argues that we have come to believe that our gravest problems should be solved by the unelected elite instead of the public institutions they erode through lobbying and dodging taxes. We look to Elon Musk to take us to Mars or Bill Gates to eradicate malaria, when in the past it has been our governments – elected, directed and funded by us – that have taken us to the moon and eliminated malaria.

This has come to pass because of the incredible global rise of neoliberalism as the prevailing social and economic ideology. As George Monbiot outlines in this Guardian article, “The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938. Among the delegates were two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the gradual development of Britain’s welfare state, as manifestations of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism… Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control…It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax.” It became more dominant in the second half of the 20th century and many were persuaded that there is no credible alternative.

A key characteristic of neoliberalism is a belief in meritocracy. As Monbiot says, “The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.” It stands to reason then that we would turn to the super rich to solve the world’s ills, as we believe they are the most qualified. 

Alongside this we have seen a persistent distrust in modern politics and politicians. Ironically much of this is driven by the failings of neoliberalism – privatisation of public services, tax cuts for the rich and the impacts of austerity have led to increase inequality, child poverty and the decline of the NHS. So, although the British Social Attitudes survey showed last year that most people want far higher government spending on pensions, healthcare and education this is coupled with a reluctance to pay higher taxes.

In Giridharadas’s book he points toward an answer: Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, we must take on the gruelling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions and truly changing the world. There is increasing public discourse on the failures of neoliberalism and arguments made for alternatives – with movements such as Extinction Rebellion and collective action such as unionisation in the gig economy helping to light the way.

But these feel like major projects out of the reach of most of us. What can we do in our daily lives to help bring about a change? How can our small actions, when aggregated with thMakine small actions of others, achieve something transformational?

I propose one simple tactic – to rebrand tax and celebrate its impact in the same way that we rush to celebrate the impact of crowdfunding. Every time you see or hear of something wonderful or useful that has been publicly funded, celebrate it by sharing it on social media with the hashtag #WeCrowdfundedThat. Whether it’s a child you love receiving free world-class education or your car’s suspension being saved by road resurfacing, don’t take it for granted but consider the fact that it is has only been made possible with the collective action of you and your fellow citizens.

As the author, Mark Haddon said recently, “I love the NHS because we pay for it with our taxes, and because the care we receive is the same whether we’ve paid a million pounds or nothing. If we want to save the NHS, we need to celebrate tax. We need to think of it not as money the government steals from us, but as our contribution to a safe and just and healthy society. “

The NHS, #WeCrowdfundedThat.