Mickey Mouse Is Corporate Progressivism’s Canary in a Coal Mine

The recent history of business has been an increasingly desperate search for popular legitimacy, most notably in the United States. The management sage Michael Porter talks about “shared value capitalism.” The hyper-connected Lynn de Rothschild advocates “inclusive capitalism.” A phalanx of leading business people talk about “conscious capitalism” (John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods), “compassionate capitalism” (Marc Benioff, CEO of Sales Force) and “JUST capitalism” (hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones). The epithets may change, but the underlying fear is the same: that capitalism will lose its license to operate unless it embraces far-reaching corporate change.

Corporate change means two things in practice: growing a social conscience and giving more power to stakeholders. Leading CEOs have supported progressive positions on a widening range of polarizing social issues such as public restrooms, immigration, high-capacity rifle magazines, voting by mail, Black Lives Matter, transgender identity, and, when it comes both to internal management and public philosophy, “diversity, inclusion and equity.” In 2019, the Business Roundtable (BR) issued a landmark statement arguing that businesses should pay attention to all business constituencies rather than just focusing on maximizing shareholder value.