Capitalism and morality

The topic of capitalism is so large that I couldn't possibly hope to tackle it on this one blog, let alone this post, so this is simply a look at one debate over the nature of morality in the free market.

A Left wing argument goes that left to their own devises companies will act immorally in the fight for profit. Government intervention is required to ensure that businesses pay a fair wage, don't ravage the environment etc. Some on the Right argue that in a fully free market, these issues will resolve themselves. Essentially, if people care enough about proper wages and the environment, then their buying habits will reflect this, making it more profitable to be fair and environmental than exploitative. It is a belief inherent in capitalism that the selfish desire for profit will lead to morality winning out.

An example of moral capitalism could perhaps be seen in the popularity of fair trade, organic and locally produced goods. Most companies are now trying to project the image that they are morally conscious and environmentally aware. The petrol company BP uses the images of their wind plants in their adverts; Mac Donalds now uses fair trade coffee in Britain. These though, reveal the shallowness of this corporate morality. BP and Mac Donalds can profit from their moral image while not fundamentally changing their damaging business practices. In capitalism, companies will act morally as far as it increases profits, but will never act morally to the detriment of these profits.

In a capitalist system the ultimate goal is the pursuit of capital with the hopeful side-affect of morally decent acts. I would argue for a 'moralist' system, where the ultimate goal is the pursuit of morally decent acts with the hopeful side-affect of producing capital. Essentially I would be content if a government were to simply declare this as their economic ideology that their effort would go towards making the world better firstly and corporate profits secondly. In implementation I suppose this would be achieved through a mixture of moral legislative restrictions on companies’ actions that are already in place but also perhaps tax breaks for acts of public good, and taxation on acts that cause harm. This can already be seen in things like cigarette tax that goes part of the way towards paying the NHS bills for issues caused by smoking.

Essentially I am arguing that the current system that the pursuit of money is an abstract notion that receives too much attention from governments and corporations, the public good is of such importance that it deserves to be the central focus of political and economic action, not sidelined as the potential by-product of financial profit.