Moral Capitalism?
Trump in the Crosshairs
Some years ago, my daughter wrote an essay for her college application. This particular essay requested that she take a current event and apply it to her life. She decided on the Cheerios commercial from 2013. If this doesn’t ring a bell, let me refresh your memory. A mom is working in the kitchen and a darling four-year-old is eating breakfast, Cheerios. The young girl asks her mom why they eat Cheerios, and the mom tells her because it’s good for your heart. I paraphrase. Soon after the scene shifts to the living room and a man awakens from a nap to find Cheerios piled high on his left chest. He’s flabbergasted and calls out to his wife. It is an adorable little story of family unity and a daughter’s love for her dad. Maybe that is why I remember the story; was my daughter channeling her feelings? I digress. The reason my daughter chose this story to share in her essay was because social media had erupted in anger over the fact that the mom was white, the dad was Black, and the daughter was an adorable biracial child. If you’re a believer in racial purity, the scenes in the commercial are a gut punch.
My daughter used this story to discuss our society’s ills and how capitalism can morally change the world—for the good. I know, this seems a bit backwards, doesn’t it. We’re used to hearing about how the gritty granular lives of people force change on corporate America, the last bastion of an immovable status quo. But corporations have had a metamorphosis over the past few decades. Customers are no longer captive clients but free-thinking explorers of the American dream. They are really driving the ship of quarterly profits and companies have gotten wise to this. So much so, that companies like Kellog-Cherrios are leading the charge for progressive change, or at least, they want to be seen as not lagging behind. Depending on where you live in this country, or your social/political leanings, not lagging behind could be seen as downright progressive.
One doesn’t usually align capitalism and moralism because, in its purest sense, capitalism is only about one thing, profit. The minute it factors in elements other than profit, the income model gets tainted and predictability falters. The benefits of this are obvious, capitalism doesn’t care who you are, and your ethnicity or sex are immaterial. If you have a successful business idea, you will succeed. The downside, however, is obvious. Where there is no moralism, a rot to the social system is likely to take hold and change the fabric of society. This change often does not look good. America has been down this road a few times since our inception as a nation and it has required an austere form of surgery to excise the capitalist demons from our national promise.
The four horsemen of American history rescued us from what might have looked more like a fascist regime, than the democratic institution of the people, by the people, and for the people, that Abraham Lincoln so eloquently defined in his Gettysburg Address. Lincoln recued us from the tyranny of capitalist slavery, Theodore Roosevelt, from industrial robber barons, Franklyn Roosevelt, from banking fraud, and Lyndon Johnson, from transgressions against civil liberties, voting fraud, and poor access to health care. These corrections took a capitalist ship bearing down on rocks in the shallows and steered it back into deep calm waters. We were a nation hell bent on success without morality, a pure capitalist adventure, and rightly corrected our course to a healthy balance of a capitalism that can thrive while still protecting the people intended to benefit from its egalitarian promise.
Since these historic milestones, we have seen a more symbiotic relationship between capitalism and moralism in a campaign to effect change. Boycotts of South African apartheid, Iranian political hegemony, and more recently in China, against their policy of Uyghur forced labor, are all intended to use capitalism for moral change. So, it should come as no surprise that after the attack on the Capitol on January 6th of this year, we saw the leaders of dozens of American companies swiftly act to right the course of aberrant politics. To be fair, their interests were probably equally of moral and monetary concerns. Where there is strife, as has been promised by the hardcore invaders of the Capitol, there usually are less moms and children spending money in the malls of America. No doubt, these companies are protecting the delicate emotional state of the American psyche, making sure that nothing interferes with a necessary economic recovery so desperately needed after the pandemic of 2020. Despite the monetary element of these capitalist convictions, it should be a lesson learned. Political or social activity that negatively affects corporate America’s bottom line will be boycotted by the CEOs of our nation. Alternatively, social progress, like the Cheerios commercial that enhances American values while encouraging spending from all segments of our society, will be encouraged.
Corporations in American can dictate our quality of life not just by providing jobs and selling products but by advocating for an environment that allows for a free pursuit of happiness, fairness and transparency in democracy, and the health and safety of our family. It’s not a perfect process, but it’s the one we have and its need for correction from time to time, is no reason to abandon it. The best capitalism is one in balance with the needs of society; one that can restrain its purist philosophy enough to breathe life into the society it wishes to thrive in.
© Eric Clark, 26 January 2021
Photo: deena-englard-xYqsu0DU1Nw-unsplash
