ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the existing response of anarchists to business ethics, and explores the possible and continuing response of activists to key issues in business ethics. The economist Milton Friedman is also commonly cited as someone who has little time for business ethics. The commentators in this part of the Venn diagram fundamentally oppose the suggestion that business is, or can be, ethical. Indeed, business may be inherently unethical or immoral, and the ethical credentials of managerial forms of organization have often been challenged. The philosopher Alain Badiou has argued that the idea of business ethics is a term with no real content. The anarchist political theorist Benjamin Franks takes an alternate path to connect anarchism and business ethics, reconstituting Friedman’s maxim as ‘the social responsibility of the anarchist is to destroy business’. For any critical thinker, whether anarchist or otherwise, it is clear that business ethics is in, at best, a morally paradoxical proposition.
