The central quest for economic justice in the grand struggle against poverty has largely rested on the shoulders of those who are at the bottom of the economic scale and their allies in the advocacy and policy fronts. Hardly does the fight to change the economic trajectory of the victims of income inequality involve major business leaders and captains of industry who command incredible and enormous amounts of resources that can change the direction of many underserved communities for the better.
As a result, CEOs, and those who direct the market forces through the sale of goods and services are viewed as a band of capitalists who are simply interested in the profit margin and nothing else. That their concern in the larger scheme of things is based on how many profits their companies can make in a given community regardless of the quality of life of that community.
Such observation is not misplaced. It is well-documented. The fact is that there are business leaders whose prime concern is only about ensuring profitability and not the overall economic growth of the communities that enable huge returns for them. Their rule for business success is anchored solely on profit, not helping to create a more equitable future that also reflects the values that both their dedicated employees and loyal customers hold so dearly.
And that explains why there are not that many captains of industry in the nation who are willing to join the battlefield for economic justice, where the contours of the engagement are not confined to only reporting huge profits to Wall Street, but are also predicated on the kinds of requisite investments major businesses make in cities, counties and townships across the nation to help enhance the living standards of those who are living on the margins of society.
The leading argument that many CEOs advance in defense of a laissez-faire attitude towards economic inequality is that their number one obligation is to their shareholders, not to the very community in which they are reaping billions of dollars of profits. Not the community where some of their companies were created and flourished.
While that argument is legally correct and plausible as business leaders have boards of directors and a cadre of investors to report to regarding the economic performance of their companies, it does not dismiss the growing and critical need for them to be engaged in social issues like poverty.
The Bankole Thompson Doctrine posits that business titans cannot be divorced from the devastating reality of the socioeconomic ills adversely impacting the communities in which they are selling their products and services. That they have both a moral and an ethical obligation to demonstrate good corporate citizenship by strategically investing in anti-poverty efforts and concrete measures that will yield tangible and impactful results in the push to uplift the lives of those who are confined to the economic misery index. Because creating a healthier economy in the nation calls on the leaders of industry to move with all deliberate speed in advancing the economic mobility of those who have been reduced to a perennial underclass where they have no hope or opportunity to escape the scourge of poverty. They remain forever trapped in a cycle of deprivation where they are constantly reminded through persistent inequality that there is no room for them in the inn of economic opportunity.
Though the nation’s captains of industry are not hired to be the moral leaders of their companies, it is incumbent on them to be men and women of conscience with a profound commitment to drive social change. This era is demanding conscientious corporate leaders who are committed to the issues of economic justice.
Every leader of a major corporation must decide whether they will invest in the principles of economic justice where everyone has access to the opportunities that would lead to a dignified life. The former dean of the Washington National Cathedral, the Rev. Francis B. Sayre Jr., chose to be with the Civil Rights Movement, when he was faced with an existential question illustrated in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet: To be or not to be? In the same fashion, CEOs as leaders of institutions also face a profound moral dilemma in this dispensation to clearly state where they stand in tackling poverty which presents ethical challenges for their businesses.
Despite the longstanding argument that the mores and customs of the free market enterprise are not designed to fight the multidimensional poverty crisis facing communities across the nation, it is time for a paradigm shift in the role of the business leader in this age. A social impact business leader is one who is not only concerned about the profit wellbeing of their company, but also the economic health of the community in which they operate. The two are not mutually exclusive. They are mutually inclusive.
In 1970, Milton Friedman argued in the “Friedman Doctrine,” published in the New York Times that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits writing that, “there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”
Friedman’s analysis was published two years after the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who in a speech delivered in 1967 at Stanford University titled, “The Other America,” noted that there are two Americas with one “Overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity. This America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies; and culture and education for their minds; and freedom and human dignity for their spirits. In this America, millions of people experience every day the opportunity of having life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in all of their dimensions. And in this America millions of young people grow up in the sunlight of opportunity.”
King continued, “…Tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the ebullience of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”
The other America King talked about still remains invisible in the eyes of many corporations. That is why CEOs must not only be concerned about closing the bell on Wall Street, but they should be equally interested in how many families and children are going to bed each night without a meal.
In fact, Adam Smith, eloquently writes in his magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations, “Whenever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many.”
Smith’s prognosis of the increasing gap between the rich and poor underscores the severity of mass economic desolation that continues to define life for many communities including Detroit.
Take for example, the latest U.S. Census report, which shows that Detroit’s 34.5 percent poverty rate leads the nation for cities with a population of over half a million, the highest since 2017, while child poverty is at 51 percent. These numbers raise Socratic questions about not only the role and responsibilities of the city’s elected leadership, but also the contributions that the city’s corporate leadership can make to mitigate the factors that lead many in the city wallowing in the pool of economic neglect.
In a speech given to the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos in 2018, Pope Francis, waxed on the value of economic security and the need to attack poverty.
“We cannot remain silent in the face of the suffering of millions of people whose dignity is wounded, nor can we continue to move forward as if the spread of poverty and injustice has no cause. It is a moral imperative, a responsibility that involves everyone, to create the right conditions to allow each person to live in a dignified manner,” Francis told the world’s wealthiest. “By rejecting a ‘throwaway’ culture and a mentality of indifference, the entrepreneurial world has enormous potential to effect substantial change by increasing the quality of productivity, creating new jobs, respecting labor laws, fighting against public and private corruption and promoting social justice, together with the fair and equitable sharing of profits.”
Those who lead America’s industries can’t look the other way or be tone-deaf about the pervasiveness of economic inequality that is stealing the future of generations in Detroit and beyond.
There is a noble truth embodied in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, where he talks about the difficulties, moral and materialistic challenges of changing with time. That as some point we must confront our innermost conflicts that mirror our external conflicts in our search for wholesomeness.
But the Death of a Salesman reminds us that despite the whirlwind of changes facing the nation, we see what is happening on the horizon. And we say Capi diem. Seize the day. That means not banking on profits alone. But that CEOs must have a new vision for economic justice in the marketplace and being able to articulate that vision in their corporate boardrooms and among their shareholders.
Bankole Thompson is a nationally acclaimed journalist and standard-bearer for economic justice issues. The PuLSE Institute, Detroit’s national anti-poverty think tank was founded several years ago based on his work on race, democracy and poverty. He is a twice-a-week opinion columnist at The Detroit News, where his column on public leadership, culture and socioeconomic issues appears on Mondays and Thursdays. He was one of the nation’s first Black editors to conduct exclusive sit-down interviews with former President Barack Obama. A journalistic thought leader in the tradition of Frederick Douglass, he is a leadership keynote speaker on corporate social responsibility and public transformational leadership. In 2022, he delivered a keynote lecture for Brown University Forum on Race and Democracy in which spoke on “Why Major Institutions Must Address the Fierce Urgency of Racial Justice.” His latest book, Fiery Conscience, which is his fifth book, was published in 2023 and captures his decades of speaking truth to power.
