How to read David Brooks on social enterprise

Social enterprise ostensibly aims to introduce the rigorous analysis found in business culture to the world of public benefit. To an extent it succeeds in doing this, except in regard to its on PR. The Darwinian rhetorical analysis of corporate texts has little place in our world--just look at the critical reaction to Allan Benamer's routine parsing of a Convio press release and you'll find reactions you'd rarely if ever encounter in the rough and tumble real world.

Today's New York Times offers another opportunity for us to think about the tentative future of social enterprise, and my bet is the real message is going to be missed. The occasion: David Brooks' opinion column on social entrepreneurship, Thoroughly Modern Do-Gooders.

If I were to give this piece the typical SE-friendly read, I'd write about how this sort of recognition is a sign that the movement has truly arrived, even if the mainstream media is actually a bit late to the game. But that's not what's really going on.

The timing is one clue. Note when the article appeared--Brooks touts the venture-capital model of philanthropy a week after the collapse of Bear Stearns exposed systemic problems in the investment world, problems that persist despite the post-bailout dead cat bounce.

Another clue: Brooks' description of social enterprise as a "decentralized" post-welfare-state movement that limits the role to government in administering social programs. If it sounds like there's a resonance here with Reagan-era public policy, you're not hearing things--that's the perspective from which Brooks speaks.

In a nutshell, what we have in Brooks' column is not an emblem of triumph for social enterprise but a signal of an ideology in retreat. Brooks is writing this now because free-market capitalism and conservative federalism are in desperate need of validation outside politics and pundits. McCain, Obama, Clinton, Congress, the mainstream media--no matter where you look, the future seems to trend more toward government control than the Reagan Revolution. In this context Brooks' appeal to social enterprise is similar to the use of charity in commercial advertising. It's an attempt to borrow goodwill--if you're not going to believe the American Enterprise Institute, listen to social entrepreneurs.

Maybe this will work, but I doubt it. Yes, Brooks is on target in linking social entrepreneurship to conservative social policy; it's a connection, in fact, that I highlighted in my recent StartingBloc talk as one of the ironies of modern progressivism. But if you pay close attention to what people are actually saying both within social enterprise and charity more generally, you'll notice that the social enterprise is old Reagan in new wineskins. Rather, it's what you might call yes-but federalism. Private social entrepreneurship is otherwise the ideal, but national health care is a necessity. Companies need to promote environmental sustainability, but the government needs to be the prime mover. And maybe . . . a hedge spoken in whispers as loud as a roar . . . the focus on private initiative has gone too far, such that we have lost sight of the substantial good that government can do.

If you want to see the future of social enterprise, you have to do more than round up the usual appealing suspects. Robert Reich's Supercapitalism, Jim Collins' Good to Great and the Social Sectors, Michael Edwards' forthcoming Just Another Emperor and columns like this one today in the New Statesman--whatever we might think about their particular objections, we ignore them to our peril.