The Reform of Global Capitalism

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- by Peter Heslam

Letter from Peter Heslam (LICC) to Church Times, published 11 May 2001


The Anglican bishops of Southern Africa are to be commended for their Freedom Day message (Church Times, 4 May 2001). There are good grounds for their claim that global capitalism is heretical, unjust and inhuman. It is for this reason that I heeded the call of the Church Times columnist last year who urged Christians to join the Mayday anti-capitalist demonstrations in London. It was a challenging and moving experience I am glad not to have missed, especially as the director of a research project on contemporary capitalism at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, which is based just off Oxford Street, where the demonstrations were focused.

If, however, the problems with global capitalism are as acute as the bishops make out, the question is whether it can ever be reformed, or is it doomed to moral bankruptcy? It's a question that forces us to reflect on the purpose of business. If all work, including business, is to be directed towards the flourishing of God's creation, then business is not for the sake of private interest but for the sake of the common good. This means that it is to work for rather than against the poor.

All well and good in theory. But in practice isn't it naïve to expect business to work for anything other than profit? For sure, there is nothing wrong with profit, and without it a business wouldn't be in business for long. But there's no reason why one person's gain has to be another person's loss. There's nothing innately unbusiness-like to gear one's business decisions around the interests of the common good. Take the example of Cadbury's, which sought to embody Christian ideals in its business practice. The story of its founding and early history is rich in suggesting imaginative possibilities for the way we do business today. With a renewed understanding of the purpose of business, capitalism can indeed be reformed.

What emerges from such a reformation is so different from what we commonly take to be at the heart of capitalism - self-interest with its attendant propensity towards monopoly and exploitation - that we might want to call it an 'alternative' to capitalism. Evidently the Anglican bishops are happy with such language, as they call for the implementation of alternatives. But whatever we call it, the good news is that the market can be used to work for and not merely against the poor.

How it can do this is a crucial question, and the government has made a courageous if inadequate attempt at answering that question in its white paper Eliminating Poverty: Making Globalisation Work for the Poor. The debate is only just getting under way, but one thing is already clear: international trade and finance will have to undergo tighter regulation, if for no other reason than to secure the future of the planet.

Despite a number of recent setbacks, there are positive signs that the climate of discussion and international policy-making on globalisation is starting to move in this direction. This is in no small part due to the fact that the voice of the church is finally being heard, thanks not only to the pronouncements of bishops, but to a new willingness amongst Christians to engage with political and economic issues and to become involved in direct action.

If the momentum can be maintained, through strength of moral and practical vision, the future can start to look promising.

Dr. Peter S Heslam