On the Soapbox: The Problem With Moralism

The Problem with Moralism

In confronting many of today’s problems we hear a lot of talk about immorality, corruption and unethical behaviour. Bankers, traders and other capitalists are regularly called out in the media for corrupt and immoral behaviour in the wake of successive financial crises. Individuals and companies are consistently attacked for avoiding taxes and collecting large bonuses, politicians are pulled up for having uncomfortably close relationships with powerful corporations and exploiting their positions for profit, and so on. Intuitively, it seems correct to attack these bankers, politicians and CEOs for their immoral behaviour, to reveal their corruption to the general public, and to criticise their lack of ethics so as to encourage those in a position of power to act in a more socially responsible manner. Yet, in this very approach, the real problem is obfuscated: The moralist critique prevents us from perceiving the true dimensions of the issues we wish to address.

In order to properly confront the issues we face today, we must return to the fundamental insight of Jean Baudrillard apropos Watergate – that is, that the Watergate scandal was not a scandal at all. Baudrillard’s point here was not that the actions of Nixon et al were somehow acceptable, but rather that in attacking the perpetrators from a moral standpoint, in creating a public atmosphere of moral indignation, the unspoken assumption was that the unethical and corrupt actions of those embroiled in Watergate were a deviation from the norm.

In other words, the unspoken ideological assumption was that power normally operates in an ethical way, that government and politicians normally operate from a pure moral position, that — at a trivial level — even Nixon’s tendency to utter profanities, as revealed in the Watergate transcripts, somehow revealed a disgusting deviation from the normal ethical functioning of government. This is of course ridiculous. The history of governments is littered with corruption, unethical behaviour and immoral politicians. The properly radical position is Baudrillard’s: to assert that Watergate was not a scandal but, rather, indicative of the way that power functions.

What can this insight in regards to Watergate offer our contemporary perspective? The answer is that it helps us to perceive the “other side of the coin” when we encounter moral critiques – that is, the conservative element in the apparently radical. When our media attacks figures like Rupert Murdoch, Bernard Madoff or Bob Diamond through a moral prism, when society attacks these individuals with a shared spirit of moral indignation, do we not replicate the very same problem identified by Baudrillard concerning Watergate? The underlying ideological assumption is that by purging these corrupt, immoral elements from our society, the system can then return to functioning in a just fashion; and so, paradoxically, an apparently anti-establishment moral critique can reinvigorate the very system it denounces. To repeat the point emphasised by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, it is not so much the case that we suffer from a lack of anti-capitalism these days, it’s just that, more often than not, it’s the wrong kind.

From the moralist’s perspective, the problem appears to be the following: how do we stop corrupt and immoral capitalists and politicians from exploiting the liberal democratic capitalist system so that it can function in a properly just manner? But the real problem is that the unethical, immoral and corrupt behaviour of the rich and powerful is intrinsically linked to the way in which the liberal democratic capitalist system functions. The real problem is thus: What do we do with a system which not only rewards but actively encourages immoral, unethical and even corrupt behaviour?

Of course, this does not mean that those who cheat taxes, rig markets, or take home outrageous bonuses should not be criticised or punished appropriately, nor that they are somehow absolved of moral responsibility. The point is simply to perceive the “other side of the coin” in moral critiques, to recognise the unspoken ideological assumption that accompanies moral indignation. As long as we continue to treat the undesirable behaviour of the rich and powerful as disturbances in the operation of what could otherwise be a just and egalitarian social system, we cannot hope to properly address the issues confronting us today. Only by acknowledging that this undesirable behaviour is a symptom of the way liberal democratic capitalism functions can we truly begin to confront the problems our society faces.

By Paul Walker