Soft Pillow vs. Marxist/Leninist

Reflections from Chuck Collins, a leader and elder in this work

Chuck Collins is a warm, big-hearted white protestant guy from the wealthy family who started Oscar Mayer. He gave away his inheritance as a young man and has spent the rest of his life organizing against wealth inequality and for the collective good. He’s done this as a prolific author¹, speaker, advocate, and organizer. He’s been involved in many different efforts over the last 50 years to move wealthy people towards progressive movements and a more just and fair economy. He is a beloved elder in this work. 

Over the last two years, he’s also become a mentor of mine and one of the primary people supporting me in writing this book. We meet once or twice a month, and I get to reflect on where I’m at in the process and pepper him with questions about organizing and book writing. It’s been invaluable.

During one of our early meetings he mentioned an idea that I love and want to share with you. 

According to Chuck, since the more formalized versions of organizing the rich began in earnest in the ’70s, there have been two competing approaches. One he calls “Soft Pillow,” the other “Marxist/Leninist.” They are useful labels for different tendencies in this work.

The Soft Pillow approach prioritizes the physical and emotional comfort of wealthy people; there will be few conversations or actions pushing them to increase their giving or share their power.

Marxists/Leninist² is the name he gives for the approach that firmly directs the rich to hand over both money and control to poor and working class activists and organizers, and get out of the way. This tendency, in its dramatized form, has a harsh tone and cares little about the emotional well-being of the wealthy people involved.

When Chuck shared this with me, I nodded my head, snapped my fingers, pointed at him across the Zoom screen, and yelled, “Yes!!” I knew just what he was talking about. In my 20+ years in this work, I’ve experienced over and over this tendency to swing between a liberal, coddling attitude towards the rich and a harsh, “put you in your place and tell you what to do and how to do it” approach. We constantly move between these two poles, struggling to be both supportive and challenging, caring and agitational, direct and kind, loving and rigorous.

Chuck went on to describe how he saw these tendencies play out in the ’70s and ’80s, when he was a young man and in his first decade or two of involvement and leadership in progressive efforts to engage the wealthy. He talked about how the Soft Pillow approach was embodied by Threshold Foundation and the Marxist/Leninist approach showed up in Funding Exchange conferences. 

Here’s an excerpt from our conversation last winter:

MG: Tell me about these two trends you just named, the Soft Pillow versus the Marxist/Leninist. 

What's the story there? 

CC: Well, the first thing to understand is that a whole set of social justice public foundations were founded around the country in the late ’70s. They were based on the radical idea that the leaders from the communities being funded should be the ones to decide where the money goes. Obie Benz and Vanguard Foundation in San Francisco, George Pillsbury and Haymarket Foundation in Boston, to name a few. Subsequently, these public foundations came together as the Funding Exchange (FEX) Funds and that network was created. 

The Funding Exchange started having these national conferences for wealthy progressive donors, where I met some really interesting people. We had meetings and interactions with poor, working and middle class activists, and activist-led field trips. It was a uniquely cross-class space.

We had a lot of fun at these Funding Exchange gatherings — at least at the start. Over the years, they became a lot less enjoyable. 

In the early ’80s, there was a new-age subgroup at these conferences that said, “This is just a little too political.” It wasn't really meeting their needs. So they started the Doughnuts [get it? Dough-nuts]. They tried to keep the name out of circulation, but part of what I remember, which is embodied in the name, is that they always had a sense of humor about themselves. There was an embedded ability to laugh at themselves.  

The Funding Exchange people often had this attitude like, “Wealthy people are holding on to their privilege. Our job as donors is to turn the power over to activists who are going to make better decisions.” “Wealthy people have nothing to offer to the strategy discussions. You are faucets.” And the Doughnuts were like, “We're holding on to the decision-making power and we don't want to be challenged about that.” That was very simplistically how it broke out. 

The Doughnuts became the Threshold Foundation and adopted its own culture. It had its own language and it had a lot of new-age rituals. Josh Maillman was one of the founders and leaders. Their network met twice a year. They usually met in really nice places with hot springs. They would meet for a week. It became people’s family. The personal connections created during those meetings were quite strong because they were doing personal work and there was often a heart connection. There was more intention about building personal relationships and a culture that didn’t want to make people feel bad, unlike the Funding Exchange. They had an attitude of “Let’s not make people feel guilty.” 

I remember going and giving a presentation at a Threshold meeting and feeling like I was a little bit considered on the “making people feel bad” end of the spectrum, you know? So I wasn't going to get invited back. Just the fact that I had given away my wealth made people feel bad. But occasionally I still get invited to speak at one of their gatherings. So I have a little window into the group.

They did a lot more nurturing of themselves and others, and lo and behold, they still exist.

Relationships matter. They last.

While Threshold was growing and building their community, the Funding Exchange continued to do these annual conferences. Over time, they got smaller and smaller. People didn’t mesh and didn’t come back year after year.

At some point, around the ’90s, FEX noticed they weren’t getting many more young wealthy people and decided to do something about it. They invested in the writing of Robin Hood Was Right and the early proto version of Resource Generation. Several networks funded the early reconnaissance work by people like Christopher and Anne Ellinger, which led to RG. 

In many ways, Resource Generation was a coming together of these two trends, the Soft Pillow and Marxist/Leninist. It took the best from all these different donor networks into its DNA. Having a mix of personal and political offerings. Creating safe space while also setting a radical intention for what people can do with their wealth. Being welcoming and accepting, while also pushing people to move money and shift power.  It’s a tricky balance, and I am for every effort and project that bring lessons from both tendencies.

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I’ll stop there for now. There is much more from my conversations with Chuck, and this is the part I will share today. I find this pair of archetypes quite useful to consider as we talk about and develop the theory and practice of organizing the rich. I imagine planning meetings, workshops or conferences and talking about how much Soft Pillow or Marxist/Leninist we want to bring to each situation.

I also want to take a moment to celebrate everyone involved with Threshold Foundation and Funding Exchange. I claim both groups as part of the lineage I organize within and the shoulders I stand on. Thank you.

1. If you haven’t read or heard of Chuck’s writing, I highly recommend taking a look. From Robin Hood was Right: A Guide to Giving your Money for Social Change to Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good, Chuck has been one of our key storytellers in this work organizing the rich towards justice. I particularly love his recent book, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Spend Millions to Hide Trillions, which shares a clear and disturbing picture of the “Wealth Defense Industry” protecting the money and power of the owning class. He also just published his first non-fiction book, Altar to an Erupting Sun, which I’m halfway through and enjoying thoroughly.

2. If it wasn’t clear, Chuck’s name for this trend is not based on a direct analysis of the words or theory of Marx or Lenin.