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Capitalism has been condemned for many of the world’s ills, from huge income inequality to climate change. But self-interest was not the central idea of the economic system first codified by Adam Smith in the 18th century.. Greed joined capitalism in the 1980s, fueled in large part by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman’s theory that the singular goal of companies is to maximize profits for shareholders. In short, it was the argument that “greed is good.”
Now, a new global alliance, with Pope Francis as the moral leader, is pushing to rescue the heart of capitalism and reorient it as a force for social good. The founding members of the Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican include large corporations such as Bank of America, BP, Estée Lauder, EY, Johnson & Johnson, Mastercard, Merck, Salesforce and Visa. It also includes grant-making agencies such as the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, government agencies, and the International Trade Union Confederation, the world’s largest workers’ rights group.
Each organization is committed to changing aspects of its business model, which will be audited annually through a scorecard system. Mastercard, for example, is committed to working more intentionally with African Americans. It plans to invest $ 500 million in black communities and will increase annual spending with black providers by 70% over the next five years. DuPont, for its part, will make sustainability a mandatory criterion throughout its value chain by 2030.
The 230 action items posted on the coalition’s website denote the many ways capitalism has gone astray and the ways it can be fixed, to link the end result to the health and well-being of workers and customers and , above all, the planet.
Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the founder of the coalition, argues that the alliance is not just another group exclusive to large corporations. Any company that believes in the need to reform the prevailing capitalist agenda can sign up to be part of the movement. “It’s available to the corner drugstore that wants to commit to hiring a person of color or being carbon neutral,” he explains. “They don’t have to do what Johnson & Johnson or Merck do. They will do what is comfortable for them. “
Forester adds that, although the leader of the Catholic Church is his main adviser, the coalition is firmly non-sectarian. “Of course, this is reported by [Christian] gospel, but it talks about what Aristotle was talking about some 300 years before Christ about humanity’s need to be responsible for one another, “says Forester, also known socially as” Lady Lynn, “by virtue of her marriage to a gentleman. British. His net worth was more than $ 600 million in 2016, according to Business Insider.
Forester, who is also the CEO of the EL Rothschild holding company, says that involving the Vatican promises a big boost. Hearing the Pope speak at a 2016 business forum convinced the coalition that he would offer “moral poetry” to the coalition’s initiatives, in the same way that the words of Martin Luther King Jr. fueled the United States civil rights movement. United. Indeed, in his gracious manner, Pope Francis has proven himself among the most persuasive critics of broken systems. From his 2015 encyclical Praised According to a recent TED talk, his words have ignited activists seeking to address socio-economic injustice and global warming.
“I think this Pope has real authority over the human soul,” Forester tells Quartz. “When he says things like ‘we need a new conception of the economy in which the production of wealth improves rather than destroys our world’, that is inclusive capitalism.”
Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, is part of the coalition’s central advisory group, which is made up primarily of heads of large corporations. As a union organizer, she says she was interested in joining the corporate leaders who meet annually with Pope Francis at the Vatican to help devise realistic interventions. “We shouldn’t see this as another roundtable,” Burrow explains, referring to the myriad initiatives by high-profile do-gooders around the world today. “The fact that there are CEOs at least brave enough to admit they have to realign the model is a start. Now let’s see if we can really move towards a common vision on a path to a more just future. “
He warns that ideological discussions about capitalism will be meaningless if they do not really improve the plight of workers. “For workers and their children, it doesn’t matter what the economic system is. What matters is a good and secure job in which they can live with dignity from their income, ”he says. “That will be the test.”
