It is a bit gratuitous to review a long journal article as a
“book”, but there is a substantial piece by Jerry Z. Muller in the March/April
2013 issue of “Foreign Affairs” titled “Capitalism and Inequality”, starting on
p. 30. The basic link is here.
Muller points out that the belligerent attitude of the far
right to using taxes to pay for a social safety net can be downright dangerous
for stability and sustainability of capitalism.
On the other hand, he believes that the left should relinquish its idea
of victimization and by trying to bypass ideals of individual merit.
Muller points out that in early human history, most
immediate needs were met at home outside the market economy, and that the
expressive freedom of people was limited by religious or familial (or perhaps
feudal) institutions that demanded loyalty of the individual to ensure
stability.
A market economy allows individuals to specialize and avoid
engagement in activities in which they are weaker and emphasize their
strengths. But this does not happen
without the social development that normally must occur in the family. Muller spends some space tracing how the
relationships between family, gender, and the workplace changed over time with
technological revolution.
Muller does not take the role of family as far as he could,
instead, toward the end of the essay, talking about the proper perspective on
the public safety net and on programs to try to develop human capital, which
may be less successful in the future than they used to be.
I do think that social stability does have some relationship
to the idea of an individual social contract, the idea that any person should
achieve a certain level of functionality in the ability to relate to and help
others outside a direct economic interest.
Much of this expectation would relate to taking care of other generations,
and that isn’t limited just to the choice to have or not have children. But any society has, just as a matter of
logic, to decide what to do when some members don’t do certain things as well
as normally expected. Value of human
life and human rights requires respect for that person’s potential, but it has
a “pay if forward” component, in that the person (given some slack) in term
becomes more generous to others. If that
ethic is expected of everyone, there is less incentive for corruption in leadership
at the top. Yet, there is also something
about character here: it’s not good if
people say, “I can do the right thing only if I think others will”, but that
seems how things really work.
Although Muller doesn’t mention gay rights, it’s clear that
the gay community can become a target of such discussions, because gay people
usually are less likely to have their own children or (perhaps) conform to cultural
gender expectations as to how everyone “pitches in”. There is an issue of freedom, and yet
sometimes freedom is used to make (narcissistic) choices that don’t advance stability and
prosperity for others – and then we realize that this problem is already quite
familiar in the conventional heterosexual world already.
I can remember, during my own coming of age, a certain
almost violent repudiation of the “idea” of capitalism by some members of the
far left. At a personal level, as to the
appropriate use of personal expression and choice, the Left can be more moralistic
than the Right.
Muller is s professor of history at the Catholic University
of America in Washington DC. Perhaps this article is a fitting read on the Pope's last day in power.
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