A culture of corruption

By guest blogger GPWayne

Corruption is concomitant in cultures driven by greed, the search for power and profit. It is difficult, and possibly suicidal, for a single actor to act ethically when the competition may not do so. No business can afford to underestimate the implications of competitive capitalism; where a competitor can gain legislative, supply chain or market advantage one must respond appropriately or watch as market share diminishes. The assumption that one’s customers will pay extra for ‘moral’ products is not consistent with broad experience, just a minority one – albeit admirable.

A study of history reveals that morality is usually trumped by self-interest and the search for power and wealth. The link between amoral behaviour and the profit motive seems unbreakable. A society which is fair and honourable and egalitarian, that rewards truth and honesty and disdains amorality has yet to be built. Consequently, history also records that well-meaning people have repeatedly tried to ‘fix’ this kind of system, and all seem to have failed.

Perhaps it is time we stopped trying to fix this system, and instead recognise that it cannot be fixed because the problems are a function of the system’s design and the imperatives that are its foundation. Only by rejecting this atavistic social paradigm can we replace it with something that values human experience over money, that values dignity of the individual over status, and does not place the work ethic at the heart of all human endeavour. As trite as the expression appears, none the less we should work to live, not live to work.

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One argument frequently put to me places much faith in purchasing discrimination – both by businesses in their selection of suppliers and services, and by consumers choosing ‘ethical’ or ‘sustainable’ products in preference to – inevitably – cheaper ones.

I find this argument strangely naive. In the context of business to business, no company can chose to use more expensive (read ‘ethical’) suppliers of raw materials or services without disadvantaging that business and turning the enterprise toward some kind of philanthropic institution. Philanthropy and the adoption of social purpose and responsibility is at once a worthy aim and also a serious disadvantage: the putative loss of market share and potential reduction of ‘raw’ profit; these are hard to explain to shareholders who, in light of their pan-national demographic, will have less concern for the domestic betterment of other countries than for their dividends.

For the public, choice is clearly proscribed by banks, energy suppliers, supermarkets and the like. Can you buy many consumer electronic goods that are not made in China? Computer products not made by a Foxconn subsidiary?

In matters of choice, we are all held hostage to the implications of commercial trans-nationalism. The growth of global markets and the consolidation of the multi-nationals has made choice the prerogative only of those who can afford to pay extra for it. No matter how far you travel around the world, it is clear that most of us now dress the same. From Sidcup to Sidney we work in ubiquitously bland industrial estates. We eat the same burgers, enjoy the same entertainment on the same i-Pods and televisions. Uniformity is demanded of consumers everywhere, as the price for what choice we can afford. Economies of scale rule globalisation: to suggest we have any real choices in this globalised consumerist milieu smacks of apologia.

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That the ancient trading system can be fixed, patched up, modified and repaired, is what I call a ‘status quo’ argument since it does not ask the greater and more difficult question – whether the system is worth fixing yet again. Those that argue for social or commercial evolution depend on the premise that there is a way of exploiting labour and markets that is ethical and moral.

I do not believe that capitalism can be moral, for it depends far too much on two kinds of exploitation: of poor people by those less poor – a hierarchy of exploitation if you like – and the exploitation of desire and demand, where dissatisfaction and an artificial obsession with brands, status and novelty are manufactured by advertising in the same way obsolescence is built in to every product. One example alone demonstrates the moral vacuum at the heart of the consumer ethic: which manufacturer seeks product longevity when they know a longer lasting product, while plainly better value for the consumer, will also impinge on future sales?

For most of us, work is neither noble nor fulfilling. Most people do not work because they love to do so, but because they have to; those who can forge some kind of marriage between work and vocation are lucky indeed. Most of us work because we live in a system where, unless we maintain some kind of employment, we cannot survive. The work force is a resource whose compliance is manufactured. Many of us, no longer morally bound by echoes of the Protestant work ethic, are instead compelled to work so we can service our debts.

The idea that there is some kind of honourable way to exploit labour is naive, as it is to believe that sustainability and economic growth are mutually congruent aims. The entire chain of consumerism depends on acts that are amoral, manipulative and sometimes outright dishonourable. Nothing will make exploitation sustainable, no matter how we dress it up in fine sounding theories, laws, or high-minded rhetoric.

Where there is brass, there is muck; while we care more about brass than we do much else, we will always be wading in muck. Sustainable or ethical business practices, if they are to succeed, must be a subset of a greater morality, one that permeates our whole culture, and from the top down. When corruption is endemic at the level of government, for example when the Serious Fraud Office is prevented from investigating the bribes paid to Saudi princes by BAe, expecting the left hand of commerce to ignore the fact that the right hand is buried deep in the till is both unreasonable and self-defeating.

Good intentions will not save us: how many good people have discovered that, in a corrupt place, the only way to conduct business is on terms set by the proprietor? When the proprietors are governments, when corruption is an institution embedded in our culture, we are all compromised, our only options to participate to the extent we can bear, drop out altogether, or starve.

Or stop trying to fix a perpetually broken paradigm and invent a new one.

G.P.Wayne blogs at http://gpwayne.wordpress.com/