Ethics versus economics? A Proposal for a humanistic enterprise

Abstract

It is commonplace to oppose ethical principles to economic ‘laws’, but this is by no means a necessity. This paper draws a brief sketch of a specific type of enterprise that overcomes the traditional contrast between Ethics and Business. The Humanistic Enterprise, a humanistic evolution of the Democratic Enterprise, is a place where the necessary economic aspects and the ethical principles of democracy, freedom, solidarity, equality of opportunities can be combined together in the praxis. For a start, the paper proposes a brief report about some peculiarities of the Democratic Enterprise that distinguish it from the Capitalist one. Then a summary description follows of a cooperative holding (the ‘Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa’ in Euskadi i.e. the Basque Country), consisting of more than 100 democratic firms and operating on the domestic and international markets. Finally, the paper considers some of the differences between the Democratic and the Humanist Enterprise.