The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

138 chapter 8acknowledgment of solidarity. But why are people so offended? On thevending-machine characterization of others that the Max U model assumes,no offense would be taken. But people do take offense. Even in a workplaceof tough-guy American men, the avaricious, competitive, Dilbertian, “businesslike”Prudence can’t be all there is.In other words, it’s not the case that market capitalism requires or generatesloveless people. More like the contrary. Markets and even the muchmalignedcorporations encourage friendships wider and deeper than theatomism of a full-blown socialist regime or the claustrophobic, murderousatmosphere of a “traditional” village. Modern capitalist life is lovesaturated.Olden life was not loving; communitarian life was not; and actuallyexisting socialist life decidedly was not. No one dependent on a distant godsuch as the Gosplan or Tradition can feel safe. Paradoxically, a market linkedso obviously to our individual projects makes us safer and more loving.As the libertarian Catholic economist Jennifer Roback Morse puts it,a capitalist business partnership is like a marriage, not like a temporary contract:“The contract between the partners does not govern every detail of therelationship’s functioning. The partners do not attempt to specify everyduty of each party during the course of their relationship: only the mostbasic duties are so specified. The contractual relationship between partnersis not the end of the relationship or the method for how the parties relate toone another. The parties expect to do a great many things of mutual benefitthat cannot be included in the set of legally enforceable promises.” 32 Sheargues that contract-like marriages, and contract-like business partnerships,do not work very well. A lack of committed love “undermines the selfgivingrequired at the heart of the committed marriage: we practice holdingback on our partners; we practice calculating.”