“Dear Cleinias, the class of men is small . . . who, when assailed by wants and desires, are able to hold out and observe moderation, and when they might make a great deal of money are sober in their wishes, and prefer a moderate to a large gain. But the mass of mankind are the very opposite: their desires are unbounded, and when they might gain in moderation they prefer gains without limit; wherefore all that relates to retail trade, and merchandise, and the keeping of taverns, is denounced and numbered among dishonorable things.”
That is Plato in the Laws. He is outdone by Aristotle who in the Politics advocates banning any merchants from the state, since “such a life is ignoble and inimical to virtue.” It isn’t just the Greeks who disparage commerce. Aquinas says that a merchant who works to enrich himself is a rather despicable creature, “justly deserving of blame, because, considered in itself, it satisfies the greed for gain, which knows no limit and tends to infinity.”
One of the interesting things about reading old books is how modern they sometimes seem. You don’t dig very deep into Left or Right political commentary to find remarks disparaging the multinational industrial capitalist economy. The Left wants to replace it with some sort of edenic international socialist state. The Right wants to replace it with some sort of edenic national religious state.
But both conservative and liberal market critics claim that large corporations are being run by greedy CEOs who care only about becoming mind-bogglingly wealthy, tossing the concerns of the poor working classes into the ashbins. Indeed, these capitalist swine in pursuit of riches do what they can to corrupt the government and thwart the will of all those decent not-so-wealthy people who just want to live satisfying lives.
But a profit motive does not necessarily entail systematic social corruption as ancient and modern naysayers of open markets suggest. An individual working in the economic order does not cease to be a moral person simply because he has a profit motive. It is possible to run an ethical business—to treat your employees and customers the right way, the way you would like to be treated yourself—and still generate profits.
Can the case for commercial activity be made stronger? Is there a fundamental answer to the charges of immorality leveled by Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and their modern counterparts? Is it possible to argue that commercial activity is inherently virtuous, that it does not need to be tolerated as a necessary evil, but rather should be embraced as a positive good?
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