Can a business be anti-capitalist?

Try This One Weird Trick!

Aaand we’re back! I’m kicking off the year with a flu-y thing and a little slow to get moving. My brain is not super interested in working, but I have been rewatching House which feels productive. I love a TV show that lets me pretend I’m smart. I’m basically a doctor now. I hope that all of you are well, rested, cared for, and not sick. Today we have our Brain Trust column. To submit your own question or topic for the next Brain Trust, click here.

🧠 Brain Trust

Our topic for this month’s Brain Trust column is: “The role and abilities of small businesses and online businesses with regards to social justice, and ways to develop towards anti-capitalism.”

Rewatched Wall Street this weekend. Martin Sheen is the role model from this movie, listen to him. Do the opposite of Michael Douglas and you’ll be set.

Well, I have to be honest: I don’t know if I can answer this. These topics are largely what my entire body of work has wrestled with for eight years. What is the role of small business? What are the responsibilities of business owners? Can business be anti-capitalist in capitalism? Should it?

And I don’t have answers.

To some extent, that’s because I don’t think these are things that can be prescribed. I cannot (will not) tell you how you should run your business.¹ The constant outsourcing of our opinions, beliefs, and motivations to randos on the internet like me is a source of deep concern, echoing our drive towards authoritarianism in times of crisis. Per usual, I think this is about religion: in the absence of a cohesive cosmology dictated by religion, we seek instruction elsewhere. In this day, that instruction comes in the form of content. Content has replaced cosmology. You can avoid coherence, instead consuming ideas until you find the one that you like best.

Over the years I’ve had many people disagree with me about foundational business principles or strategies because they “saw something about it” that conflicted. Disagreement is fine of course, I love opinionated folks who challenge me, and love to work with them. But the outsourcing of opinion, the way that ideas seep into our consciousness as we scroll to become vague beliefs backed up only by a worn thread of memory, we “saw it", we “heard it somewhere,” it must be true…this concerns me.

So when it comes to the role of small business with regards to social justice, or anti-capitalism, or any other value,² the first thing I want to say is: What do you think the role is? What do you want it to be?

The opinions of others cannot—must not—replace the development of our own beliefs. And I am so wary of how my opinions become the passive fodder for your ruminations. The authority that I carry as someone with experience, someone with a (somewhat, depends on your definition) successful business or two under my belt, someone you may have paid for services or products, someone with an audience online, makes what I say more potent to your mind. If you think that I am reasonable or smart or successful or beautiful, your brain will categorize my words as valuable, even if you’re only half paying attention to the words themselves.

This authority trance³ can lead to a dogmatic relationship to the information and opinions shared. I’m pulling this in because it’s a very common challenge in political and activist circles.⁴ Someone with the “right” mix of experience and identities⁵ offers an idea, a concept, a theory, and it becomes law within a particular belief system. The political left (which is where I am situating “social justice” and “anti-capitalism,” and what I’m using as shorthand for those and other topics) is often criticized for vicious infighting and a tendency towards rigid beliefs that become dogmatic: any questioning or compromise is reason to be expelled.

When we begin to ask about the role of business with respects to social justice or anti-capitalism, in some ways we are already at risk of expulsion: many diehard leftists would say that business is incompatible with those values. To some extent, I agree.⁶ Which means to engage with these questions necessarily places us in the liminal. We will not find actionable answers if we hold tightly to what we’ve been told. And we will not, I believe, find firm answers at all.

So what to do, then? What are the roles and abilities of small, online business with regards to social justice and anti-capitalism? I do, of course, have an opinion here. It may appear simplistic, but it is the one thing that I have found to have an actual impact.