Will the master's tools ever dismantle the master's house?

Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright, novelist, poet, short story writer and Freemason, known for his barbed and clever wit, was one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London. His life took a tragic turn, when at the height of his fame, he was accused and imprisoned for homosexual "gross indecency.” Upon release he lived penniless under an assumed name, exiled from society, dying not too long after from syphilitic meningitis. Today his legacy lives on as the gayest of all blades. Yet I never knew that he was a socialist, who had strong opinions about private charity.

"The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism -- are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this… Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease…

The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life -- educated men who live in the East End -- coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair."

What do you think? Can even the most well-intentioned amongst us challenge the institutions that made them strong? Would perhaps reframing the debate have a more long lasting impact on alleviating suffering and oppression?