Third, during the past decade social and environmental activists have been wildly successful convincing thousands of business executives to embrace corporate socialism. The so-called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) movement had business executives spending corporate capital on programs and policies that contribute very little to profitability and, in some cases, harmed their companies’ bottom lines. It was all oh so voluntary, neither government mandated, nor shareholder-sanctioned. Oftentimes, these expenditures amounted to pay-offs for the pet projects and policies of non-government organizations (NGOs) who helped shove CSR down our collective gullets.
Why did the anti-business activist groups preach the gospel of CSR? The simple answer is that they were preparing the battlefield to advance their socialist agenda at the ballot box, and in the court of public opinion. They knew that it would not be difficult to sneak into corporations led by executives who talk like Rambo but act like Bambi.
So why did these corporate leaders participate in this capitalist equivalent of treason? Some believed the myth that good PR—at any cost—is the Holy Grail of successful business management. Others wanted to position their competitors as corporate villains who could care less about human rights or the environment. Most were trying to appease the socialist attack groups, and their allies in the media and in government.
Guess what all of you corporate appeasers, CSR is about to become real mandatory!
Economist Milton Friedman wrote that some “businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned merely with profit but also with promoting desirable social ends; that business has a social conscience and takes seriously its responsibility for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers.” Friedman added, “In fact, they are . . . preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.”
It boggles the mind to think that any self-respecting business executive would pay lip-service to the CSR movers, shakers and spinners given their basic belief that corporations should become government property, while leaving the financial risks to the private investors.
Long before the economic meltdown, millions, if not billions of corporate dollars were diverted from shareholders and redistributed to others under the guise of CSR. Every dollar represented a hidden tax on unsuspecting investors. Talk about taxation without representation. Now, of course, people who actually work hard to achieve success won’t have to worry as much about hidden taxes. They will have to worry about Congress and the President deciding that their property and prosperity must be shared with people who haven’t worked quite as hard, or not at all.
How can we stop this lunacy? First, America’s 100-million shareholders need information about how their investments are being shanghaied, how their rights are being subverted and how corporate socialists and government officials are using their hard-earned cash to undermine free enterprise. This is advocacy of the kind employed by the Free Enterprise Action Fund (FEAF). The Fund uses its status as an institutional shareholder to persuade companies to focus on increasing shareholder value and profits rather than vainly trying to appease the socialists and their allies.
Second, American voters must be reminded of Winston Churchill’s admonition that, “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy, its inherent value is the equal sharing of misery.” I fear that Americans will discover what Churchill meant in a multitude of ways over the next four years.
In the meantime, I offer three words to the corporate Neville Chamberlains who helped put this country in the hands of people who advocate wealth redistribution and government control of what was once the private sector: Shame on you!