Since the mid-1800, maybe before, social activists have been arguing that companies should embrace human values… that is that they should value something beyond profit.  Go back to 1894 and look at Henry Demarest Lloyd’s muckraking classic, Wealth Against Commonwealth, to read an early expression of the ideal that more than just profit matters.  Or watch the 2004 documentary The Corporation  to see how these views have been expressed in more modern times.

There is an irony in the fact that after so many years of activism to reform corporate values and corporate law, anti-corporate activists and other social activists now bristle at the idea, being expressed by religious conservatives, that their company’s have “beliefs.”  The fact that we find discrimination abhorrent has many liberals toeing the traditional corporate line that companies are about profit and not belief.

Perhaps activists are responding without seeing a way to advance the cause of corporate reform.  If corporate owners are now willing to recognize that their companies need to express a morality isn’t that progress?  And if conservative activist judges are now willing to overturn more than a 100 years of business law to allow the law to recognize corporate “belief” isn’t that what the corporate reform movement has been advocating, and judges have been refusing, during all this time?

Yes, it bothers me that the “beliefs” that conservatives want their companies to be recognized for are bigoted and homophobic.  But, conservative business owners are saying that their companies value this bigotry above and beyond profit.  And if business law will now recognize that values can trump making a profit, then that in my opinion is progress.

It is difficult to argue morality with entities that are amoral.  How do you stop a company from clear cutting a forest, or polluting a water way, or dealing with blood diamonds if that company has no values besides profit?  You can argue the morality of your case but as we have learned during all our years of corporate activism these arguments have fallen on deaf ears both in the corporate board room and in the court room.  Companies have responded and changed based on market pressure but nobody wants a neighbor who suppresses their antisocial behavior only because it is profitable for them to do so.  Those kinds of victories feel hollow.

I also see an irony that for more than a 100 years company owners have argued that their beliefs do not effect the way they run their companies.  While activists have argued that anti-social beliefs on the part of owners and bosses foster anti-social companies.  Now, conservative business owners are demanding that the law recognize the reality that one cannot separate the beliefs of the owners of a company from the operation of the company.  A company owned or managed by homophobic people will itself reflect an environment hostile to gays and lesbians.  This rips away the illusion that corporate owners have maintained.  These new conservative activists who want company beliefs and morality to be enshrined in law are now willing to admit that they and their companies are one and the same.  That personal belief and company policy are married and cannot be separated.  This too seems like progress.

Should companies value more than profit?  Yes.  Is there a risk that the values that a company adopts will be anti-social, homophobic, sexist, racist?  Yes.  The odd thing is that companies already adopt such values, they just won’t admit it.  Instead of admitting to such values companies have always tried to hide behind market and profit.  They say, “we’re not racist because we won’t open a market in an inner city neighborhood it is just business…”  Clear cutting a forest does not demonstrate that the company does not value the environment, companies have always claimed, it is just more profitable.  And for more than 100 years the courts have rewarded these companies for hiding behind the lie of profit.

Now conservative activists want to rip away that lie and admit that their companies hold these anti-social values.  I say let them.