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#2. The Corporations Need the Left
The Republican Party is generally seen as the party of both Big Business and of traditional values. But the traditional values people in the Republican Party should beware of Big Business, because business is secretly half in league with the left. Traditional values are not always good for business. The fact is, without the left, business would not be nearly as successful as it is.
What? Is this some kind of mad right wing fringe nutcase paranoia? No, it's just common sense from an old leftie.
How does a business get to be efficient? One requirement is to get the best talent, the smartest, most hard-working people. You may have noticed that these days a number of big corporations like IBM and Disney give spousal benefits to gay employees. Are these companies full of sexual radicals trying to subvert traditional values? No. They're just trying to attract the best talent from a significant section of the population, who happen to be gay.
Of course any given business today may have an inefficient culture - one that discriminates, against African Americans for example. But these days when a Texaco is found doing that it is criticized not just by the civil rights community, but by business consultants who say it is harming its own efficiency by excluding talent.
Another requirement for efficient business these days is niche marketing. Why do lots of businesses advertise to gay people, incidentally making gay lifestyles look glossy and increasingly mainstream? To sell things to gays. Big businesses don't do this because they believe in a liberal morality, they do it because they basically have no morality. They do it for the same reason that cigarette companies sell cigarettes, Ford sold trucks to Hitler and GE is currently very big in the porn trade: to make money.
Business is basically amoral, though its employees and customers may force it to reflect their own moralities.
We know there has been a revolution in the perception of women, blacks, gays, the disabled: these people are now seen to be good employees and good consumers - in other words, good people. The question I want to ask is, could businessmen have created this revolution on their own, simply to promote efficiency and create new markets? Of course not! Business isn't that creative. Although business may only believe in the bottom line, most businessmen were mired in the traditional morality that put straight white men on top. They liked it that way. Traditional morality is a morality of hierarchies and exclusions. Its roots are thousands of years old. Businessmen basically had to be brought kicking and screaming to change it. What was needed to change it was crusaders, true believers in a new morality who would struggle against the old social relationships, make a hell of a fuss, march, die! for the cause. Progressives did not crusade for the equality of all people cynically - they did it with righteousness. It was that power to change people's hearts and minds that business could not provide.
So civil rights, feminist, gay and disabled activists improved corporate efficiency by more than doubling the talent pool available. I would say the left has played quite a role in saving capitalism from the prejudices of the capitalists.
In fact the left has done a whole lot more than that to help capitalism. For example, with few exceptions businesses did not pioneer the people's health and safety, social reformers did. Republicans fought tooth and nail against Medicare and Medicaid, but the population is more productive as a result.
Capitalism could not have got where it is today without the destruction of the traditional exclusionary morality. Sorry, my conservative friends, but the biggest people to blame for liberal morality, apart from the lefties who crusaded for it, are your allies in business. Feminists, gays and racial minorities were prophets crying in the wilderness, until business provided the conditions for their success. In the end business will also discover that true efficiency and long-term survival require listening to the left on global warming, on pollution, on respecting nature, and on extending respectful, equal treatment to all the world's peoples. We are not enemies. We are all in this together.
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