A business career can be a morally noble one

“Business as a Calling Work and the Examined Life ”
Michael Novak


If you have gone into business, have earned some considerable income, and somehow feel guilty about your “materialistic achievements,” listen to what the author says: “A career in business is not only a morally serious vocation but a morally noble one.”

You are a member of the academe or of some “noble” professions. You somehow have drifted into a small-scale business that now “creates wealth” for you and your workers. Problem is, you feel you now travel the low road of materialism. But, listen to this book:

“The heart of capitalism…is constituted by creative wit and the sheer joy of creating something solid, substantial, lasting and worth losing one’s shirt for. The zest is in the creating, The money that may (or may not) follow us more akin to public recognition than it is in itself.”

This does not sound like an enterprise driven by greed.

Then the author reveals, after studying the lives of famous wealth creators: “To most creators, the money itself is boring.”

The book, “Business as a Calling,” authored by Michael Novak, 246 pages, is subtitles Work and the Examined Life. It takes off from a Greek philosopher’s declaration: “An unexamined life is not worth living.” In that subtitle alone, Novak declared his belief that, after examining the “world of work” – engagingly laying its theological and philosophical basis – he arrives at the expected conclusion: Work is a ministry.

The author gives one the impression that he is a philosopher, theologian and political scientist – all rolled into one – investigating the ethical anchors of capitalism and business. As a matter of fact, Novak is a theologian, US ambassador, author and professor on Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

In this book, Novak revisits the landmarks thought of Adam Smith (author of “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”), Karl Marx (author of “Das Kapital”), and other famous names in political, economic and religious thought.

Novak regales us with little known facts, like: it was Karl Marx who gave the classic definition of capitalism, the idea Marx “hated fiercely.”

In a scholarly attempt to balance his understandable bias for capitalism and democracy, he also notes people’s low regard for businessmen, notably their loose moral, insatiable greed, and exploitative impulses. He quickly counters, however, that industrialists – anchored on sound moral foundations and governed by the principles of services and fair play – also abound.

The author seems to have a long-running debate with a socialist – or with an anti-capitalist. For example, on capitalism and the poor, he argues: “Capitalism makes it possible for the vast majority of the poor to break out of the prison of poverty; to find opportunity;…to rise into the middle class and higher. Watch the crowds on the streets of free nations: they walk the walk of the free.” It’s hard not to agree with Novak.

This nook devotes considerable pages on people’s “calling.” Novak admits that the word has a religious connotation to it and, in the process, elevates one’s work in business approximating the calling of, say, a priest, a minister or a nun.

A Catholic theologian, Novak quotes from Pope John Paul II to Augustine, from poet William Blake to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, from Kant to Kazantzakis, and from Plato to M. Scott Peck.

The remarkable think, though – considering the impressive array of ideas of thought leaders separated by centuries – is that the book has the discipline and coherence of a scholar who has more than a superficial appreciation of diverse philosophical and theological thinking.

Anyway, if we are not interested in this panorama of thought, the book will still be very useful to us, because it provides a well-argued ethical basis of why business is a “calling.” Often, friends chide businessmen for their endless pursuit of money, when businessmen know well enough that it’s not only money, but the joy of perfecting a craft.

It’s not really greed but the need to have enough economic power so that they can serve others. It’s not the perverse desire to decimate a competitor, but the thrill of putting together a strategy that wins. That’s why this book succeeds where lame or feeble answers from enterprise managers fail.

A bonus from this books is an entire chapter on philanthropy, titled: Giving it all away.” The chapter takes off from Andrew Carnegie’s dilemma (of Carnegie Hall fame) on how he can dispose of his wealth – because he cannot, obviously so, live forever, Read on and learn how Carnegie solved his dilemma – to the eternal of many.

How to read this book? First, scan it to get its drift. Then, on second reading, explore the thought slowly. I’m not saying that you will love the book but, I know, that you will end up loving your business calling over again. Yes, you will exult with the author when he uses this quote:

“Enterprise is the creation of surprise”