Entrepreneurs as Moral Men

Abstract

On ‘Homo Sovieticus’, Aleksandr Zinoviev, 1985⁴ Moral harmony is an invisible yet formidable part of state and market building. Moral polarisation brings societal upheavals and conflicts. Modern state-building processes not only require national identity formation and power consolidation but also a societal moral harmony. In order to forge this, as the experiences of modern Western nation states illustrate, the state uses its coercive powers to eliminate opposing groups and promote agencies of moral harmony in many realms. Legal and institutional foundations safeguard society from moral disarray. Although the modern state has been subject to new pressures in the post nation-state era and top-down uniformity is no longer regarded as necessary, moral harmony remains a central problem in many postcolonial states and newly emerging ones. In the post-Soviet context, the transition to markets, dissolution of state legitimacy and ideological void dislocated individuals from their value systems. Although individuals continue to accommodate these major changes in their day-to-day lives, societal and individual moral reference points become unstable and confused.

Don’t break anyone’s heart, even if he is an unbeliever. To break the heart of a man is equal to hurting God.

Sufi philosopher Ahmed Yesevi, twelfth century¹

Let the beauty you love Be what you do.

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

Sufi philosopher Mewlana-falaluddin-Rumi, thirteenth century²

We repudiate all morality that is taken outside of human, class concepts ...

We say: morality is that which serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the toilers around the proletariat.

Vladimir I. Lenin’s speech at the Komsomol Congress, 1921³

Which is better: to be indifferent to your neighbour’s fate in a moral society

or to be concerned about it in an amoral society?