Ethical Capitalism
As an anti-capitalist I've always felt a disconnect between the idea of a "craft beer community" and knowing that every business within that community is, and has to be, a profitable enterprise. It’s the same with all the good vibes stuff around natty wine making too.
I have worked in marketing for over a decade, and in that time I’ve developed a talent for sniffing out social justice paint jobs. This in turn has allowed cynicism to grow where it’s not welcome — I desperately want to see beer businesses working to bring good into the industry, and to banish what’s rotten, and to believe that this is being done for the benefit of everyone who interacts with the industry. It’s difficult to see how anything that operates within a capitalist society could survive without adopting capitalist goals — and now I’ve started my own business, I’ve had to look at what exactly it is that I can achieve that works for good, while admitting I am aiming to turn a profit to support myself and my family.
Equity and justice can never be allowed to become buzzwords used to make shareholders happy. I worry that this is already happening.
In my mind, owning a business puts me in a better position to support my community than working for an employer ever did. I have autonomy over every decision made. I can choose to source ethically made, eco-conscious products, and can opt to reject higher profit margins in favour of making our own products less exclusive.
I have the authority to hire people with equity and justice in mind, and only have myself and my business partner (my husband Tom) to answer to, when it takes more time and effort to enact all of these things. Working for employers, no matter how ethically-minded they had claimed to be, had always felt stifling. I had always been a number, complicit in exploiting hidden or invisible workers in the name of turning over profits I would never see. Is my owning a business hypocritical? Deeply. But I’ve struggled with the knowledge that my life is inherently hypocritical for some time now. I am bisexual, but am in a straight-presenting marriage with a heterosexual cis man, and live my life pretty straightly, given I only came out in my late 20s.
And it’s not just my sexuality that makes me feel hypocritical. I’m a workaholic, chronically so at times, surrendering to the capitalist concept that hard work, application, dedication and motivation are what make me real and whole; give me purpose. As food writer, sustainability advocate and communist Alicia Kennedy recently tweeted: “don't call me a capitalist, baby, but I love to DO THINGS.”
“There is no ethical consumption under capitalism” is a sentence that wriggles around in my brain often, and I worry that simply by knowing this phrase, that I’m using it as an excuse. Does understanding that ethical products are often inaccessible to someone on a budget like mine, excuse me from making an effort elsewhere? If I can’t afford to only drink “ethical” beer, should I abstain?
By many people’s impeccable standards, yes, I should. Would I? Honestly, no. Lack of cash makes a phoney out of me. Would wilful ignorance of macro brewery global practices absolve me of this? Would shouting “it’s only beer” until I’m red in the face make it right for me to drink cheaply made beer sold in late-stage capitalist homogeneity, and get rid of the niggling doubt that someone, somewhere along the line is being shafted?
Or, on the other side of the coin, am I using guilt to absolve me when I don’t manage to live up to my own ethical standards? Is there anything worse than a newly-middle class white woman angsting over whether the grapes in her wine were picked by underpaid workers while doing nothing to counter that imbalance? This is why I’ve been trying to see what more I could do.
If I’m going to continue to drink and feel all shades of white guilt about it, the very least I can do is use some of that energy for good.
“When you’re creating a document that outlines the diversity goals of your business, you’re writing a policy that’s saying you want to be a decent person. You’re sitting down and writing it out: “we’re not going to tolerate your hate”. And people have been so used to not acting in a decent way that this is what scares them — it’s a different way of acting”
“The Time Is Now, Part Three — Why Inclusion, Equity, and Justice Could Determine Whether Breweries Flourish or Fail” was written for Good Beer Hunting last August 2020 by Dr. J Nikol Jackson-Beckham, and part of the opener begins like this:
“...know that working towards inclusivity is not just a moral imperative—it’s a financial one, too. Ignoring this reality isn’t just ethically bankrupt; it may well be bankrupting.”
That has been caught in my brain ever since I read it. It is a thorny sentence, with two burrs that catch in the skin — that some businesses still refuse to accept their responsibility in regards to demanding inclusivity, and that for some, only a financial incentive is enough to persuade them to act. Perhaps that financial incentive — the threat of losing out if measures are not taken — will create more change than any imploration of self-awareness.
That change is needed no matter the reasons behind it, I suppose, and perhaps I should be happy that changes are being made at all. But there is something in it that bothers me. That people won’t do the right thing for the ethics and justice of it, that there must be an economic viability to it, really scratches me up.
To try and understand my resistance to this form of activism activity, I gave Ren Navarro a call. Despite being super busy with Beer. Diversity., her consultancy project that cultivates diversity and addresses the lack of it within Canadian beer, she spent a good half hour with me hashing out my concerns. We truly don’t deserve her!
“When you’re creating a document that outlines the diversity goals of your business, you’re writing a policy that’s saying you want to be a decent person. You’re sitting down and writing it out: “we’re not going to tolerate your hate”. And people have been so used to not acting in a decent way that this is what scares them — it’s a different way of acting,” she tells me.
“Capitalism is about making money but if it’s hate dollars, you can say “we don’t want it”.”
I wondered what resistances Ren had come up against in her experience of working with businesses to improve their inclusivity, equity and justice policies. What have businesses seen as roadblocks in building diversity into their ethos besides obvious inbuilt prejudices and biases?
She told me that people wonder if they actually have to write these policies down. In their minds their business is already welcoming and inclusive because they say it is, or that actions prove it to be so. Why should they take the extra step of writing out a document that tells them to act a certain way when they feel they’re already living it?
“But if I never come into your space,” Ren says, “I never see your actions. Putting the words down means accountability.”
So how about the businesses and organisations put the words down but don’t live it? Is there necessarily anything wrong with paying lip service to a cause if it brings about the same conversations and helps to enact the same change?
“There are the people who take the money they can get. There are people who are legit. There are in-betweeners who want to get the most money from everyone.” Ren is great at placing complex ideas into easily understandable terms. (If you’re a business reading this and you need some guidance for your own policies, please hire her to help you out. Seriously.)
“The thing is, you can’t maintain a façade of ethical behaviour. Eventually the people who felt safe buying your products will realise it’s not genuine, and they’ll go “wait a minute, you’re a terrible human, I’m shopping elsewhere”. It’s short term gain, but it can’t really last.”
“The Black Is Beautiful project really showed that. It was like “Black People Are Awesome, come and buy my beer” and it made a ton of money! Then, months later, people were contacting breweries like, hey, where’s the follow-up? What were they going to do next?”
Sincerity shines through. If you’re joining a campaign for good, it’s obvious (and you’re more likely to be transparent in showing your receipts.) As our desire to see more ethically-minded decisions being made increases, the sophistication with which we check out the finer details of the things we spend our money on does too. It’s not enough anymore to donate to a cause or issue.
When making money is the main aim of capitalism, it can be hard for businesses to see that there might be more to be done than simply throwing cash around. In a world where we’re all beginning to demand more, how can capitalist businesses do better?
“Donations are great, but where’s the connection?” asked Ren.
“I can give away money, I could start writing cheques right now, but if I don’t know where it goes or learn what’s happening with it, it’s just throwing money out of the window. It shouldn’t be that you donate to those folks and then never see them again.”
“Businesses can build an exchange of knowledge to go with it — a lot of places are doing this, like Cloudwater with their Wayfinder project. It helps them to figure their shit! These sorts of projects help businesses to understand how to deal with communities, but also, the individuals taking part in the programme or project get all this experience, they gets paid for it, and they will be able to give their valuable feedback, eventually taking what they’ve learned back into their communities to make positive changes.”
It’s sort-of like redistribution. In a capitalist context.
[Disclosure: all 2021 blog pieces are funded through the Cloudwater Wayfinder project, however Cloudwater have no say on anything we choose to publish]
“I think that people need to know that it’s okay to mess up, but you need to stick it out.”
Ren Navarro’s passion for inclusivity and justice extends beyond the limits of crafting in-house diversity protocols and policies. She asks breweries and hospitality businesses why they’re in the business they’re in. Ren wants to know what they want to do for their communities.
“If you don’t want to do anything for your community, you’re not gonna last,” she says, “because the shift for demanding more is vast. It has to be less of a buzzword.”
It’s true, though, that there’s a lot of work to be done in all areas of hospitality before we can claim to be an ethical industry. Ren believes that this means our ethics not only have to shape everything we do with integrity, but that they must have longevity.
“We’re rushing, at the moment. This topic is being treated like a task and that, at some point, it will end. That it will be completed. It won’t. This is lifelong — and once you drop dead your kids take over for you!”
“If you look at this as the world’s longest marathon, you’re gonna need to slow down and walk a bit, look at the trees, think about what you’re gonna do when you start running again.”
A scary thing for a lot of businesses is that by leading by example, that singles them out as leaders — a position they may never have wished to put themselves in. By working true to their morals, they are putting themselves into influential positions, and vulnerable ones too. Putting your head above the parapet is never easy. When it’s about something as essential as inclusivity, equity and justice, passion and energy can drive you for a while, but persistently being leant on (and dealing with opposition from less ethical people all the while) is wearing. How can people run their bars, bottle shops, restaurants, breweries, wineries, cideries ethically under that sort of continual pressure?
“I think that people need to know that it’s okay to mess up, but you need to stick it out.”
“The whole notion of leading is that you’re learning with those that you’re leading,” Ren advises. “Talking with fellow business owners about the policies and house rules you’re putting in place will help to normalise it within your community too. Be in it together.”
