286. Managing "Moral Capital"

If Machiavelli didn't coin the expression "moral capital" he should have.  It's such a good term to bring into the power game.  Does your Republican colleague want to propose destroying the Iranian missile sites?  "We've got the bombs and missiles to do it."  No, friend, after the Bush interventions "our party has almost no moral capital left" (Rich Lowry, NYT 10-4-06).   Material capital is not enough.

Your moral capital is your goodness quantity, measured in the currency of the dominant ethic.  (Forget that no respectable philosopher will quantify goodness; this is Machiavelli.)  Players in the domestic market don't hesitate to quantify.   The pro bono chairman at a large New York law firm once figured  that "20 pro bono cases, involving the homeless, for example, or nonprofit cultural institutions" balanced one defense of a death-penalty case (NYT, 12-30-94).  So when the senior partner, his Prince, saw some immorality coming up he'd know how much pro bono he had to have in the bank to meet it.

An adviser like that must have been at Lord Grenville's elbow when Napoleon reinstituted the slave trade.  What an opportunity!  "Abolish it here!  Abolish it!"  The British prime minister did so.  Right (as the newspapers noticed) in the middle of a major war with France!  The world rang with approval.  A moral-market coup.  Thanks, Bonaparte.

"Squander" is what's most frequently done with moral capital, as a review of the NYT archives shows.  It's what the U.S. Government, by catering to "big corporations and capitalist fat cats," did to the pile it had accumulated during the Civil War (William Grimes, 4-18-07).
 It's what the Begin government did to Israel's often-drawn-upon account in Congress when it invaded Lebanon in 1982, and allowed the Sabra and Shatila massacres (Hedrick Smith, 9-26-82).  It's what we do, "for trash," when we "illegally detain and torture, usually with no yield of usable intelligence" (Lance Morrow, 1-29-06).  Beware of moral spendthrifts.

You can sell moral investment to a materialist by noting its dividends: heightened motivation in your soldiers, more willing allies, a more permissive world opinion (the weighted average of all the various ethics).   Then there is esthetic capital, which pays what has to be recognized as a dividend.  The Parthenon weighs something against the deficit left by the Melian massacre.  Anger against Florence for its Volterra atrocities is reduced by Brunelleschi's dome and Ghiberti's  doors.

I begin to see an ideal national broker.  He'll invest in "those who share our [democratic] values" around the world, especially in Russia,  and "build moral capital for the future" (Opinion, NYT 3-5-12).  He'll "leverage the political and moral capital Sept. 11 provided" (Opinion, NYT  9-8-02) and get everybody on our side.  He'll keep us all in the black.  Come Lord Buffett, come.  Manage, oh manage, our dwindling fund.