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The biggest American companies have made an announcement: they feel your pain and are ready to become better citizens.
This week's Business Roundtable – whose greatest success is NAFTA, the removal of key antitrust and consumer protection laws, the broadening of Reagan's tax cuts and the facilitation of dismissal workers to try to form a union – announced that she "modernized its principles" role of a company "to value all stakeholders, not just shareholders.
181 CEOs of some of the world's largest arms manufacturers, banks, oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, manufacturers and arms retailers have pledged to do their part to restore confidence in the meritocracy and make the American dream a reality .
The group promised that, in addition to "generating long-term shareholder value," its members would also invest in their employees, "equitably remunerating them and offering significant benefits" through new training programs and education. Workers can expect an environment that promotes "diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect".
The round table also commits to "[support] the communities in which we work ". From that moment, American companies promised to "respect the members of their communities and protect the environment by adopting sustainable practices in all their activities".
These companies collectively control nearly $ 7 trillion. We must therefore keep their promises: take seriously the principle that, instead of being the spearhead of ecocide, Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil are ready to seriously engage in the implementation at the point of a fossil fuel alternative. After firing workers and destroying communities, General Motors will retrain the fired people and find them a worthy place in their operations. Bayer will stop denying that the products manufactured by its subsidiary Monsanto cause cancer and kill people.
Have American companies turned a new page? Next year, instead of allocating 90% of their profits to share buybacks and derivatives or hiding their earnings in offshore tax havens, can we do we expect new projects to channel significant investments to jobs, communities and infrastructure?
Absolutely not.
No matter how many breathless comments there are, no matter how many interviews with business leaders and business elites claiming that it is necessary for US companies to behave more responsible manner, morally, etc., the announcement of the Business Roundtable does not indicate that companies America is ready to put the needs of stakeholders before profits.
This is an indication of something, however. This is the last sign that elites are deeply concerned, not only for the health of capitalism, but also for the legitimacy of our for-profit system.
Capitalism requires the adhesion of workers. This may not seem to be the case, because capitalism is perceived more as a force of nature than as something we agree with or vote on. But the constraint is insufficient to generate sustainable profits, growth, and innovation. For capitalism to exist, ordinary people must find meaning in our for-profit society; they must voluntarily direct their creativity, energy and passion towards their work. They must actively, or at least passively, believe that social structures are able to meet their needs for justice and security.
This collective belief crumbles quickly. Over the past decade, calls to a different type of society have been growing stronger.
Businesses and elites have done their best to ignore or minimize these calls, but that does not work. General support to Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist with a platform to provide health care, colleges and jobs to all Americans, and Elizabeth Warren, who proposes serious new regulations for business , shows how far the ideological landscape has moved away from the real meaning of neoliberalism.
The only thing that the Business Roundtable announcement shows is that business elites are finally realizing this reality – that they have accepted the coming change and that they recognize the need to go from there. before.
But the train left the station. American companies will have to offer more than promises in the air.
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