Against the Moralisation of Politics
Politics is not about judgements of individual virtue. In this divided world, we would do well to remember it.
Recently, I stumbled across a twitter post excoriating socialists for their condemnation of ‘the rich’, a category to which this user pointed out her father belonged. She rejected calls for greater taxes, trotting out the usual claims to hard work and ingenuity as a justification for his wealth. He already pays his fair share, so why should more of the fruit of his graft be collected by the taxman and dished out to those whose contributions pale In comparison?
Aside from the dubious claim of paying his ‘fair share’ and the elevation of the ‘hard work’ of the business owner above those of his workers — who are of course excluded from the profits of the enterprise despite their own ingenuity and graft as labourers — it reminded me of a certain perception which crops up time and time again. A similar insistence has often been made against the legitimacy of socialising ownership: ‘What about those people, who through the sweat of their brow, lucky breaks and a good idea, built enterprises from the ground up? They treat their workers rather well, and sure, you might consider them capitalist pigs, but to us they’re emblems of success and creation.’
There is something here, beyond — as I said — the problem of labours analytically marginalised role in co-creation and value production. I’m not here to relitigate the fault in the logic of this. More interesting is the presence of a moralisation of politics, whereby systemic processes and potentials are reduced to individual stories, characters, and judgements, obfuscating the manner in which such individuals are constituted — their interests and behaviours shaped. It is, in a sense, a straw man by way of individualisation; mistaking structural critiques and propositions with games of offence and personal virtue.
Imagine we have two potential enterprise structures. In enterprise A, ownership and control of productive assets is vested in the hands of a private individual, possessing ultimate decision making power and we sole access to the profit and wealth of the business. In Marxian terms, this enterprise is thus defined by class relations — the owner, and the workers, mediated by a strict hierarchy. In enterprise B, on the other hand, there are no class relations, for the workers are the owners. They not only perform labour, but make decisions pertaining to the management of the enterprise and receive the surplus (profit) flowing from their collective ownership of the productive wealth.
When I pose this brief schema to those who are far from socialist and ask them to choose which one they prefer, they almost invariably and unanimously choose the latter. Given the assumption that B is as productive as A, if not more (as the relevant literature suggests), then it is usually preferred on the grounds of two notions of justice: increased material capacity (that is, more financial security), and increased freedom, both negative (freedom from the dictatorship of the boss) and positive (freedom to shape the economic decisions impacting ones own life).
To state that B is preferrable as a matter of principle is not to deny that entrepreneurs haven’t worked hard, nor that they are evil for exploiting their work force. It is merely to say that given these two possible situations, the classless and collectivist enterprise B would be most conducive to certain moral values (equality, empowerment and social justice). The ideal-type entrepreneur that the objections pose did what such an actor would do: they engaged with the socially dominant commerce template at hand — i.e. enterprise A, the capitalist enterprise premised upon class relations — and gained their wealth via this method. To say this method of gaining wealth is unjust for reasons X, Y, Z, is a claim that is distinct from judgements of the moral character of the actor. For this ideal-type entrepreneur, in a world which prioritised enterprise B, would again do what such an actor would do, and build their wealth in collaboration with others who share the ethos and who contribute ideas and labour. This is to say that the potential paths before this type of entrepreneurial character are established by forces outside of their control — that complex mix of cultural, legal, and political thought that congeals into social norms — which makes the laser-focus on their moral responsibility, positive or otherwise, rather beside the point.
Take another example: landlords. When I have stated in conversations with friends and family that landlords are parasitic, extracting value from tenants by virtue of their control over land and property, I have been met with the insistence that all landlords aren’t evil. Some are Very Good Landlords. I’m sure this is true. Which is why my critique wasn’t lodged at the content of their soul, but at the structures they operate within. You can have very good landlords, but nonetheless a very bad structure of home provision, because it fails to fulfil principle X, Y, and Z. I’m not blaming people with ideas or spare capital for creating a business or purchasing property. I’m blaming the very structures of corporations and rentierism; structures which, as the term suggest, are constructed by social decisions and processes determining what institutions are deemed right and normal.
To return to the original objection: such businesspeople may indeed be ingenious and stubbornly hard working. I’m not saying they’re not. What I am saying, however, is that the normalised structure through which they enacted those virtues is antithetical to certain moral values many of us hold dear. In the words of philosophy professor Ben Burgis, our focus should not be ‘on the individual virtue of people who participate in flawed institutions.’ Rather, ‘our focus should be on a moral critique of the institutions themselves.’
You can, of course, disagree with this moral critique, or hold great scepticism as to how it would be enacted in practice. Indeed, these are worthwhile and necessary conversations to have. But so long as we refuse to escape this stultifying individual moralisation, the conceptual dilligence required to have them will be out of our reach.
