Whether the allegations of sexual harassment and racism against the World Economic Forum (WEF) are true or false, they teach us lessons. The organization’s investigative report is worth reading. the wall street journal (Shalini Ramachandran and Khadeeja Safdar, “Behind Davos, accusations of a toxic workplace” WSJJune 29, 2024) and its follow-up (“World Economic Forum launches survey on workplace cultureJuly 19, 2024). To summarize the investigation report in the WSJin his own words:
Under Schwab’s watch for decades, the Forum allowed a hostile atmosphere toward women and black people to develop in its own workplace, according to internal complaints, email exchanges and interviews with dozens of current and former Forum employees and others familiar with the Forum’s practices.
To the extent that these accusations are true, they will show how hypocritical men can violate the fashionable DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) ideology they advocate. To the extent that they are false, they will show how a group-based, victim-driven ideology can incite unethical or spiteful employees to falsely accuse innocent individuals. One way or another, the WEF will have been caught in its own ideological trap.
The World Economic Forum in Davos is “economic” only in the sense that it is a cartel of business leaders, rentiers, and politicians who, in short, want to use the coercive power of the state to rip off ordinary people. Its unifying idea seems to be that collective choices have absolute priority over individual choices and that its own shade of soft statism is the one that must be imposed. The organization jumps on any fad—one of them being DEI—that will help increase its reputation and the power of its ideal leaders. Its founder and current president, Klaus Schwab, and a co-author have written, among other clichés (Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret, Covid-19: The Great Reset (Editions du Forum, 2020)):
In the post-pandemic world, questions of equity will be at the forefront, from stagnant real incomes for the vast majority to the redefinition of our social contracts. … We are now at a crossroads. One path will lead us to a better world: more inclusive, more equitable, and more respectful of Mother Nature.
(To further illustrate their chameleonic softness, they even speak of “societal (equality”, which seems more scientific and serious than the standard “social equality”, apparently outdated and perhaps too tinged with connotations of a spontaneous nature.)
THE the wall street journal The investigation found that
The Forum has at times struggled to live up to its ideals of promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.
In 2020, for example, the WEF published Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 4.0: A Toolkit for Leaders to Accelerate Social Progress in the Future of Work. It is Annual report 2020-2021 prides itself on “embedding diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice,” boasting of its racial consciousness:
Over the past year, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States and around the world, the Forum also launched the Corporate Racial Justice Partnership initiative. Nearly 60 companies have joined the alliance, committing to take immediate action on racial justice within their own organizations and working together to drive systems change.
Consider sexual harassment, which the zeitgeist often confuses with non-vulgar and non-intimidating compliments. As long as men and women work together, innuendos and tensions cannot be avoided. Harassment and intimidation are another matter. Just as economics prevents the neglect of individual choices, classical liberalism promotes a culture of individual respect and dignity. Its positive and normative theoretical foundation rests on individual consent. It is less likely that a culture of individual contempt will develop when the individual is conceived as freely choosing his or her acts of exchange and possessing a theoretical veto over collective choices.
The same goes for racial issues. If we believe that WSJBased on the WEF examples, management appears to have been more responsive to vulgar racism in its work environment. The organization still faces legal action or perhaps private discrimination, which is consistent with its preference for government solutions to all problems. It is not difficult to see how, in an ideological environment of power bargaining and disdain for individuals, discrimination based on mere group membership, a consequence of tribalism, might be more prevalent than in a culture of individual dignity.
Libertarianism and classical liberalism constitute the only political philosophy that supports DEI in the sense of free diversity, formal equality and individualism, as opposed to forced and artificial diversity, arbitrary equalization and authoritarian inclusion. The WEF is on the side of the latter.
