The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

22 apologyV. Probatio C: And Improves Our EthicsBut.If we had gained a better material world, two cars in the garage andChicago-style, deep-dish, stuffed-spinach pizza on the table, but hadthereby lost our souls, I personally would have no enthusiasm for theachievement. I urge you to adopt the same attitude. A good name is ratherto be chosen than great riches. For what is a man profited, if he shall gainthe whole world, and lose his own soul?I do not want to rest the case for capitalism, as some of my fellow economistsfeel professionally obligated to do, on the material achievementalone. My apology attests to the bourgeois virtues. I want you to come tobelieve with me that they have been the causes and consequences of moderneconomic growth and of modern political freedom.True, any well-wisher of humankind will count the relief of poverty overlarge parts of the world as desirable, at least if she could be sure that noexcess corruption of souls was involved. No good person delights in themisery of others. Even many people skeptical of a Washington consensus ofneoliberal capitalism agree that globalization has been desirable materially.It has, as one of the skeptics, Joseph Stiglitz, wrote in 2002, “helped hundredsof millions of people attain higher standards of living, beyond whatthey, or most economists, thought imaginable but a short while ago.”He means bringing the 1.3 billion people—70 percent of them women—now living on a dollar a day to two dollars, and then to four, and then toeight, not merely the further enrichment of the West, which neither he norI regard as especially important. “The capitalist achievement,” wrote JosephSchumpeter in 1942, “does not typically consist in providing more silkstockings for queens.” That can be achieved merely by redirecting aristocraticplundering to silk factories. The achievement consists “in bringing[silk stockings] within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily diminishingamounts of effort.” 45To halt such a good thing, as some of the Seattle-style opponents thinkthey wish, would be according to Stiglitz “a tragedy for all of us, and especiallyfor the billions who might otherwise have benefited.” 46 The economistCharles Calomiris, who supports globalization on egalitarian grounds, asI do, argues that “if well-intentioned protestors could be convinced thatreversing globalization would harm the world’s poorest residents (as it