The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

appeal 57consumption. Feminist economists have been noting for some time thatwithout such love, and therefore without such altruistic purchases, thehuman race would promptly die out. A theory based on selfishness alonetherefore cannot work scientifically. And if it became the way the socialworld actually worked, the social world would collapse. Some balance ofvirtues is in order.Even in its four-volume completion, though, my project must leavemany such matters at hints and summations, at one-sided cases and abbreviatedexamples. The subject is too big. There is barely time for me to beapproximately fair to the defendant’s case. The book is heavily footnotedprecisely because of my inexpertise. You have some reason, I guess, to takeseriously my unattested remarks about economics or economic history, andmaybe the history of rhetoric—but not the ventures into philosophy orsocial psychology or Japanese history necessary to make the case. I will oftenirritate you, mistake facts out of ignorance, misunderstand the texts I amciting, choose the wrong grounds on which to argue, miss important textsand statistics and writers, fail to address all of your very reasonable doubts.My excuse for trying is that for a century and a half, since the high-browbranch of the clerisy turned decisively against capitalism, the prosecution’scase has been made over and over and over again, with fewer attempts to befair in reply. No class in history has internalized such abuse as the Westernbourgeoisie. Perhaps it’s good for our souls. But the result is that most educatedpeople’s minds, such as yours, are thronged with unfavorable opinionsof the way we live now. Time to listen to the other side.In this connection I sometimes wonder why the Western clerisy doesn’tgrow ...well ...bored by the reiterated attacks on capitalism and the marketand the bourgeoisie. How can they bear, I wonder, to hear yet anotherdiatribe against the evil of profit, the curse of materialism, the insincerity ofadvertising, the scandal of excessive consumption, the irreligiousness ofcommercial dealing, the corruptions of corporations, the ruination of theenvironment, the inevitable poverty consequent on a system of market capitalism,the horrors of piano lessons and learning French and settling downto a quality job?Since 1848, and in some versions back to the Hebrew prophets, it’s “thesame people making the same points about the same things to the samepeople,” as the ancient Greeks said. 1 The book-length jeremiads come andcome, unceasing waves every publishing season, from Dickens and Carlyle