Sever Voinescu on morality and greed in capitalism

With reference to the financial crisis Sever Voinescu analyses the role of morality and greed in the capitalist system for the weekly Dilema Veche. "We have been taught that the market - if not positively immoral - is certainly depraved. We have been taught that in the market there is only one thing that can stimulate competition: profit. Where should morality come from in this hard struggle? If you read Marx and Engels' definition of capitalism that is indeed how it is. But if you look at the theory of capitalism of someone like Max Weber, you discover something completely different. [There you learn] that ethics is the key to the performance of capitalism, to the flow of all money, goods and services, which ... only function if there is trust. Yet trusts depends on a sense of ethics. The American crisis has become so widespread because trust in the system has taken a severe battering. Someone somewhere was telling profound lies, so now all 'market actors' have become mistrustful. ... What has happened now is the most obvious proof that greed is definitely a bad thing. Greed, unrestrained by any law - for we can no longer speak of any moral norms in the market - is what is chiefly responsible for the crisis, which has had a grave impact worldwide. To blame are those who ... left the system unregulated so that they could make millions of dollars speculating on the stock market. To blame are those who saw this tsunami approaching and kept quiet. To blame are those who told convenient lies in their company reports. ... In short all those people are to blame who thought greed was a good thing, for that is what capitalism is."

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