Humanist Capitalism

I believe in the strength of an analogy between the evolution of personal aims at an individual level and the aims of business. Our evolution has made us into moral beings and one day the same morality will become central to capitalism.

The Demise of Savagery:

Over the course of a few thousand years human aims have evolved. In the time of ‘savages’ individuals were fighting for two things, namely survival and reproduction. Through the evolutionary benefits of living in groups, humans developed more complex moral systems, building empathy and altruism into our evaluation of worth. The more basic aims of survival and reproduction remained, but they became subconscious as society became central to human life (for the subconsciousness of base human desires see Love-cynics? Feed them to the lions). I recognise that this is a very  brief overview of an intensely complicated topic but I think it is enough to make my point.

The Rise of Humanist Capitalism:

The aims of business in a capitalist world are almost identical to those of the savage; survival and expansion (now measured in financial profit) replace survival and reproduction.  The savage nature of capitalism is an unhappy truth but it does allow for the very happy possibility of capitalist evolution. Just as a modern individual who aimed only for survival and reproduction, without even the pretence of human morals, would be shunned by society and would probably fail in at least his second aim, perhaps in the future businesses driven purely by the search for profits will become socially unacceptable. Many large corporations already see charity work and green initiatives as a vital part of their PR work but hopefully as the world population (who ultimately decide the fate of any business) start to demand more of the companies they buy from these social aims could become more central to the aims of business. It might seem ridiculous to predict that future businesses will have a powerful moral conscious but I think that Homo erectus would have laughed at the idea that people would one day have the complex morals that we now take for granted (assuming you could even explain such a system to them). The move towards incorporating social worth into an evaluation of business success has already begun: Not for Profits.  And businesses have already started to reassess how they measure their own success: Global Business with Prof Michael Porter.

 But Don’t Forget to Ask:

One break in the analogy is where the impetus for social change comes from. For man: Living in groups provided safety, this society then required a moral system to work, these morals then became subsumed into the individual consciousness and we became moral beings. For business: Consumers demand ethical business, it becomes financially beneficial to be ethical, business morals are born and become subsumed into the capitalist consciousness. The ‘selfish gene’, in its search for reproduction, had to allow for genuine moral feeling. Now the selfish capitalist business, in its search for profits, will have no choice but to allow for moral feeling also. Over time (possibly a very long time) the selfish drive for reproduction/profit recedes into the subconscious and our daily understanding of society is only intelligible in moral language. However, for all this to happen the first step is vital and the first step in the evolution of business morals is the consumer demand for ethical business. Whether or not capitalism develops something akin to human feeling is dependent on our demand for it. For our own good we must make such a demand.