The Rich Get Richer and The Poor Get Poorer What do the following organizations all have in common?; The “United Way, “Salvation Army”, “Feed the Children”, “Gifts in Kind”, “Americares”, “YMCA”, “The Red Cross”, “Catholic Charities USA”, “Feeding America”, and the “Mayo Clinic/Foundation”. These foundations that we have just listed are what are referred to as non-profit organizations. The majority of individuals in society have most likely either heard of these organizations before, volunteered at a non-profit organization, have had to depend on a non-profit organization, or are still depending on a non-profit organization in order to survive. So what exactly is a non-profit organization”? There are numerous ways of defining the term non-profit organization. We used “The Free Legal Dictionary” to define it and learned that it is, “A corporation or an association that conducts business for the benefit of the general public without shareholders and without a profit motive” (The Free Legal Dictionary, 2014). It is important for us to differ between what is known as “nonprofit organizations” and “profit-driven corporations”. The objective of non profit-organizations is to benefit the “greater good” of the members of the community, society, and the world. Non-profit organizations are entitled to make a profit but the surplus value produced must be used for the organization or other nonprofit organizations (Fritz, 2014). On the other hand, profit-driven corporations’ main objective is to generate profit for their entrepreneurs and employees rather than the “greater good” (Ingram 2014). Examples of “profit-drive corporations” are Apple, WalMart, Toys R Us, Starbucks etc. There are numerous reasons for the development of nonprofit organizations that exist today. Many sociologists have taken into account previous sociologist thinkers’ work such as Karl Marx to try to understand the real cause for the creation of these non-profit organizations and how they have come to be where as they are today. Karl Marx, a respectable sociologist, was concerned and critiqued capitalism as a mode of production. He was specifically concerned with industrial capitalism as he studied industrial capitalism from a sociological standpoint and a historical viewpoint. Marx coined the term “historical (or dialectical) materialism”. “Historical materialism” is the study of actual life experiences of members of society. Marx was concerned not with what people think they are doing, rather he was focused on people and their activities and the study of society as a historical process. According to Marx’s historical materialism, we believe that he would use historical materialism as a way to understand how non-profit organizations in today’s society originated. In Marx’s writings of the “The German Ideology” he stated, “But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life” (Marx, 1845, 10). Therefore, Marx would reason that non-profit organizations exist because they are necessary to reproduce material requirements of life such as clothing, food, etc. Marx might also interpret the development of non-profit organizations as a result of capitalism in today’s society. With the rise of a capitalistic society, Marx has argued that capitalism over time has formalized a new way of extracting surplus value and profit. Capitalism therefore has created a dialectic of class conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie’s (the owners of the means of production) main objective is to increase the extraction of surplus value through the use of lower wages and longer working hours. To the contrary, proletariats are the ones who have their labour power sold and commodified. Wages are necessary for the survival of the proletariat, however these wages are controlled by the proletariat. In relation to non-profit organizations, Marx may not agree with the overall motif of these organizations, since non-profit organizations interest is the “greater good” rather than creating profits. Non-profit organizations do in fact create profit from the donations of other organizations and community members, however they are entitled to spread these donations. Karl Marx might also interpret non-profit organizations similarly to assembly lines and the implantation of the division of labour. Within Marx’s writings, “The German Ideology”, Marx concluded that the division of labour includes a, “mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided” (Marx, 1845, 14). If you have ever walked into a non-profit organization such as a food bank and have witnessed the environment of the warehouse where all of the donations are held, packaged, and distributed, you would see the similarities of the working conditions of a non-profit organization similar to that of an assembly line. Within the non-profit organization there is always an owner who is in control of the entire non-profit organization (bourgeoisie), and there are also volunteers who volunteer their labour in the warehouse responsible for organizing, packaging, distributing, and shipping the donations to those who are in need of these products. Similar to an assembly line, some non-profit organizations use characteristics of the division of labour where one worker is responsible for the packaging of canned foods, or another worker is responsible for checking and organizing the expiry dates of certain food items within a warehouse. In summary, the labour is divided so that it, “makes it possible for me to do one thing and another tomorrow” (Marx, 1845, 14). “The rich get richer and the poor get poor” is a common statement that mainly summarizes the type of society in which we live in today. Marx may use this statement to criticize nonprofit organizations and may not agree with the logistics behind these organizations. He may see volunteers who work in these non-profit organizations as “slaves”. In the “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts”, Marx wrote that, … “His labour is, therefore, not voluntary but forced, it is forced labour. It is, therefore, not the satisfaction of a need but a mere means to satisfy needs outside itself” (Marx, 1844, 5). Those who volunteer are not receiving a wage for their work that they contribute to the organization instead from a volunteer’s perspective they are most likely volunteering as a way to “give back to the community”. To summarize, from a sociological perspective, we have explained and have interpreted some thoughts and ideas that Karl Marx might have concluded about the development and characteristics of non-profit organizations. The thoughts that we have just argued cannot be generalized as they are our own thoughts and can not be entitled to what Karl Marx thought of non-profit organizations, but rather what he “might” have thought about non-profit organizations. Therefore, we believe that Karl Marx might have used his theory of historical materialism to understand how non-profit organizations in today’s society have developed because they provide the basic material requirements of life for survival for those individuals who are suffering from the economy. Secondly, we stated that Marx may criticize the main objective of non-profit organizations, since nonprofit organizations interest is for the “greater good” of society, rather than creating profits for the organization, employees, and their workers. Thirdly, Marx might interpret the working conditions of a non-profit organization similar to an assembly line in a factory system, through the utilization of the division of labour. And last but not least, we believe that Marx may view volunteers who work in these non-profit organizations as slaves, thus allowing the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. References http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Non-profit+organization http://nonprofit.about.com/od/qathebasics/f/nopvspro.htm http://smallbusiness.chron.com/non-profit-organization-vs-profitorganization-4150.html