The Moral Economy of the Rich

This article applies the concept of a ‘moral economy’ to the actions of the rich and powerful. The author focuses attention on business owners and provides a case study of a late nineteenth-century provincial businessman and his dismissal of two long-serving employees, an act which caused outrage in his community. The author questions how the morality of employment, job rights and dismissal developed subsequently and sketches developments up to the 1960s. The article then provides a more speculative discussion of the effects of changes in corporate law on corporate behaviour and suggests they have had a tendency to produce a moral irresponsibility in the behaviour of corporate officers.