• Hugh Mackay
• Griffith Review: Participation Society

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14 May 2009Social researcher Hugh Mackay's essay on on making social investments in our communities. 

The former prime minister once dreamed of Australia as a nation of shareholders, enriched by their participation in the adventure of capitalism. Properly conceived, that is certainly one form of social engagement. If it looks a little less appealing to the punters today than it did back then, that might be because the full value of that kind of participation has not been widely or well enough understood.

Investing in our economic future is a worthwhile thing to do, and is most rewarding in the long term if, like philanthropy, it is undertaken as a form of social engagement. That’s how the fi nest capitalists, from Adam Smith onwards, have approached it. Such investment is a symbol of the investor’s faith in the future and in the integrity and potency of the enterprises they choose to support via their shareholding. Committed investment helps build communities and hold them together.

If, by contrast, the stock market is conceived of as a vast casino where buyers and sellers behave as if they are nothing more than gamblers, the system is bound to break down because the motivations are warped. Exploitation, motivated by greed, is a very different thing from investment. It is also a very different thing from social engagement. Investment is the key to the creation of stronger communities and, ultimately, to a stronger nation.