The Sunday Times FT - Harry’s gains beyond most local dreams of avarice

The dreams of avarice are as old as man. What is new is that there are today more opportunities, generated by capitalism, for avaricious men to pursue their dreams. This makes capitalism a ghastly thing for the average moralist. In our own country, sush a view of capitalism appears to have great sway with the erudite and the vulgar alike. Lately, our own critics of capitalism have been holding up Harry Jayewardene’s spectacularly successful life of gain as a perfect illustration of the meaning and the effect of capitalism – a typical capitalist is said to be “avaricious with gain and lavish with meanness”.

The fulfilment which avarice finds in capitalism is so obvious a fact that it is not to be denied. Likewise, we need to face up to the fact that in our own country avarice is unfailingly fulfilled when it is combined with the fine art of manipulation and intimidation. In fact, the art of manipulation and intimidation appears to be a skill vital to the task of securing cooperation between various elements and activities of the economic life here.

Yet could it said to be a skill that is vital or integral to capitalism everywhere? Or is it something that is practiced in countries where tradition has yet to be superseded by modernity - the rule of man by the rule of law, and statism by capitalism? What is clear is that there must first be an adequate understanding of the effect that the persistence of tradition continues to have on our economic life before any apportioning of blame could take place.

But in a more basic sense, one might point out that no critic of capitalism, who wishes to blame capitalism for making the human condition mean and brutish, could hope to escape the role that self-discipline and self-control play in any ethic. There must be room for some measure of self-mastery even in an ethic in which the moral life, or the highest, is pared down to an irreducible minimum – in an ethic of renunciation, which suggests even to the neediest among us the possibility of fulfilment.

Although renunciation is distinct from self-mastery, a measure of self-mastery is needed to have a feeling of dignity.

As critics of capitalism would point out, the attainment of self-mastery is a superhuman task when men, who live under the seduction of advertising, are confronted with innumerable choices and immense possibilities of thought and action.

Moreover, such pursuits as those of riches, social respectability and power can become all-absorbing – they, unlike the pursuit of sensual pleasures, produce no feelings of regret or remorse. There are no “morning after” feelings in fulfilling love of riches or prestige or power.

Indeed the demand for self-mastery is truly at a maximum in a capitalistic system – especially on those who have resolved to live well, perhaps to live an examined life dedicated to achieving a goodness that is distinguished and consummate; and to live supremely well, when conditions are favourable, in a life of erudition, scholarship and scientific or philosophic speculation.

However, on the less fortunate and the needy, the demand for self-mastery under capitalism is mercilessly harsh. Yet, in spite of it, capitalistic democracies are at peace, and live in illustration of freedom and fraternity - whereas socialism could be at peace only through political repression and by pitting man against man to create a network of informants as a tool of repression.

The critics of capitalism wish to ground the principle of efficient organization, that is to say justice, on need rather than on merit – to take justice from each according to his worth to each according to his need. The argument for it is emotionally satisfying: a man’s true worth cannot be judged without knowing the cause of it. But the cause is “the whole sate of the universe prior to that event”, which is not knowable. The notion entertained here is that of the cause as the antecedent of the effect – “the notion of causation as a constant succession”.

In other words, it was argued that the legitimacy of a man’s acquisition of his worth cannot be judged without recreating his past going all the way back perhaps to the creation. And since such a recreation was not possible, it was deemed that a just society would distribute equitably the fruits of its labour.

However, the man who first conceptualised justice for the free world, Aristotle, had grounded it on his analysis of motion – not as a succession of cause and effect, but as a movement from the potential to the actual.

Be that as it may, in our own country, in the common parlance of the erudite and the vulgar alike, capitalism is identical to avarice, meanness and exploitation. This is a serious problem for business, and business is partly to be blamed for it.

Businesses claim that profit is the aim of business, and the measure of business progress.

But profit, like pleasure, admits of degree and that which admits of degree is no standard by which to measure the progress of anything. To measure progress one must envisage a possible perfection, an achievement that is final and consummate. Moreover, we habitually rate conglomerates very high, yet what is a conglomerate but an obsession with profit. A society that deems the idea of conglomeration highly praiseworthy cannot afford to criticise anyone for avarice, except to say that another’s gains are way beyond most dreams of avarice.