Ilove movies, television and novels, but I become depressed at the persistently negative image of business portrayed in so much fictional drama. Writers and film makers, in works ranging from Hard Times to Avatar, always seem to make corporations and their bosses the bad guys. And in the past six years a whole academic genre has sprouted up, churning out books claiming that the current capitalist system is broken – recent British additions being Geoff Mulgan’s The Locust and the Bee and father-and-son team Robert and Edward Skidelsky’s How Much Is Enough?
These narratives reflect the poor job that capitalists do in selling the benefits of the free-market system. From university economics courses to media coverage of the financial crisis, articulate and credible defenders of the profit motive are hard to find – especially in Europe. Yet the relentless rise in living standards since the industrial revolution, and almost all the technology, comforts and advantages of modern life are thanks to laisser faire economic principles.
Opponents of free enterprise offer an incoherent and impractical vision of the possible alternatives. Generally, it involves more state spending, more regulation, higher taxes and greater protections for the public sector. At heart these ideas are reactionary: the left longs to renationalise and revive unions and ignores the emergence of highly competitive Asian countries and the catastrophe of dependency cultures.