AC351 Business Ethics Lecture 4 Contemporary Ethical Philosophy: Marxist, feminist, postmodern approaches.

1. AC351Business EthicsLecture 4Contemporary Ethical Philosophy:Marxist, feminist, postmodern approaches. Stevphen Shukaitis Essex Business School 2008/09

2. Critique of B/E�s use of traditional moral philosophy: contributions of Marxism, feminism and postmodernism. Classic ethical theory used in a way that lacks a radical edge (Jones et al 2005: Ch 1). Marxist ethics as enabling a radical critique of capitalism and business. Abstract reason and a distance characterise the use of ethics: might this lead to a loss of moral concern? (Bauman 1993: Ch 1.:Derry 2002) Feminist and postmodern ethics as reintroducing closeness and emotions into ethics. Search for universal rules masks a process of normalisation and exclusion. Feminist and postmodern ethics as stressing how rationality and universality have excluded some from the status of being moral subjects Moral philosophy used in a way that is reassuring and promotes a false certainty. Postmodernism as stressing an ethics of continual questioning and radical doubt.

3. Marxist ethical contributions Moral philosophy is used by Business Ethics in a way that reduces its radical, questioning edge. �More often than not it is thought that the role of business ethics is to add something on to present business practices, to make minor adjustment in order to make things �more ethical�. And as a result, the task that ethics was originally intended to achieve � a radical questioning of how it is that we should live and work � has all but disappeared from books and journals on business ethics.� (Jones et al 2005:139) Marxist ethics as a radical critique of business, capitalism and the social relations it enshrines. Founded upon a notion of the unique and ethically sacrosanct nature of human potential.

4. Marxist conceptualisation of human nature The Architect and the Bee� (Marx, 1867 in McLellan 1980: 174-175) What defines our humanity is the unique potential to engage in purposeful labour: And to (re)fashion the world and ourselves by engaging in self-directed, cooperative actions. Therefore not one human nature but rather an unending, socially fashioned, potential. Respecting and encouraging this human potential, this essential human freedom, is the ethical imperative (echoes here of Kant�s imperative to respect other�s moral dignity). �We presuppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.� (Marx 1867, in McLellan 1980:174-175) �We presuppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.� (Marx 1867, in McLellan 1980:174-175)

5. Marxist ethics as an extension and critique of notions of freedom underpinning capitalism. Capitalism is founded upon and legitimised by an ethic of human freedom. Which is conceived negatively and individually. Negative because it is based upon the formal freedom from coercion, freedom from others (Fromm 2001). This freedom is manifest in property relations: the individual�s right to own that which they accrue. Marxist ethics can be read as starting with this ethic of freedom (Brenkert 1983: Wray-Bliss and Parker 1998). But arguing that it is understood and manifested in a self-defeating way in capitalism: Individuals work so as to separate themselves from others through the accumulation of wealth and property. Such separation constructs a society founded upon isolation, competition and conflict. With individuals, and classes of people, exploiting others so as to accrue more wealth for themselves and/or resentful of their own exploitation. Ultimately, society becomes composed of individuals who have lost (become alienated from, Marx 1844) their sense of their own humanity or defining essence. Both the wealthy and the rest have substituted the pursuit of property and wealth in place of their conscious and deliberate cooperation in fashioning the world they inhabit.

6. Marxist Ethics and Business Ethics Capitalism, therefore, is seen as stifling human freedom. Both the capitalist system, and those institutions which support it and sustain it (such as businesses, managers, etc) are opened up to a radical ethical questioning. Further, it follows that those acts in opposition to capitalism, and in favour of more solidaristic/ community orientated and un-alienated practices are seen as good. In direct contrast to mainstream Business Ethics assumption of the �goodness� of management control and business, a Marxist ethics enables us critique the fundamental functioning of business and to explore resistance to managerial authority, commercialism and other forms of exploitation as ethical. (Wray-Bliss and Parker 1998)

7. Feminist and Postmodern ethical contributions Business Ethics is dominated by traditional ethical philosophy that privileges abstract reasoning, dispassionate calculation and depersonalisation as the basis of ethics. From feminist and postmodern ethical positions, such approaches to ethics can be argued to have contributed to forms of exclusion and moral distancing that do not serve ethics well.

9. Reason, ethics and exclusion �The great majority of the population has been �classified out� of moral self-sufficiency and self-management. Their aspirations to make choices (if such aspirations made themselves at all felt), their singly or severally made attempts to elide the assigned identities were consequently criminalized as conduct deserving penalty, or requiring intensive treatment, or both.� The rest� embraced was quite voluminous and entailed categories of varying degree of ethical incapacitation and untrustworthiness. �Inferior races� � backward, lacking in wisdom and intelligence, both childlike in their inability to think ahead and dangerous in the untamed physical potency which they deployed in short-lived bursts of passion. The poor and indigent � moved by dark impulses rather than reason, greedy yet unable to eke out their welfare through thrift and hard work, easily diverted from duty by sensual pleasures, improvident themselves yet jealous of the fruits of other people�s prudence. Women � endowed or burdened with great admixture of animality than their male counterparts, incapable of following the voice of reason consistently since constantly in danger of being diverted and led astray by emotions. What united such sharply distinct classes of people, rendering them objects of choice rather than choosers, and thus a source and the target of ethical-reformatory-punitive concern, was the feature of moral incapacity imputed to them all.� (Bauman, 1993: 120-121)

10. Reassessing the �rationality� of ethics. The feminist author Gilligan (1997) conducted research arguing that women and men conceptualise ethics differently. Women tended toward notions of ethics as care, compassion, love, and connectedness. Men towards more abstract and depersonalised notions of duty, rules, calculations. Whether we accept Gilligan�s �essentialism�, the refocusing upon emotions and relationships in matters of ethics is valuable. Postmodern writer Bauman (1993: Ch 4-5) draws upon the work of the philosopher Levinas to argue that the felt �impulse� towards the Other, towards other�s vulnerability, is the basis of ethics. It is precisely the irrational nature of ethics that makes it ethics. I act because I feel I must act. Reducing ethics to calculation or rationality means ethics is too easily rationalised away. Levinas: the Face of the Other � their real humanity - is the foundation of ethics. Not some reasoned duty or impartial calculation (Bauman 1993, Ch 4-5; Byers and Rhodes 2007; Jones et al 2005, Ch 6).

11. A feminist and postmodern critique of moral distancing. Traditional moral philosophy privileges distance from the people or issues involved so as to make an appropriate ethical judgement. E.g. Kant � performing one�s moral duty without regard to one�s relationships or emotions. E.g. Utilitarianism � making large scale calculations of harms and benefits, specifically ignoring any particular individual�s case. Such distancing may enable and encourage a loss of moral concern (Benhabib 1987), a loss of the felt impetus to take responsibility and to act (for a graphic illustration see e.g. Milgram 1974, and lecture 8).

13. Ethics and the importance of doubtPostmodernism Business Ethics as using moral philosophy to provide reassurance or neat intellectual answers to business problems. From a postmodern perspective, the proper ethical attitude is one of continual doubt and uncertainty. To keep pushing ourselves to consider what is wrong with our current practices.

14. Ethics and the importance of doubtPostmodernism Postmodernism: as an extension, and critique, of Enlightenment ideals. The Enlightenment: The rise of the scientific world view (15th to 17th Century in Europe) Critique of authority, the dominance of the church, the aristocracy, tradition. Emergence of the belief in the superiority of reason over faith, superstition, custom. The importance of questioning and of rational critique. Critique, reason, rationality etc seen as tied to social progress, emergence from authority, refusal of arbitrary claims to power or status, refusal of historical forms of dominance. The Enlightenment as the bringing of light to the world, reason, rationality and progress. Postmodernism as continuing the critical, questioning approach of the enlightenment � and radicalising it. Subjecting new �faiths� to critique: e.g. �faith� in science, truth, progress, civilisation, even reason itself. Such ideas themselves implicated in new forms of subordination and oppression. E.g. Foucault�s critiques of prisons, mental health treatment, hospitals (see McNay 1994). E.g. Bauman (1989) critique of modern organisation, ethical rules, hierarchy etc. For an earlier critic, influential for the postmodern mindset, ethics itself was to be rejected (see Nietzsche [1887] 2007).

15. Vision of the enlightenment. The electric spark of liberty pulls privileges and status out from under the church, royalty, the landed gentry. Electricity representing, at the time, the height of science, rationality, human progress � and also light: the �enlightenment�.Vision of the enlightenment. The electric spark of liberty pulls privileges and status out from under the church, royalty, the landed gentry. Electricity representing, at the time, the height of science, rationality, human progress � and also light: the �enlightenment�.

16. Ethics and the importance of doubtPostmodernism Culminating in a view of ethics as characterised by the importance of continual uncertainty, radical doubt, questioning taken-for-granteds. The ethical disposition of always questioning the rightness of what exists. ��it is moral anxiety that provides the only substance the moral self could ever have. What makes the moral self is the urge to do, not the knowledge of what is to be done; the unfulfilled task, not the duty correctly performed� This uncertainty with no exit is precisely the foundation of morality. One recognizes morality by its gnawing sense of unfulfilledness, by its endemic dissatisfaction with itself. The moral self is a self always haunted by the suspicion that it is not moral enough.� (Bauman, 1993: 80) �My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do.� (Foucault, 1984: 343)

17. Feminist ethics, postmodern ethics and Business Ethics. Ethics as proximity, closeness, relationships - not intellectual distancing. Need to be very cautious of the ways that we distance ourselves from others in organisations and business. For instance by rank, role, hierarchy, place in organisation, outsourcing, etc (see Bauman 1989: Ch. 8/9; and Lecture 8) Ethics as concerned with one�s responsibility and connectedness to real, living others not abstract concepts or laws (Benhabib 1987). Ethics legitimately based upon the emotional or irrational. Ethics as characterised by uncertainty, doubt, and continual critique. Feminist and postmodern ethics present a powerful critique of the rationalistic, abstract, and reassuring nature of ethical discussion in mainstream Business Ethics and in organisational ethics policies.

18. Summary: The contribution ofMarxist, feminist, postmodern approaches. Mainstream Business Ethics has been criticised for: the narrow range of moral philosophy it draws upon and the ways that it uses this philosophy Marxist, feminist, and postmodern ethics: may enable a more radical and far reaching ethical examination of capitalism and business practice than the one presently offered in B/E. question the appropriateness of an abstract, rationalist and emotionally distanced approach to ethics and provides some alternative conceptualisations based upon emotion, connectedness and relationships. ask questions of a Business Ethics that uses moral philosophy to reassure or provide neat answers: stresses the importance of a radical, continually questioning ethical doubt about current practices.

19. Bibliography Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust Cambridge, Polity. (paperback edition) Bauman, Z. (1993) Postmodern Ethics Oxford, Blackwell. Benhabib, S. (1987) The generalised and the concrete other. In E. Frazer, J. Hornsby & S. Lovibond (Eds.), Ethics: A feminist reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Brenkert, G. (1983) Marx�s Ethics of Freedom Law book company of Australasia. Byers, D. and Rhodes, C. (2007) �Ethics, alterity, and organizational justice�. Business Ethics: A European Review, 16(3): 239-250 Derry, R. (2002) �Feminist theory and business ethics� in Frederick, R. (Ed.) A companion to business ethics Oxford: Blackwell. Foucault, M. (1984) �On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress�, in P. Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader, pp. 340�72. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Fromm, E. (2001) The fear of freedom London: Routledge. Gilligan, C. (1997) �In a different voice: Women�s conceptions of self and morality� in Meyers, D. (Ed.) Feminist social thought: A reader London, Routledge.

20. Bibliography Jones, C.; Parker, M. and Ten Bos, R. (2005) For Business Ethics London: Routledge Maclagan, P. (2007) �Hierarchical control or individuals' moral autonomy? Addressing a fundamental tension in the management of business ethics� Business Ethics: A European Review 16(1): 48-61 Marx, K. (1844) �Alienated Labour� (in any collected works of Marx�s early writings) McLellan, D. (1980) The Thought of Karl Marx Macmillan: London. McNay, L. (1994) Foucault: A critical introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press, Milgram, S. (1974) Obedience to Authority New York: Harper and Row, Chapters 1and 15. Nietzsche, F. (1887 [2007]) On the Genealogy of Morality Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schwartz, M. (2000). �Why ethical codes constitute an unconscionable regression.� Journal of Business Ethics 23: 173-184. Wray-Bliss and Parker (1998) �Marxism, Capitalism and Ethics� in Parker, M. (Ed.) Ethics and Organisations London, Sage. pps: 30-52.