social ethics questions

5/9/22, 1:31 AM Launchpad: What is Capitalism?: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business

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Launchpad: What is Capitalism?

What is Capitalism?

We live and breathe capitalism. It is the global economic order that currently binds the entire world under a single system and its measure of value: money. Our material lives —the goods and social relations we subsist on—are produced and reproduced by way of this system. But what is the system of capitalism? If we are going to practice ethical reasoning in a way that transforms business, then we need to take a harder look at the deeper underlying system—the structural rules of the game of capitalism within which every business operates.

First then we must recognize that capitalism is not eternally the way things have always been or will always be. It is a contingent historical product. As Carolyn Merchant's article from Week 3 highlighted, capitalism is a contingent economic development that historically arose as a break from previous organic societies and their production for communal needs in order to produce solely for private profit. But prior to capitalism there had been markets for exchanging goods, and there had also been some merchants exchanging goods for private profit (which we already saw critiqued by Aristotle). So what exactly makes capitalism historically distinctive?

To answer this question, let’s go over some of the questions we’ve been asking since the beginning of the quarter:

What is it that makes the human species distinctively human? Some typical proposals: culture, education, consciousness and intellectual capacities, as well as those social qualities of compassion, love, empathy, etc. (such as proposed by Aristotle or Mill in their different ways)

Where did these capacities and practices come from? If these important characteristics did not simply fall from heaven then how did they materially emerge and evolve in history? What is distinctive about the human that makes these higher-order qualities and activities possible in the first place?

More fundamental is our ability to shape our environment and our own nature by socially producing our own means of production and thus our own

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means of subsisting.

Most animals produce only according to their given biological endowments as genetically adapted to a certain environment, with only a few species using certain found objects to aid their productive activities. But humans have learned how to create new productive technologies and new ways of producing together that transcend the limits of our biological endowments and thus can transform any environment into a human habitat (or a habitat for any species).

This creation of our own means of production and thus our own means of subsisting within any environment has led to the abundance of goods and time (the necessary production and distribution of a diverse social surplus) that opens the possibility for developing new qualities, needs, and creative forms of existing as diverse cultural beings.

Thus, what makes the human the distinctive animal it is, is not merely that we are social or culturally diverse in our expressions. Rather cultural diversity is a later healthy sign of developing that distinctive power we all share: the creative power of our labor to consciously and cooperatively transform the very means of producing and reproducing the material life of our species beyond mere survival—to transform the material at hand into new tools as well as to transform physical resources into new forms of energy, and thus new kinds of abundance, produced in new ways, through new forms of cooperation and sharing, and for new reasons—community for its own sake.

This transformative activity of producing together our own means of subsisting through better organizing both nature and ourselves is the beginnings of developing real agency for self-determination beyond being passive objects to biological/environmental dictates, and thus the beginning for discovering our common good—it is where we first discover the virtues of cooperation and creativity, the need for solidarity and compassion, the virtue of wisdom and the intellectual capacity for higher order organization, and thus the capability for “practical reason” as emancipatory social practice.

In other words: This distinctively transformative quality of our production and reproduction of the species has been possible because it has been highly social (sharing of resources, labor, knowledge, abundance, etc.)

5/9/22, 1:31 AM Launchpad: What is Capitalism?: UCOR 2910 02 22SQ Ethical Reasoning in Business

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and intentionally planned to increasing degrees (reasoning together through dialogue).

Moreover, throughout our evolutionary history our social means of producing a social surplus has been more or less socially owned by the producers themselves; and societies have advanced more or less insofar as they consciously reinvested the social surplus back into their socially creative capacities for cultivating new potentials in nature rather than violently exploiting certain given mechanisms of nature.

What then makes our capitalist system distinctive within human history? Humanity’s social means of producing the social surplus that makes any human society possible, is now entirely privatized by only a few entities, with the social surplus entirely captured in the form of private profit. As Shaw briefly states in the reading, capitalism = the privatized ownership of the social means of production (i.e. land, resources, productive technologies privately owned by corporations) as well as the private ownership of surplus value (i.e. commonwealth) thereby generated. While kings prior to capitalism were able to forcibly appropriate large portions of society’s wealth and even temporarily capture a small amount of slave labor, no king or empire in the past was able to privately capture the entirety of its society’s productive means for producing its material life and commonwealth. For more details on how capitalism historically arose through the private capture of the social means of production, especially through land enclosures, slavery, and colonization, etc., and some of its key enduring features, see the lecture notes here (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034401?wrap=1) (https://seattleu.instructure.com/courses/1603225/files/68034401/download? download_frd=1)

Thus while we know the story of how capitalism supplanted the strictures of feudalism, and thus has generated vast amounts of wealth, unprecedented in history, we don't often hear the story of exactly how and why it is able to do so, and thus the hidden costs to generating such a system of monetary wealth--why is it that within such a system of wealth there is nevertheless a rising inequality gap, as well as a diminishment of the earth's resources? Shouldn't true wealth be measured more precisely as to how well it universally develops the diverse creative potentials of humanity and nature for a holistic quality of life?

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The problem in a capitalist society then is not simply that there is such exorbitant monetary wealth, or that there are only a few wealthy people with power at the top, but rather the problem is that society’s social means of producing and reproducing its material life together is now privatized and thus undemocratically structured toward ends (concentrating private profit) other than advancing the social life of the people actually producing the commonwealth--a failure that has existential consequences for all.

This is because the common resources and social means by which we produce our collective life together is now privately owned and controlled by institutionalized private entities (i.e. corporations) guided solely by private ends, with the market allocating goods solely on the basis of this pursuit of private profit (remember Nussbaum on the question of how goods should be allocated?). The world is now divided up into those who privately own the social means of production and the rest who have only their labor to sell for a wage and yet no real voice in how their world itself is produced.

In other words, the problem is not merely unequal wealth distribution—but rather more problematically, because more fundamentally, unequal ownership of the social means for producing wealth: thus a fundamental issue to address with capitalism is the privatized process of production that undemocratically and arbitrarily determines how, in what form, and why a society's common wealth should be generated in the first place.

Whereas prior to our capitalist world most humans worked more closely together and with their land to meet real communal needs for creating their own existence, now our collective labor is divided up and sold as a commodity for a wage to private corporations, all in order to appropriate our common land, resources, and time for generating private profit for a few.

Hence, the very material existence of our social life is mediated back to us by private capital and its commercial interests. (our collective efforts in producing needed goods are now organized according to exchange value rather than social use values--remember this distinction from Aristotle?)

Because the capitalist market is structured so that the competition for private profit requires accumulating more capital in a zero sum game

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(increasingly privatizing and commodifying more land and labor) the problems of capitalism therefore tend to be deeply structural and cannot simplistically be reducible to a few greedy individuals at the top—everyone is compelled to play this game to some degree in order to survive.

Thus the privatization of the social means of producing the social surplus that makes social life possible, redirecting it into the form of private profit that reinvests back into capital accumulation, is inherently structured so that it is exceptionally difficult to wisely or justly, or even adequately, reinvest the social surplus back into its very sources of possibility--people and the environment--since the end goal is now exclusively making profit in the form of money for its own sake (think about how difficult it has been during our pandemic for the government to appropriate needed funds for proper public health care and social services).

As we will later see this is a recipe for our runaway social inequality and environmental degradation that is now catching up to us

As we will explore, each ethical framework deals with these issues of capitalism differently, whether they acknowledge them only in part or as a whole, and whether they seek to regulate, reform, or transform the economy.

Some Questions to Think about

If in the very first lecture from Week 1 we discussed the origins of ethical discourse within a community that socially produced according to use values and shared its social surplus together, now we find we are in a specifically capitalist society in which the social means of production and its social surplus are privatized for generating exchange values as an occasion for private profit, thus making the common good more difficult to see.

But is this socioeconomic system of private ownership and private profit as such nevertheless able to be made compatible with more robust attempts to critically pursue the common good and collectively build a democratic society? Can healthy relationships with one another as well as with nature be adequately cultivated within a system driven solely by privatization and the profit motive?

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Can issues such as poverty in general, and racial inequality more specifically, be healed within this system, or does the system itself perpetuate such problems? Can capitalism be separated from its violent history, or are the costs of this history still with us and still being generated in other forms? Is there any robust form of ethical reasoning beyond a reductive sense of utilitarianism that is compatible with capitalism?

These are the big questions we need to ask within our modern world, especially if we are going to develop the critical capacity for ethical reasoning within the business world so as to make it serve more humane interests. Moving forward we will need to continually refer back to the ethical paradigms as we analyze these issues. Below is a quick point of reference, especially in thinking about the differing views on justice in all three theories. You will need to consult this for the case studies moving forward:

Ethical Paradigm

NormativeStandpoint Dimensions to human being

Main Purpose for ethical action

Primary Me for fulfilling ethical actio

Utilitarianism

Bentham

Mill

We are only consuming animals without universal standpoint

One- dimensional: pleasure machines with no higher qualities

Maximize and regulate pleasure seeking within given brute nature

Ends justify whatever me

Deontology

Kant

We are consuming animals, but with a universally shared rational structure

Dualistically two- dimensional:

Pleasure machines + rational will

To restrain and transcend given brute nature when its interests conflict

Focuses on neither ends means, but o purifying intentions fo obeying duty duty’s sake

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Virtue

Aristotle

We are inherently social animals with universally shared rational and social potentials for politics

Organically multidimensional: sensible pleasures, social qualities, rational capacities

To transform our brute nature according to its more excellent potentials for holistic development

Virtue as fitt appropriate means to en the practice building up highest pow through hab

Let’s restate a summary of the two principled theories of justice, virtue and deontology, according to the difference between equality and equity:

Deontology = justice as abstract equality: treating everyone the same by making sure everyone gets the same regardless of situational needs and diverse histories. Virtue ethics = justice according to need: in light of uneven histories and situational contexts, it is about discerning the real needs each diverse individual or group has in order to build up equity (i.e. real wealth!) precisely as a development of their human capabilities.

We can sum up virtue's principle of justice as, to each according to need, from each according to ability.