Here’s a brief item from The Press Trust of India, via China Digital Times, that reports:

Family-run businesses form the core of China’s private enterprises.
More than 90 per cent of three million plus such businesses are family
owned and among such enterprises, the vast majority are operated
according to family-style management, the first-issue of the "Report on
the Development of China’s Private Enterprises" says.

Now, this is not a great surprise, given the rapid dissolution of socialism in China and the tendency, in Chinese societies, especially before the pressures of globalization have grown too powerful, for more personal, network-style business practices, as opposed to impersonal (and maybe idealized), market-based business.   But a question arises here: to what extent does the profit motive of business undermine the Confucian notion of family?

     Historically, the Confucian emphasis on the family played some role – a complicated role – in the development of Chinese business.  Even though (as mentioned in the previous post) classical Confucian thought disdained the profit motive, it did not prevent a very robust commercial class from emerging in China.  I am one of those who think Max Weber goes too far in his argument that capitalism was impossible in China: ideology alone does not determine economic practice, and state regulation of business did not crush the Chinese propensity to "truck, barter and exchange," to borrow a phrase from Adam Smith. 

     I raise these historical thoughts to make a philosophic point, however.  While Confucianism influenced the development of economic behavior in China, we should not, therefore, turn around and suggest that an economically-oriented family unit would somehow satisfy a Confucian moral standard. 

     I think that, were Confucius to come back and look at how economic priorities have come to influence family life in China – and in the US as well – he would be very dismayed. 

      For Confucius, the family was the center of living a moral life.  It was the location of our closest loving relationships that we need to cultivate and extend into the world to achieve Humanity.   When we – whether in contemporary China or the US – allow a profit motive or a strategy of material gain to define how we manage our family affairs, we would, from a Confucian point of view, be undermining the ethic of care that should  shape our interpersonal interactions.

     In the end, Confucius was not a capitalist.  And while, historically, his ideas may have influenced Chinese business practices, philosophically he would reject as diverting at least, and immoral at worst, the capitalism that has taken his name.

     The Master said: "The noble-minded are clear about Duty.  Little people are clear about profit."  (Analects 4.16)