The author launches a devastating attack on what is known by various names such as "enlightened capitalist", "conscious capitalism", "conscious business", "enlightened consumers", etc. It is primarily a popular view of capitalism that infects upper middle class people who suffer from the guilt of their active and key support of capitalist enterprises. Without these people the rule of capitalism would collapse within a week. Therefore capitalists like David Rockefeller are aware of their critical role in maintaining their system and class rule, and reward them accordingly. As a result they are co-opted into collaborating with capitalists to exploit workers all over the world, supporting wars to secure control of cheap labor and markets, damaging the environment, off-shoring their profits to evade taxes, etc.
Depending on the critical nature of the role that individual upper middle class people play in maintaining their system, capitalists reward them with salaries and perks far greater than ordinary wage-slave workers. They enjoy the advantages of an independent work style, home ownership, securing higher education for their children, owning a smart new car, enjoying extended vacations, and many other features of a respectable lifestyle. However, they are at least partially conscious that they have made many compromises along the way to achieve such advantages such as doing things which they don't agree with. There are times when some of them feel guilty about this and about having so many advantages over ordinary workers with the result that they adopt such views to justify their support for serving the capitalist system.
He wraps up his essay with this conclusion:
Working within the capitalist system is never going to work out. Ending the capitalist system, however, is guaranteed to provide the opportunities for the fundamental changes which are needed, and needed now. There is no “enlightened capitalism” on a corporate scale.And to clarify, there is no going back to earlier stages of the system even if we wanted to--and why would we want to? The logical dynamic of capitalism is for ever increasing concentrations of wealth and power for a tiny class of people.