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The extraordinary program for social change in Matthew’s Gospel (particularly chapters 5-7) compels every generation of people who read that particular book to examine their society to understand how it fails to reach the challenge set by Jesus Christ, or is should. The challenge is thoroughly adversarial. Not only does Jesus take a disputatious stand against the entrenched privilege of those who held power in his society, the religious elite, but he also takes each of us to task over our commitment to participation in social transformation, which must, of course, commence with our selves and our lives.
At the social level, proposing such change will at some point start a discussion about certain rights of the individual – to freedoms that social transformation may circumscribe, to particular styles and comforts of life, to protection from a range of threats and so on. Rowan Williams, reflecting Alasdair McIntyre, reminds us there are no rights, at least in the sense that we understand them, what we usually call human rights. That is a challenge too, isn’t it? Are there no human rights? Williams and McIntyre point out that these are merely claims that we make. They seem like very good claims and usually they arise from good hearts, but they can also be dangerous. If I claim the right, say, to fulfilling work, I must on Kantian principles universalise that claim to all. Then I, especially if I am in fulfilling work myself, have an obligation to provide, indeed to ensure, that right to most if not all other people. Can I, or will I, really do this?
Although it raises difficulties, the language of obligation is a better foundation for doing what rights language seeks to do, to provide some form of maximal universalised utility. In a social sense these obligations are not hard to arrive at or comprehend, restraint from violence, respect for human dignity, provision for the dispossessed, and so on.
What, however do we expect of our business corporations? Leave aside for the present that their obligations are set in either law, which they are but only to a limited and insufficient extent, or manifest as the sum of the obligations of their various stakeholders, which I do not think they are at all. Given that our business corporations have the greatest share of personal talent, of financial resources, of intellectual property, of information, and of primary resources like land and minerals, how do we expect them to contribute to the good of the community?
The first and most obvious answer is the goods and services that they produce: food, clothing shelter, entertainment and so a very long list goes on. But do we as a community really have any control over how these corporations do this? Do we set obligations in any material sense and monitor their observance. Of course, we do, through the law, but as I said, it is insufficient, as moral philosophers will agree. The same law allows dairy farming that allows the production and distribution of tobacco or gambling services.
What are their obligations to us? Milton Friedman said, controversially, that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. Looking at the three chapters in Matthew’s gospel, 5, 6 & 7, known also as the sermon on the mount, there are immediate statements which challenge us and Friedman. Right at the outset, Ch5 vv3-11, the beatitudes – ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit …’ and the 8 that follow it make a radical statement of the need for inclusion. They say emphatically that the basis on which we give honour – wealth, power, social standing, possessions, dress and so forth have no meaning in a transformed world, indeed poor, the powerless, the socially misfit, the scruffy and the dispossessed have at least equal standing. Such radical ideas unsettle our notions of who from the business perspective we prefer – who do we call our stakeholder – our customers, our employees, our shareholders, our suppliers? Are any of these poor, powerless, socially misfit, scruffy or dispossessed? Tell me what you think.
Refs:
1. Williams, Rowan. Faith in the Public Square. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2012.
2. MacIntyre, Alasdair, C. After Virtue. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 1984.
3. Friedman, Milton. “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” New York Times Magazine, 1970.