A NEW CAPITALISM?

The latest corporate leader to call for a new flavor of capitalism is Marc Benioff, the Chairman of Salesforce. Salesforce is generally considered a progressive company. It recently spent a reported $10 million to close its gender pay gap, for example.

Writing in the New York Times (“We Need a New Capitalism”) to launch his new book, Trailblazers, Benioff says, “I believe it’s time to say out loud what we all know to be true: Capitalism, as we know it, is dead.”

More specifically, he explains, “capitalism as it has been practiced in recent decades—with its obsession on maximizing profits for shareholders—has led to horrifying inequality.”

His prescription is, “The culture of corporate American needs to change, and it shouldn’t take an act of Congress to do it.”

In essence, Benioff is embracing the Business Roundtable call for stakeholder capitalism to replace shareholder capitalism.

His call is welcome, and we look forward to learning more. There is some progress flowing out from behind the walls of corporate America and we need to make sure it grows from a tentative trickle to a mainstream current.

That, in our view, is where organized money comes in.

Benioff’s goal is right. His solutions, though, seem only half-right to us. A new capitalism needs and inclusive and sustainable financial system, not the market fundamentalism that rules today.

Market fundamentalism is conservative, costly, extractive, and counter to every type of inclusive and sustainable capitalism. Yet it is hugely powerful and influential over our society, policy, politics, not to mention money and finance.

If we want transformational, lasting change, progressives have the wealth, the experience, and the expertise to make the financial system work for and with a new capitalism. In fact, any type of new capitalism cannot work without a more progressive financial system.

Benioff and his peers should openly reject market fundamentalism (private gains based on a taxpayer safety net) and work toward a new progressive financial model (private and public gains based on shared public and private risk).

Our approach—which we detail in Organized Money—is already working well at the margins of the markets today. In the mainstream, it can re-balance capitalism to make it work for, not again, fairness, equity, and sustainability.