From Nike's support of Black Lives Matter to Gillette's engagement with the toxic masculinity debate, major corporations are increasingly taking a stand on social justice movements.
Critics of woke capitalism claim that corporations have no place in playing politics. On the other hand, others argue that big business should contribute to the interests of society.
Carl Rhodes, Dean of the UTS Business School and author of Woke Capitalism: How Corporate Morality is Sabotaging Democracy, joined Verity Firth, Pro Vice-Chancellor Social Justice and Inclusion, to discuss an alternative perspective: woke capitalism is a threat to democracy with devastating consequences.
So firstly, I'd like to thank you all for joining us for today's event. Before we begin, I want to acknowledge that for those of us in Australia, we're all on the traditional lands of First Nations peoples. This land was never ceded. I want to acknowledge particularly the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, upon whose ancestral lands I am meeting, but also of course the ancestral lands of the Gadigal people are of course the land upon which our university is built. I want to pay respect to Elders past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for the land.
My name is Verity Firth, I'm the Pro Vice-Chancellor of Social Justice and Inclusion here at UTS. It's my real pleasure to be joined today by the brilliant Professor Carl Rhodes, who's the Dean of our UTS Business School. I'll be introducing him properly in just a moment.
But a couple of housekeeping pieces first. The first thing to know is that today's event is being live captioned, so to view the captions, you click on the link that's in the chat, and you can find it at the bottom of your screen in the Zoom control panel. The captions will then open up in a separate window.
If you have any questions at all, we are going to have an opportunity for question time, so you can also do that by looking in your Zoom control panel and you'll see there is a Q&A box. This means that once you've put your question in, you can also upvote other people's questions. So I do tend to take the questions with the most upvotes, I'm a democrat in that sense, but of course I also scroll through and if there's a particularly good question, I'll ask that as well. However, remember please try to keep your questions questions and relevant to the topics that we're discussing here today.
So now to introduce you to Professor Rhodes. Carl is the Dean of the UTS Business School and is responsible for leading its vision to be a socially committed business school. He's held professorships at various universities in the UK and Australia and prior to his academic career he worked in professional and senior management positions in change management and organisational development. His combination of senior experience in academia and the private sector provides him with a unique perspective on the role of universities in contributing to and questioning how business and economic activity can and should contribute to society.
Carl is the author of "Woke Capitalism: How corporate morality is sabotaging democracy". The ideas explored in his book have piqued the interest of many, with Carl featuring on ABC's The Drum, the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, and he's cited in many local and international publications. In fact, he just told me he's appearing on German radio tonight. So the book has recently come out in paperback. We're going to post a link in the chat so you can purchase it. I read it this weekend and loved it. I devoured it. It's a really, really good read, a really, really easy read, and also I should say a really important read.
So I'm now going to ask Carl the first question. So Carl?oh, welcome first, welcome.
PROF. CARL RHODES: Hello. Thanks, Verity, for that very generous introduction.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: So the term "woke" and the concept of wokeness refers to someone who is well informed or alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice. In your book at the beginning? and actually, it's one of the chapters that I really enjoyed? you go through a process of describing how the term emerges in fact from the lexicon of black America. It's a term that has been for many decades actually at the heart of African American social and political awareness around race and class and injustice. So I thought to begin with let's talk about what woke actually means before we then discuss about what's happened to it since its adoption by the capitalists. So Carl, what does woke actually mean?
PROF. CARL RHODES: Thanks, Verity. I don't know if you remember? I might start at an interesting place. Do you remember the story of Rip Van Winkle, or you might have read the bit that I wrote about it in there, and Rip Van Winkle is actually the subject of a speech by Martin Luther King in 1965, his speech was called "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution" and it was two years after the "I Have a Dream" speech.
Anyway, in this speech King talks about the story of Rip Van Winkle. So just to remind you of this, Rip Van Winkle in the story actually fell asleep. He actually went to a tavern and when he was there, he saw on the wall a picture of King George III of England who was at that time the king of the colony of the United States and then Rip Van Winkle then kind of goes up a hill, I think it is, and falls asleep for a great deal of time.
Anyway, then he eventually wakes up and he comes down and he goes to the same tavern and he sees on the wall a picture of George Washington, who is the first US President. So Rip Van Winkle in the story slept through the American Revolution, slept through the birth of American democracy, and so the story goes he's confused, he doesn't know what's going on because he was asleep.
Now, Martin Luther King in his speech kind of uses this as an idea to talk about how can someone not be aware of the massively significant social and political changes going on around them and in his case, of course, he was saying well, Rip Van Winkle was asleep through the American Revolution, to what extent are people in the United States asleep to what was going on with the civil rights movement and the revolution around that?
So you see in that Martin Luther King there very much drawing on this notion of being awake or being awoken to what's happening to you, meaning being aware of the politics and the issues affecting you, and this was a term that he drew on but was kind of in use in African American culture at the time. You know, there was a play by Barry Beckham in 1971 called "Garvey Lives", which again was how Marcus Garvey woke people up to what was going on, but even in popular culture there's a song from 1975 by Teddy Pendergrass called "Wake up Everybody".
Although at this point it's still very minor, the term was very much kind of located in black American vernacular and it kind of got a bit more widespread use when there was a hit song in 2008, music lovers might remember 2008 song by Erykah Badu called "Master Teacher" where she sings about kind of the daily pressures that people are under in their life and there's a refrain that repeats "I stay woke, I stay woke, I stay woke". So this was kind of there.
It kind of got much more widespread at the time where Black Lives Matter kicked off in 2013 following the tragic unnecessary death of 17yearold boy called Trayvon Martin at the hands of a Neighbourhood Watch kind of quasi vigilante, I guess, and as the Black Lives Matter took off, and this was the beginning of social movements through social media and picking up on this usage, Black Lives Matter used the hashtag "stay woke" and so as a way of be aware of Black Lives Matter, be aware of what's happening with racial discrimination and violence against black people in the United States. But the Black Lives Matter protests were so successful and so successful through social media that's when the term woke started, you know, entering into the broader mainstream.
So that's kind of a snapshot of the story about how woke is really about very powerful political meaning about being aware of what's going around you politically and not being easily duped into believing fake truths, to use that term.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: Yes. So that's really interesting. So the term woke is excellent, right, like it's a great term.
PROF. CARL RHODES: Yes.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: So what is woke capitalism?
PROF. CARL RHODES: So what happened after this woke became more well known through Black Lives Matter, as is often the case, the word was appropriated by mainstream culture, and particularly by white culture, and so it started being used in its original term, but it soon got transformed to being used as a form of criticism and particularly a criticism not for African Americans but mainly for white Americans who were perceived to have some kind of superficial or inauthentic kind of right on politically correct views and so woke, really the whole meaning of it transformed from being something really positive and politically powerful to just about a way of criticising people who bragged about their selfrighteous positions on political issues.
And it was actually not long after that that it became a derogatory term in relation to corporations who engaged in social activity. It was actually initially at the time Donald Trump was President, a journalist from the New York Times called Ross Douthat coined the term woke capitalism and a conservative author, journalist, but what he was saying is that this was when Trump was significantly reducing corporations tax in the US and he was saying well, big corporation is quite happy about this reduction in corporate tax, but at the same time not wanting to align themselves with the kind of regressive, bigoted, you know, terrible socially oriented side of politics about building the wall and, you know, all of these racist kind of views, so the idea he suggested that companies were taking on social views in a way of distancing themselves from that whilst still taking advantage of it.
But after that the term really just became used as a way of criticising corporations who engaged in sociopolitical causes? Black Lives Matter, you know, the MeToo movement, LGBTQI+ rights and marriage equality, these kinds of things that corporations, but most commonly used by kind of arm waving, shouty right wing types? Piers Morgan is a good example? who really just were using this as a way of blanket criticism saying that corporations shouldn't be doing this, you know, aligning themselves with stupid left wing positions? their view, not mine.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: Yes, so that's interesting. So you've mentioned them already. In your book you actually outline really these examples of these big corporations doing these allegedly woke agendas and the example? you use a number of examples. You talk about Nike's Dream Crazy ad that featured Colin Kaepernick supporting Black Lives Matter, you've got Gillette taking a stance on toxic masculinity with their The Best a Man Can Be campaign as a result of the MeToo movement and you describe in your book what you just basically said, which is the corporations receive backlashes of different types, right, so they receive a backlash from the political right which basically says, you know, oh, you're just lackeys of the liberal left, you've been taken over, this is outrageous, you should be concentrating only on shareholder profit, so that's what the right say, but then they also receive a sort of backlash from I don't even know how to determine, maybe the political left, where they say actually, are you performing, you know, are you actually meeting up to the standards that you are saying that you're doing. So you talk about Elizabeth Warren's critique not so much about the concept of being involved in politics, but just that they're not doing it well enough, right?
Now, I now want to talk to you about that because your book really talks about a third critique, right, a different type of critique. Can you take us through that, what is it that you say about the problem of woke capitalism?
PROF. CARL RHODES: Yes. I mean, if you look at the dominant perspectives both from the kind of conservative and liberal side of politics, in some cases people agreeing, you'd also get positions, more liberal positions, who say, "Well, these organisations are supporting the kind of causes that I also support, that's got to be a good thing because they agree with me", or criticisms from conservative, as you say, you know, this is a change.
In both cases there's a kind of belief that there's some fundamental change in capitalism going on and the difference might be whether you happen to agree with it or not, but there's a fundamental change. So when the Business Roundtable in the US says they're going to redefine the purpose of the corporation around stakeholder capitalism, the implication is that we've got this massive change.
My view is that this is not a change at all, this is entirely a continuation of what has been going on, and even if you trace it, you know, you can trace woke capitalism through the history of corporate social responsibility. Woke then is in part about ensuring that market capitalism can continue on the same trajectory that it's been on for the last 40 years of kind of post Thatcher, post Reagan neoliberalism.
So it's not necessarily a good thing, it's not just simply a matter of saying that woke corporations are hypocrites or they're riding popular causes. It's what actually is happening to the economy and part of the interest here is what does it mean for corporate power because as corporations continue to get involved in these kind of political issues, they're more and more encroaching on engaging in issues in the public sphere.
Now, the basis of democracy is based on a division between private interests and common public interests, the whole notion of the common good is central to democracy, but with this we get a kind of mixing of the two. So even Gillette, the example that you used, they supported, you know, the MeToo movement and a criticism of toxic masculinity, a view that I also personally would uphold politically, but again, the question of? and there's good news in the sense that they did that because it was so popular, so they were backing a cause that had already, you know, been fought in some ways, and their ad was very controversial, but they were specifically looking at targeting a market of millennials who are kind of turning away from their products, and so forth. So what they did made a whole lot of commercial sense.
But what we've also got to remember with any of these things, the corporations aren't leading change at all. At best they're following and amplifying it. Look at, you know, issues of LGBTQI+ rights, which many organisations support now. You know, they've come in after public opinion has not entirely been settled, but largely. The real activists were marching on the street risking their lives, putting their whole lives on the line trying to create social change for causes that matter to them. Corporations come in at the end of the day to take a bit of the glory and to help that kind of match up to their commercial interests because they are driven by commercial interests, as they're legally bound to do. You can't criticise them for that. But to suggest that they're leading social change through this, you know, the real activists have done that way ahead of time.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: That's right. I might actually throw to a Q&A. This is all? I can actually move the questions from the public into the conversation. It's perfect because Josh Bornstein has just asked a question and it relates exactly to what you're just saying. He says, "Business now argues that they don't have any choice but to embrace social activism? including to appease consumers and employees. There are examples of employees petitioning their employer to embrace woke capitalism on social issues even while their employer ducks corporate tax and suppresses wages. Could you comment on that please?"
PROF. CARL RHODES: I could. This points to a very interesting issue and corporations do tend to engage in these things under pressure. I mean, so this is a bizarre kind of way that democracy strangely operates through this.
But corporations still have some choice because I think you've got to think also of woke capitalism generally supports a range of political issues that focus? that are more socially oriented, as we've talked about, you know, anti racism, you know, the MeToo movement and issues of gender relations, sexual identity, and so forth? not suggesting they're not important political issues, but there's many things that corporations and woke capitalists don't go for.
So I haven't seen any of these companies make any issues about the scandalous, obscene extremities of CEO and executive remuneration and its contribution to growing or indeed worsening issues of economic injustice and inequality. Not many focus, there are some, but not many focus on increasing the minimum wage. Like you said, how many are thinking that aggressive corporate tax minimisation is a woke issue, when it is if you ask me because it's central to the ability for democratic governments to be able to pursue the common interests of the people. So that's not included.
So on the one hand it's responding to employees, but it's also?it’s a distraction from some of the more fundamental problems, and particularly around economic inequality, that have been produced by capitalism over many years and become worse and worse more recently.
So, I think the idea that corporations have no choice, I don't think that's entirely true. It's true that they're under pressure from employees, but there are some lines they won't cross and those are the lines that affect their economic self-interest.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: I think that's?you write beautifully on that throughout the book and in fact just as you were talking I was just remembering the quote you quote Helen Lewis in the book where she points out exactly that point, where she says, "Equal pay is economically radical. Hiring a female or minority CEO for the first time is socially radical", you know, "Diversity training is socially radical at best. Providing social housing tenants with homes not covered by flammable cladding is economically radical", and it's a really great pulling together of what you've just described.
PROF. CARL RHODES: Yes, and the idea is that corporations aren't going to be economically radical, and to some extent they shouldn't be because that's kind of their function in society to do that and you wouldn't necessarily expect them to be.
I mean, another point that I've made is that it's not just about blaming corporations or pointing out that they're evil business people who look like the Monopoly man going around, you know, stealing all the swag, that's not the point at all. I think, if anything, a lot of the issues with what we're seeing now is a failure of government as opposed to being some kind of evil doing by corporations. Governments in liberal democratic countries, you know, for decades now have empowered corporations, have withdrawn from many aspects of economic life of citizens, have failed to act on climate change, have failed to deal with inequality, have failed in so many ways and corporations are kind of filling that vacuum. So it's a problem created politically as much as it's created by aggressive corporations. So we don't want to kind of just play into some, you know, little bit too easy stereotypes of evil corporations. I don't think it's like that.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: Okay, then. Well, to be devil's advocate then in the argument, if that is the case? and I think you definitely in your book make a strong case, you talk through the Thatcherism very well and Reaganomics and the whole neoliberal agenda and what essentially happened to public life via that neoliberal agenda and sort of the privatising of public life in many ways. So given that's the case, then when the world is facing a cataclysmic existential crisis like climate change, does it really matter what motivates the businesses to do well and isn't it a good thing? Whether or not they're doing it to line their own pockets, if they're actually reducing their carbon emissions, if they're actually powerful people sitting around a table at Davos making the right decisions, does it matter?
PROF. CARL RHODES: Well, there is a question?I mean, I think? I mean, it matters looking a little bit beneath that and a question of whether the right decisions are being made. Climate change is an interesting example. I mean, CEOs might adopt various climate-friendly policies, you know, notwithstanding the potential for green washing still alive and well, it's certainly not a thing of the past.
But corporations essentially have a very strong incentive of maximising shareholder value, despite the rhetoric, and that's of interest in the short and long term. For CEOs, that's also about that incentive includes their personal wealth with their remuneration being tied up in share price, but also the ability of their corporations to grow and develop and to be able to attract finance, attract capital, and so forth.
So you've got to ask the question will business leaders sacrifice their personal wealth and the ability of their organisations to raise capital for social and public good? And we've got to understand there are deep contradictions in place here between private interests and public interests that kind of get washed over in this assumption of what businesses can and can't do. That doesn't go away. So I think it's naive to assume in the climate case, you know, net zero targets, Paris Agreement, and so forth, are going to be achieved through voluntary action.
Now, there was a report just produced actually here at UTS by our colleagues at ISF just I think it was last week or so and it looked at the kind of production plans of auto manufacturers and the idea that if we continue creating fuel? you know, combustion engine based automobiles at the rate that's planned, there's no way the Paris Agreement reductions are going to be made and they released that, it went into the press last year? not last year, sorry, last week and the newspaper, I think it was the Herald, interviewed someone from Toyota and the person from Toyota basically said, you know, they remain committed to providing customers with a diverse range of vehicles so the customers can choose what kind of technology they want, whether they want an electric vehicle or whether they want, I don't know, a kind of gas guzzler, or whatever the case may be, and so again they're deferring to the customer to make that decision.
So this is an example?there's a commitment to climate change visibly in the auto industry, but this report suggests that that's completely inadequate to deal with the issue. So it's not to say that business doesn't have to be involved. Well, obviously business is either creating the machines or cars and other machines that emit and also the whole problem of climate is a result of industrialised capitalism. You know, that's when we started burning stuff at the scale we are now.
So sure, it's good if corporations do things, but it's by far not enough without serious public commitment.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: Yes. I think one of the bits that I found most persuasive as well in your book, there's a chapter where you talk about Jeff Bezos and his giant? so he made a $10 billion philanthropic donation for climate change, to a climate change fund, but in your book you also go through just how much tax avoidance Amazon undertakes and that he was actually just paying? if Amazon was actually just paying a fair share of tax, the increased government capacity, right? So more and more it became obvious in your book that part of the problem also is how can the government be that regulator par excellence or leader in all of this when they're so chronically underfunded mostly because all of these corporations are not actually delivering their appropriate tax entitlements. I mean, what do you say about that?
PROF. CARL RHODES: Well, firstly, it's not just about tax. Many of these corporations also get other forms of incentives as well, you know, Tesla being an example of a company that's received many, many incentives. So, yeah, again it's interesting. I mean, in the case of the earth, you've got a company like Amazon which essentially the whole business is built around transportation so that when you order a book? not mine? from Amazon and they deliver it to you, they didn't make the book, so it makes sense that they would want to have some control over the whole agenda of the fossil fuel industry as well. So it's basic to what they do.
But again, if you look at a company like Amazon, who's come under massive criticisms for the way it treats workers in its warehouses in particular and other aspects of what we do, when we come back to think what are core social responsibilities of business? Is it about taking these kinds of stands because there's a whole other set of things that says well, the real contribution corporations and businesses can make is providing citizens with meaningful work, offering people decent wages, as you say, paying tax, obeying the law, but these are things that are all in question around issues of, you know, whether it be minimum wage, whether it be sweatshop working conditions, whether it be modern slavery, in the US whether it be corporations being vicious in their antipathy to the possibility of worker organisation and trade unionism. There's different ways to look at how corporations can make the contribution and, you know, supporting social causes that the majority of people already agree with is probably not the biggest potential contribution that they could make. I think there's much more important ways that corporations can contribute, and with climate they definitely need to be a part of it, but not to call the shots. This is a global public problem that requires political solutions, not commercial ones.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: And I think that that was one of the points that I took home, which was you open your chapter 6 with that Larry Fink letter, who's of course the billionaire who's in charge of the investment management company BlackRock, and his letter says, "Unnerved by fundamental economic changes and the failure of government to provide lasting solutions, society is increasingly looking to companies, both public and private, to address pressing social and economic issues", and there's such hubris in that, right? I think we were talking offline a bit about the hubris of we have the answers because we are the people who have become rich, you know, we have a way of working, a special type of genius and it is only us who will solve the world's problems and I think?you know, I think that's part of the problem, right? What do you have to say about that?
PROF. CARL RHODES: Yes. I mean, it really is interesting how kind of, I don't know, messianic some of these people can become. Even when Elon Musk was taking over Twitter now, he's not woke by any stretch of the imagination? it wasn't about spending $44 million on a business so he can become even richer than his current status as the richest person in the world. It was that he was a, what was it, free speech fundamentalist, he was going to singlehandedly save democracy through what he was doing, and it's a crazy kind of almost?as I say, kind of messiah complex about what can happen and an unfaltering belief that the way that business is organised is the solution to all of the world's problems.
It's the same kind of rhetoric you hear from the World Economic Forum at the Davos conference. It's all about looking at business solutions for everything, and maybe it's an ideologically driven kind of neoliberal perspective that just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. I mean, you know, politics is still important and, more importantly, democracy is still important and the form of deliberation.
And democracy, you know? an ideal that's massively imperfect in how it's actually delivered through processes of government and public institutions, but an ideal that I just think we cannot let go of and just relinquish our role to private interests because if we're just relying on Larry Fink or Jeff Bezos, or whoever, we're returning to a plutocracy, we're returning to a type of feudalism where the people who are in control of society do so merely by virtue of their wealth. The onset of democracy, at least European and American democracy, was a rejection of that model and it seems by stealth we're going back to a kind of feudal time and that worries me deeply, Verity.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: So to come back to some of our guest questions, which again are beautifully aligned to the direction the conversation is taking, a question from Madeline Combe, writing under Deborah Cotton's name, "Is it the responsibility of government to change the rules of the game such that social and environmental prosperity isn't decided by woke CEOs sacrificing personal wealth? Similar for philanthropy, individuals with material wealth and power should not be able to cherry pick social environmental challenges to finance. What will incentivise governments to assert more control? Recent polls say that Australians are asking for corporate regulation. Will this happen?"
PROF. CARL RHODES: I mean, firstly, yes, yes, and yes. I hope it does happen and it depends what we mean by government. If we're talking about elected politicians, they will be driven by what wins elections. I mean, obviously government is much more deeply?you know, we need to think of the institutions of democracy, not just about elected politicians.
But I think?I hope that it's correct that the interests of the people will determine what government will do and government will reassert themselves. Remember that corporations only exist by virtue of laws that have been created by governments. You know, the corporation is legally subservient to the law, so there's the opportunity to reassert this.
What I'm more enamoured by than anything else? I mean, I've got to say that my generation, I sometimes think of myself as belonging to generation N, meaning generation neoliberalism. You know, I went to university in 1984, you know, when Thatcher was?just I was in the UK? kind of getting big and my generation has at best in some cases reaped some of the benefits from that for some people, or at worst just kind of observed things getting worse and, you know, I think we've got to kind of admit to that failure.
But when I see the new generation of people coming through university now?and obviously because of my position I do? I'm seeing a kind of level of politicisation amongst young people that I've never seen before in my life, and if you look historically, I would say that it's not been present in western countries, and in Australia too, since the 1960s.
So I think there is a renewed interest in politics amongst young people and that?as you'd expect from people entering university at 17 or 18, at times that's a little bit simplistic, naive and utopian, but we were all there once. But I see this repoliticisation as a real source of hope that there might be a different political future and it might be a rebirth in the belief of community, of common good, of public sovereignty and of democracy in a way that's been eroded, you know, year and year and year again since I was a young adult at least.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: So in the context of maybe a new way of looking at things, I might go to Julie Gellman's question where she asks about, "What about the notion of a social contract as envisaged in the German word 'gesellschaft'"? sorry if I've mispronounced that, gesellschaft "surely it is a two-way street? ie surely organisations are ideologically bound rather than legally bound to promote the profit premise at all costs."
PROF. CARL RHODES: Well, I think they're probably ideologically and to some extent legally what they sometimes call the kind of fiduciary responsibilities. The idea of a social contract, however, is really, really important in this German sense, but also going back to JeanJacques Rousseau and his book of this name which was highly influential in the formation of democracy and bearing in mind the idea of the social contract is that in order to live well together, we actually have to give up some of our freedoms, we can't just go around doing whatever we want as if just our actions are determined by whatever desire overtakes us at any given point and that to live and work together we give up some of our freedoms.
Now, at that time the issue was largely about political freedom and in many cases the fear at the time was about too much power being in the hands of governments?not democratic governments, but being in the hands of rulers and monarchies, and so forth.
We've come to a stage today where I think a new social contract is actually required, but the danger at the moment isn't through? I mean, you know, over the history of kind of politics you look at the danger of authority from the church, you look at the danger of too much authority from the state, but the situation we're in now is the danger of too much authority from the private sector and things have moved. So it is a question then of relooking at that social contract and to what extent should economic freedom, you know, the freedom of the socalled free market and the freedom of people to pursue economic interests, somehow overshadow the issues of how we live together in a democratic society, and in many ways these are all very open questions that we need to address, but it does seem that corporations now have more power than ever before and in some cases individuals.
You know, I was reading an article from a few years ago that was looking at the funding of the World Health Organization. The major funder of that is the US Government. The third major funder of that was the British Government?at the time this article was written at least? the second major funder was Bill Gates, or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Should private interests have that much control over issues that are fundamentally public? My view is no.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: Mmm, mmm. All right, let me ask you a question that Andrew Oliver posed. He was the first person to ask a question, so I think we should give him primacy: "Thinking of secular democracy, should not both large companies, especially monopolies, be neutral in many things, like religion, sport, sexual preference, recreational preference in the name of liberty, solidarity, equal opportunity?" Should they butt out altogether, Carl?
PROF. CARL RHODES: There's a temptation to agree with that, that that's kind of none of their business, but at the same time you'd expect corporations to? you know, they operate within a society and you'd expect them then somehow to reflect that society as well. I mean, to be completely neutral, I guess that was the way. I mean, once upon a time we envisaged business people as the man in the grey flannel suit, the entire kind of an interesting, conservative and somewhat boring character. Now we have these kind of larger than life people, you know, who are kind of going out of their way to have an opinion on everything.
But it does seem to be a bit out of whack if you just? you get more of an opportunity to be listened to just because of the economic resources that you control. I'm not big on banning people from saying things. I think that leads us into a whole other issue of civil liberty, so I'm not sure that we should necessarily ban people from doing anything, and that would include, you know, managers and CEOs of corporations, but I certainly think we should be aware of that.
But when it comes to actually directly influencing political activity, not just through opinion but through funding or through, you know, Bill Gates deciding what the priorities of the World Health Organization should be, I think we're in a whole other territory there beyond issues of free speech, which we need to be a bit more balanced about.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: Mmm, mmm. So Linda Peach says, "In the context that governments generally take action?and often politically watered down action?on social justice issues when it becomes clear that a substantial numbers of votes may be lost if they don't, when corporations do pick up a baton?as Gillette did? does that effectively increase the spread of messaging around social justice issues, and is that a problem? Even if their involvement is cynical in that it is motivated by profit, if we took that away, who would fill in the gap between government rhetoric and action?"
PROF. CARL RHODES: Mmm. I think in some cases it does amplify. You mentioned before, you know, Nike, Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter and that was certainly a great amplification of issues and caused, you know, some significant turnarounds in views from the NFL, the National Football League, in general. So it can have that effect and again?so there is an amplification effect. In some cases, however, there is also?it can create a backlash which works against the issues and you can see that in politically polarised views.
So to the second part of the question as to who should do it, it's still the role of all of us as citizens to engage in the political process and, as I said before, the instigation of real political change doesn't come from corporations, I don't even really think it comes from governments because governments are there to represent the people's interests, not to create? you know, not to dictate what those interests should be.
So it's from citizen engagement in politics and often that can come through social movements, through political movements, through activism and through other acts of citizenship, including going to the ballot box, which is the main way many people display their democratic role, but it's about reengaging ourselves as citizens so that it is actually the people individually and collectively who do end up having that voice.
I think the kind of individualism, you know, that's kind of permeated through society and this kind of just looking after oneself, the idea even with elections, you know, you speak to people now and it's almost as if for many people elections is well, which of these political platforms of the party will benefit me personally most and I'll vote for that party. That's not what democracy is about. Democracy is about voting for the party that you think will be the best for the common and shared prosperity of the nation, and kind of rethinking that kind of democracy I think is central and what all of our roles are in that, including our participation here in this forum in a very small kind of way.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: Mmm, mmm. So is there a way then for big businesses and CEOs to ethically contribute to positive social change?
PROF. CARL RHODES: I guess there is. I mean, you know, you may have seen a few months ago the company Patagonia, often considered woke, it was actually back in September their CEO, a guy called Yvon Chouinard, announced that his family was going to transfer 98% of the company stock to a newly created notforprofit organisation and that was all dedicated to climate change and it was billed in the press as, you know, this guy was giving the company away and in many ways this was very positive. They gave it away, but they didn't give away control. They just did control through a different set of corporate structures.
Now, that can be seen as corporations doing a good thing and, you know, we've got no reason to doubt the motives of any of these people. But practically what this means, or what the projections were, that it would mean that each year about $100 million of non-reinvested profits would go into, you know, climate-related causes. Great, $100 million.
Meanwhile, if you look at what's happened just this last week or so at COP27, there was a report released there that suggested that if the world wants to meet the Paris Agreement targets, we need an increased funding globally for climate change of $1 trillion per annum. That's the scale of the problem and the scale of investment required. So while it might be great that Patagonia have given the company away, the 100 million that it generates is relatively insignificant to the size of the problem.
So even when you get a company that does seem to be acting out of goodwill, it's nowhere near what's needed to address the significance of a problem that really can only be approached from a political standpoint, just as was the case with COVID. You know, COVID was an example that when we had this world pandemic, private organisations couldn't solve that. The kind of money that was needed to inject into the economy to keep it going, the kind of money that was needed to fund the rapid development of vaccines, private enterprise was involved in that but there was almost a return to government during COVID because it was realised that there are some problems that are of such magnitude that governments are the only institutions that can actually serve to solve it. And our big problems are like that?COVID was like that, climate is like that, inequality is like that. So despite the goodwill and ethical good mindedness of corporations, in this we've got to accept as much as anything they are too weak to address the problems and that needs to come from somewhere else.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: That's a really interesting point and in fact you write about how little corporations did in COVID and in fact, even worse than that, how many of them benefited from COVID, whether it be through furlough schemes or what we saw in Australia with JobKeeper, et?cetera. So really what you're saying is it's about restoring faith, public faith in the role of government, is that what you're saying, a capacity for government, I suppose, to once again take that mantle of leadership and be able to be at the table as a more powerful player than the combined interests of a corporate class?
PROF. CARL RHODES: Yes. I mean, it really needs a renewed faith in democracy, a renewed approach to democracy?you know, if you want to use the term, the new New Deal. I mean, that was another example of a time in the US history where government kind of reasserted itself to create massive programs for social wellbeing.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: Again in a time of crisis.
PROF. CARL RHODES: Again in a time of crisis. Now, that's been gradually dismantled by the forces of neoliberalism since then. But yes, so we need a new political imagination from a new generation. Any younger people watching today, sorry to load you up with that responsibility, but it's also a great opportunity to make a difference for the future and, I mean, and our role as a university is central to that too in terms of how we educate young people to understand those broader responsibilities and that's across all disciplines that we teach in, we have that responsibility to create a new future. Democracy is never something you achieve, right, because it's idealistic. Democracy is always like the horizon and like the horizon, you walk towards it, but you never get there. But I think we've been walking backwards a bit recently and it's time to go back into the forward gear.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: So we're beginning to get towards the end of time, but I want to ask a few more audience questions because it's very nice that people have been engaged and asking questions. Marco Angelini talks about "British political writer Will Hutton, who helped coin the expression "stakeholder capitalism" as a challenge to how business is organised and oriented legally and financially to disregard socially useful outcomes, indeed the notion of a "common good" itself. The disjunction between democratic control and corporate profits has now grown further than our worst fears. In reordering corporate capitalism for the better, what models are there, beyond radical root and branch change?"
PROF. CARL RHODES: Oh, I don't know about what?I mean, let's not discount radical root and branch change, by the way. Hopefully there's some viability in that, but it will take time and the difficulty is that corporations have a lot of political clout. I mean, often people look to countries that retain kind of elements of the welfare state that have been eroded and you see?government. New Zealand is a potential example there, certainly Scandinavia and Nordic countries, although interesting things happening in Sweden at the moment.
So I think there are some potential models there of nations that haven't completely been subsumed, and it's certainly different in different places. You know, if you go to the US, I was in New York recently, and a huge vibrant place, you know, massive wealth all over the place, but also you walk down the street, there's homeless people, there's people who clearly have mental illness, drug problems, getting arrested and, you know, that kind of inequality that exists completely side by side. So, you know, this is? even in the most wealthy countries you kind of have these problems as well.
So I think there are different models in different places to look for and, you know, those are a few examples that I gave there. But I think it's not just about looking to?it’s about looking for new models and looking for new imagination and new forms of political commitment as well.
Now, I don't have the answer to that, I don't have some blueprint for the future, and if I did, or pretended to, I'd be just as stupid as any other crazy dictator who think they can hold the whole world in their hand and control everything. I think it's something we have to do together out of a set of values that is more communal and more democratic and sees democracy not just as a political system but actually as a way of life and a way of interacting with one another that is about caring about people, but also about tolerance and respect and mutual obligation.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: And I think one of the things about COVID is I think it did remind people that that can be possible and it's a bit about we're all a bit in PTSD after COVID, but we should remember that, remember the role that the state played but also actually remember that sense of collective and of collective responsibility for other people's health.
PROF. CARL RHODES: Absolutely. I think there's so many lessons out of COVID from politics, but it seems that in practice now we're all just trying to forget everything about COVID, the health? terrible health effects of the pandemic with people dying, and so forth, but the political lessons we seem to be forgetting and I think there's many, many, as you say, political lessons from COVID that we could certainly learn from.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: So last question from the audience and then we'll allow you a bit of a wrapup and it's a great one from David Rohr. He's asking where does News Corporation fit into a woke capitalism world?
PROF. CARL RHODES: Very interesting point. I mean, clearly if you read their newspapers, no one is describing them as being woke and if anything, you know, you look at media outlets like Fox News at one extreme but, you know, Sky News here, these are really the most vicious, reactionary anti woke people who think everything about wokeness is terrible. So, on one hand, that is very much promoted there and also about control of?but also then about the political control of governments.
So this is actually kind of?there’s a different kind of school of thought there. So I would have thought these things in a way are quite in conflict with one another, even though ostensibly they're both pursuing? you know, they both kind of rely on a kind of corporate based economy and a belief in a corporate based economy, but really from a very different perspective, and News Corp if anything is kind of old school, it's more focused on government but about controlling the government in particular ways.
So yes, there's some interesting contradictions there that bear teasing out.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: Yes, totally. All right. So Carl, in the final minutes of this webinar what I suppose?you’ve actually said a lot of it in your book, so really just a recapping of I suppose the vital role that a newly invigorated democracy can play and what do you think is the next thing that needs to happen?
PROF. CARL RHODES: I'm not sure I know what the next thing is that needs to happen specifically. I mean, in many ways the purpose of my book was to kind of tease out what woke capitalism is, what it means, what it's doing, how it works and not necessarily provide solutions to that. I mean, you know, the last chapter of the book kind of sums it up that the best I can do, you know, is to help people become woke to woke capitalism. But it's as a result of that awareness and not necessarily to say?I didn't write the book trying to convince everyone that they should believe what I believe. It's more about creating a debate about what seems to be such an important thing.
So I think the next thing that needs to happen is political. The next thing that needs to happen is for all of us to continue to engage in the political process and let the democratic process unfold and democracy will always unfold to an unknown future. We can't know what democracy is going to do in the future. If we knew the future now, it would cease to be the future. But it's to engage in that process and not to give up on the promise of democracy.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: That's wonderful, Carl. Thank you so much. That was really great. And for those of you who are interested?I feel like I'm now an advertisement?”Woke Capitalism", it was a really great read, I enjoyed it immensely, easy read, read it in a weekend, but it really got me thinking about all of the subjects, all of what you were just talking about today.
So there is a link in the chat if you do want to purchase your own copy. We're not selling it via Amazon, to let you all know, and thank you all for joining us today. We do these webinars semi regularly and we'll continue to share them with you and hopefully you can join us on a few more.
We'll also share the link to this webinar today with everyone who registered, so if you want to share it amongst other friends, family contacts, please feel free to do so. But thank you, everyone, for coming along and thank you again to Carl Rhodes, Dean of UTS Business School and author of "Woke Capitalism".
PROF. CARL RHODES: Can I just say thank you to Verity, you know, for this opportunity and for taking the time to have this discussion and thanks to everyone out there for tuning in today.
THE HON. PROF. VERITY FIRTH: See you, everyone.
If you are interested in hearing about future events, please contact events.socialjustice@uts.edu.au
Corporations and, in some cases, individuals have more power than ever before. We’ve come to a stage where a new social contract is required. It’s a question of looking to what extent economic freedom should overshadow the issues of how we live together in a democratic society. – Prof. Carl Rhodes
Speakers
Professor Carl Rhodes is Dean of UTS Business School and is responsible for leading its vision to be a socially committed business school. Prior to his academic career, Carl worked in professional and senior management positions in change management and organisational development. As a scholar, Carl researches the relationship between business and society in the nexus of liberal democracy’s articulation with market capitalism.
The Hon. Professor Verity Firth is the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Social Justice and Inclusion) at UTS. She served as Minister for Education and Training in New South Wales (2008–2011) and NSW Minister for Women (2007–2009). After leaving office, Verity was the Chief Executive of the Public Education Foundation.