system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Marxist critiques of Singer's effective altruism.

I have heard some claim they they exist, so what are they and (if you can be bothered) what counter arguments could be raised against them?
gpt
A fairly standard criticism of charity from a revolutionary Marxist perspective is that charity can function as a means of making an otherwise unjust capitalist system tolerable. It both prevents those who would suffer under the system from revolting, and prevents those with power from seeing the reality of the suffering the system would naturally cause. In effect, charity treats the symptoms and not the cause of problems due to inequality.

A possible counterargument is that lifting people to a level beyond extreme poverty can be a step towards allowing them to have time to be educated and reflect on their circumstance, so rather than disguising problems it might provide more people with what they need to begin thinking about ways of correcting the root problems. It also might raise expectations of what standards of living are possible.

Another possible counterargument is that it is inhumane to ignore the very real and extreme suffering of people on the small hope that things getting worse might lead to revolutionary change.