As well as being famous for his role in the abolition of the British Empire’s slave trade, Wilberforce and his contemporaries instigated a campaign for the ‘reformation of manners’. In 1787 he persuaded George III to issue a proclamation against "dissolute, immoral, or disorderly practices" - drunkenness, gambling, swearing, lewdness, breaking of the Sabbath and so on.
Wilberforce’s objective was, according to William Hague’s biography, a strengthening of the nation’s moral fibre. And as bossy and interfering as it sounds, it was at least partly shaped by a humanitarian impulse. Hanging was both barbarous and ineffective in deterring lawlessness. The best method, therefore, was, in 21st century terms, zero tolerance policing of anti-social behaviour:
The most effectual way to prevent greater crimes is by punishing the smaller, and by endeavouring to repress that general -spirit of licentiousness, which is the parent of every species of vice. I know that by regulating the external con¬duct we do not at first change the hearts of men, but even they are ultimately to be wrought upon by these means, and we should at least so far remove the obtrusiveness of the temptation, that it may not provoke the appetite, which might otherwise be dormant and inactive.
We face a similar challenge in 21st century Britain, but in these more egalitarian times we are more likely to recognise that the vices of the rich and powerful can wreak havoc on global scale – as in the economic crisis which continues to roll on, morphing – according to the Archbishop of Canterbury – into a fully fledged depression. What is interesting is that the level to which the problem is seen primarily as one of ethics, virtue, and the lack thereof, rather than one of systemic problems in particular industries.
So the task is cultural change – but without identifying a way in which culture can be changed, we’re left only with repeated complaint and protest. Consider Margaret Hodge MP, at a Public Accounts Committee hearing on tax avoidance with Google, Amazon and Starbucks. After listening for an hour or so of legal and financial sophistry, Hodge’s blood was beginning to boil: “we’re not accusing you of being illegal,” she fulminated, “we’re accusing you of being immoral!”
Like the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent comments about the City of London’s ‘culture of entitlement’, Hodge’s comments were highly agreeable, but destined have no success in terms of a reformation of corporate manners. As much as we want to insist that bankers, city traders, and other businessmen behave virtuously, virtue is given no place in the system and structure of commercial relationships – in fact, it is explicitly excluded. It’s a luxury commodity - called philanthropy – relevant as a post facto commodity, with no intrinsic relationship to actual business relationships. Morality only gets a look in if it can prove itself a handmaiden to primary objective of profitability (cf., Starbuck’s decision to voluntarily pay £20 million in corporation tax, widely interpreted as effort to dispel some public antagonism around its tax affairs).
According to Robert and Edward Skidelsky in their recent book, How Much is Enough?, the problem is at heart a theological one, the result of a particular heterodoxy that took root in Renaissance thought and wrote itself into the DNA of capitalism. It is the idea that evil is an essential component of salvation – “without contraries there is no progression”, wrote William Blake in the tellingly titled The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. It is “a vibrant, creative force, a necessary complement to the somewhat prissy good”. Think of Mandeville’s Fable of Bees, or of Smith’s ‘hidden hand’, or Gordon Gecko’s monologue on the salvific power of greed – all secular expressions of the idea that selfishness can be providential:
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much.
The theological capitalist ideologue would say, no doubt, “Of course! This is the system that makes the most of our flawed nature. It fits humanity better than any other way of doing things – that’s why it’s so attractive”. That’s fine, but given that we cannot be content to let things rumble along as they are, where would we go from there? In my mind, there are two options.
Option 1 is a Wilberforcian suppression of commercial vice – zero tolerance policing (regulation) of minor offences so as, at least, appetites aren’t ‘provoked’. Salary caps for senior executives, for example.
Option 2 is riskier, but potentially more creative. We would need to look for ways of recognising a different kind of capitalism – one which doesn’t assume vice as a central and essential component of the machine. In the words of Caritas in Veritate, this would require that "in commercial relationships the principles of gratuitousness and the logic of gift as an expression of gratuitousness can and must find their place within normal economic activity".
Paul Bickley is Director of Political Programme at Theos
