In recent years genuine concerns have been raised about the influence of money on all areas of our social life and, in particular, on our democratic institutions. Think here of the issues raised in many quarters about the alleged use by the Trump family of their positions to make money which some regarded as a form of corruption.

Such concerns with the corruption of money are not new.  Religious leaders, literary notables and political figures have long condemned money as a source of deep moral corruption. The lure of filthy lucre is so strong and compelling that it leads ordinarily good people to do wicked things. Indeed this is a regular trope of novels, films and political tracts. But is such condemnation simply a matter of social attitude or social convention?   Is there anything objectively immoral about the pursuit of money? I suggest that although the pursuit of money is not inherently wrong, it does provide us with genuine moral hazards that are not simply a matter of social convention. These hazards will arise in any society where money is present because there are features of money that are universally harmful. These are not culturally relative phenomena.

In societies in which money exists, there are always concerns about both the buying and selling of sacrosanct goods and money’s effects on people’s motives.

The wrongness of selling the sacred is deeply ingrained in our cultural DNA. In religiously devout societies it is common for objects of devotion to be prohibited from market sale. Failing to keep such items outside the market has been often been the cause of social condemnation. Think here of Luther’s condemnation of the Medieval Church’s practice of selling indulgences; that is, selling time out of purgatory. 

But this anti-commercial attitude is not only found in religious thinking. In our more secular context there is a view that to sell or commercialise some things involves a failure of respect or failure to treat  them with the dignity that is properly required.  The German Philosopher Immanuel Kant famously claimed that every thing has a price or a dignity - and if it has a price then it does not have a dignity. Here think of debates over slavery, prostitution or the sale of human kidneys. Those who trade in people, sex or kidneys are commonly said not be treating people with the respect that they are due.  They are being treated as mere means to commercial ends - or so it is regularly said.

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"We should regard money as a moral hazard that provides strong temptations for morally pernicious behaviour"
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The wrongness of the profit motive is also a common trope in Western culture. This is a theme with a very long history. Aristotle thought that it was unnatural to produce things for the express purpose of making money; a person should only produce things for domestic consumption and only sell any excess one has. Many early Christian thinkers were completely opposed to commerce, although others such as Aquinas thought the pursuit of profit was morally legitimate so long as the aim was to provide for one’s family.

Clearly general social attitudes to the profit motive have changed considerably since Ancient and Medieval times. Observing such changes, some readers might be tempted to conclude that there is nothing morally wrong with the profit motive. Another possible conclusion would be that our moral attitudes towards money and the profit motive are nothing other than products of our historical and cultural backgrounds.