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Moral Capital
| Article
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10686 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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1 / 1986 |
3,376 Words |
| Author
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Jack Kemp
Jack Kemp is a Republican congressman from New York and a
presidential candidate. |
THE SPIRIT OF ENTERPRISE
George Gilder
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984
274 pp., $17.75 (cloth), $8.95 (paper)
The twin subjects of George Gilder's latest book are announced in the title: "enterprise" and "spirit".
Although the theoretical basis for capitalism was developed over two centuries ago by Adam Smith, Gilder does not believe capitalism has ever been adequately justified, however successful it has been in practice. The defenders of capitalism usually treat it as a "system"--efficient, progressive, free, but impersonal. Nineteenth-century capitalism became Darwinian and Malthusian, arguing for absolute economic freedom as the necessary precondition for a kind of relentless progress in a world that resembled a cosmic state of nature. Even in our day, orthodox conservative spokesmen for free-market economics often sound grim and uncompassionate.
The conventional defense of capitalism has always been unsatisfying, most of all because of its low view of people; Mankind's deepest characteristic is selfishness. The world is moved by a greed Leo Strauss once described as the "joyless quest for joy". The most successful are said to be the most self-interested, driven by their passion to accumulate huge profits. There is some inevitable law of nature, an "invisible hand" that allows the profiteering of the greedy to trickle down and unintentionally benefit the rest of us. Private vice equals public benefit or, as one parodist put it: "Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost', said
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