Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

14Personality and CultureI do not hear of anxieties about the effects of the market systemon personality and culture from as many voices as declarethat it makes us prosperous and free. Yet for some observersof the market system, concerns about personalityand culture are intense.At his touted best, market man is blessed with a multiplicityof choices of career and life style. He is informed onthe burdens of each of the choices he might make, and he isfree to choose. Admirable! But is he ever at his best? For150 years many critics have said no. Not only Marx said no,but so also did art critics like John Ruskin, psychotherapistslike Erich Fromm, and social scientists–philosopherslike Herbert Marcuse, among many others. Adam Smithhimself joined the lament. Not often challenging marketsystemefficiency in output, they deplore the effects of itsdaily processes. To listen to their critiques or to go back toAristotle’s warnings against excesses of greed is to find adeeply disturbing picture of market man. If historically, atleast in some societies, the female personality seems lesscorrupted, it may be only because males engaged in themarket system while females long pursued their taskswithin the household.How do critics paint the portrait of market man? Theyallege that he excessively pursues the lower rather than thehigher values of life. They accept his pursuit of food andshelter but find him excessive in pursuit of ever more goodsand services, as well as money for its own sake, to the near