The basic problem with private enterprise is not really the profit –driven nature of business, I think. Yes, the single-mindedness of the profit motive is behind the overwhelming influence of the marketing and advertizing industries to promote mindless consumerism and materialism. These industries rely upon instilling within the public a sense of innate inadequacy, dissatisfaction, selfishness and competitiveness to create markets for unnecessary goods. Furthermore, promoting sin and disobedience to Allah and His Messenger ﷺ opens up more opportunities for business than promoting a righteous lifestyle.
However, it seems to me that the core problem, which, if solved, could potentially remedy all of the other negative ramifications arising from the profit motive, is the corporate ownership structure.
When massive companies with tremendous reach and influence are primarily dedicated to the enrichment of a tiny group of super-rich shareholders who are themselves completely isolated from any destructive consequences of the company’s policies and practices, it is inevitable that this reach and influence will subordinate the public good to the greed of shareholders. It is even more certain that the needs of society will be ignored when these are foreign companies and the shareholders are geographically removed from the impact their companies have on the society, instead of just isolated by their class status.
There is an obvious solution to this problem, and it is not state ownership (as the Communists believe); it is worker ownership. The people who do the work should own the enterprise. The people who produce the profit should own the wealth. If you expand the decision-making body within a company to include workers, and give workers a stake in the profitability of the company, you will automatically connect profit-making decisions to the good of the community in which the workers live.
There was a very interesting and creative proposal several years ago in Sweden to implement a payroll tax, like the tax imposed in the United States that funds the Social Security program. This payroll tax, however, would not be used to fund citizens’ retirement (retirement has its own tax), Sweden proposed to use this tax to buy out corporate shareholders and deliver company ownership to the employees who worked for them. Of course, the super-rich vehemently opposed the measure, and it was defeated. But it was a really ingenious and realistic plan for the gradual transition to a worker-owned corporate system.
This is the kind of thinking we need to explore.