SOCIETY AND BUSINESS
The morality of profit
J. ENOCH POWELL
'Profit has become a dirty word'; or, 'profit ought not to be a dirty word'; or, 'socialism has made profit a dirty word'. These, and statements like them, are a commonplace of Conservative platforms and of business association dinners. The speakers refute, to their own satisfaction and the satisfaction of their audiences, the imputation of 'dirtiness' about profit. Yet the connotation clings. Perhaps there have been periods and places where profit enjoyed a good repute with the public and a good conscience with those who lived by it; but they are not easy to come by or to document. The uneasy suspicion arises that the propensity to regard profit as 'dirty', so far from being a temporary aberration, which must yield to reasoned argument, is normal, deep-seated and pervasive. Maybe the paradox of capitalist societies which disapprove of capitalism is one of those paradoxes of human nature which can't be cured and must be endured.
The reflection is prompted by a little book* in which Professor Acton defends the market, price and profit, and the rest of the mechanism of capitalism against the charge of being immoral, or morally inferior, and in particular selfish. He has it quite easy. It is not difficult to argue—to demonstrate, even—that the alternative to the market and the capitalist process is necessarily inimical to freedom of thought and action, because centralised judgment and compulsion are the only substitutes for the impersonal and spon- taneous working of the market. Since all good things are scarce, the elimination of competition and the search for equality means that somebody must apportion and enforce: `to press for universal distributive justice is to press for a universal authority'.. Moreover, the businessman and the capitalist is expected to obey—and indeed must obey, if he is to perform his social function properly—the moralities ap- propriate to his capacity as businessman or capitalist, and these do not excuse or debar him from observing the rest of the moral code in his other capacities.
Yet the fact remains that the unpopularity of profit has proved throughout the ages impervious to these and similar arguments. Why?
An attractive case, superficially, can be made out that this is the product of class an- tagonism and prejudice. The nobleman, the landowner, and the warrior despise the very different virtues of the merchant or manufacturer, and may be heard doing so from Plato's Republic to Disraeli's Con- ingsby. Other classes besides these may be naturally antagonistic to the capitalist. The priesthood of any religion, and above all of , the world-denying religions, finds itself mak- ing assertions and inculcating doctrines not reconcilable with the world where capitalism, price and profit are at home. The injunctions to 'sell all thou hast and follow me' and to 'take no care for the morrow' or the observation that 'the love of money is the root of all evil' do not sit comfortably with the business of the market-place, and were not intended to do so. It is not therefore surprising that capitalism, under the guise of 'usury', was condemned alike by the Jewish law and the mediaeval Church, and that Christianity has ever been found among the critics rather than the apologists of the market economy. Then, it has often been pointed out that the professional and academic classes have their own reasons for being contemptuous or hostile towards the market and its works. The type of personality which tends to be attracted into the professions is one that places a relatively high valuation not only on financial security but on the non-monetary rewards of any course of action or way of life. This is the antithesis of the entrepreneurial character, which is attracted by a combination of risk with preponderantly monetary satisfaction and is habituated to measuring off values in monetary terms. Both the professional man and the academic moreover are likely to be repelled by the automatic and spontaneous functioning of the market: accustomed in their own sphere to the supremacy of the intellect, they are hard to persuade that a planned economy would not be superior to a 'blind' market economy, and exhibit towards the businessman the natural arrogance of the
man of thought to the man of action. There is thus a good, sound, built-in reason why universities and places where they teach or research should be preponderantly 'left'.
Yet when all this has been said, it is not enough. It does not explain why far and wide beyond all these classes there is a rooted moral prejudice against the basic workings of capitalism. People generally who live and work in a capitalist society and know no other are prone to rail against profit and to view the price mechanism with distaste. The very entrepreneur himself, if you take him in a leisure hour or unguarded moment, is more likely than not to exhibit, not so much an ignorance (though that is common), but a • positive dislike of the principles of capitalism by which he lives, and will probably take the opportunity to explain that he is guided, or wishes he could be guided, by rules of a higher morality than those of the market- place. There is a secret shame about being an entrepreneur which there is not about being an artisan or an artist, a lawyer or even a legislator.
We are thus presented with the paradox of an economy, a society, even a civilisation, where the processes by which it exists and flourishes meet with more disapproval than approval when they are consciously exposed and analysed. It is as if a creature whose evolution had provided it with lungs were secretly ashamed of breathing, or with fins, of swimming. There is a paradox here; but, I ask again, is it not a paradox common, perhaps universal? If it is, then we cannot close our minds to the further suspicion that it may perhaps therefore have a necessary and salutary function. In terms : is there an evolutionary law that favours organisms and societies in which there exists a tension between obedience and disobedience to their principle of survival and progress? More plainly still: though a capitalist economy and society can perish through disapproval of capitalism, can it survive without the presence of substantial disapproval? Would not a capitalist society which was 100 per cent approved by its members be bound to disappear?
The market mechanism is an instinctual one. Unlike the various alternatives proposed to it, it was not deliberately, designed, still less created, though it can be more or less re- jected, and though it can be analysed and studied, no government or ruler could, or would, impose it. The 'invisible hand' of Adam Smith's metaphor is—to pile another metaphor on top—the 'hand of Nature'. There is indeed a truth, if not in the sense intended, in the objurgation that the market is a 'jungle' and its rules the law of the jungle': for the real jungle is a place not of disorder and confusion but Of highly elaborate and intricate equilibria. It may be that the antipathy to this instinctual mechanism, which expresses itself in moral terms, is something fundamental to humanity, and perhaps not exclusively to humanity. It may even be that the antipathy is as indispensable as the instinctual mechanism itself, If so, no amount of the reasoned argument which the antipathy pro- vokes will be sufficient to exorcise it.
• Professor Acton's book is sub-titled 'An Ethical Exploration'. I have suggested that there is here a far vaster and more difficult region than we commonly imagine. Moral philosophy may have suggested the existence of this unknown region; but it is not to moral philosophy that the leadership of the exploration will fall.
*The Morals of Markets: An Ethical Ex- ploration H. B. Acton (Longman £1.75)
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