Backlash on Entrepreneurship?

Jeff Wexler of Uncivilsociety.org has an interesting post about shared space and its lessons for social enterprise:

"What we are seeing today with the backlash against entrepreneurial rhetoric reflects a failure of social enterprise to respect the design logic of nonprofit form. We could view what's happened as shared space in reverse, eradicating cues in context to rely primarily on nominal signs. The problem: when the only thing visibly distinguishing nonprofit from for-profit is the word itself, the distinction becomes incoherent.

The core question, in short, is not whether nonprofits should adopt the values of the market. Such values have been their all along. Rather, we need to focus on how we can transform market relations into an identity beyond exchange. Then, and only then, will nonprofit social enterprise be sustainable."

Social enterprise embraces the ideals of market relationships and makes concerted efforts to curb the excesses and correct the flaws in imperfect markets (news flash: all markets are imperfect). Mainstream capitalism has become an extractive exercise -- stripmining the market and the enterprise to put value created into the pocket of a relatively few shareholders. Social enterprise, by striving for sustainability and mitigation of negative impacts on ecosystem in which it operates, both defines value differently and distributes it more broadly. It is not just entrepreneurship with a benevolent face.