Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

Personality and Culture 197munity or purposive organization—would be more demonstrablyvalid if three hundred years had brought us all theway. We would then see an unmistakable contrast betweentraditional community and the tragic terminal of a homogeneoussociety coordinated largely by the purposive authorityof the state. But except for the fascist and communistworld, the change did not go anywhere near that far. Itturned out that there was a third alternative: the marketsystem. It provides large-scale social coordination beyondthe possibilities of community yet does not require the subordinationof humankind to purposive organizations. It isthat third alternative—the market system—that makes itpossible to escape the purposive authoritative state as theway to coordinate on a large scale. As a societywide coordinatorof persons and organizations in the contemporaryworld, the market system preserves some important featuresof earlier societies. It preserves especially the multilateralcharacter of social interchange, thus the minimizationof unilateral authority characteristic of purposiveorganizations.HypothesesIn light of these cautions, we can examine a few hypothesesabout market-system effects on culture and personality.They will show how careful one must be in laying responsibilityon the market system yet not denying a responsibility.materialism and commercialismThe first common thesis—that market systems push participantsinto the pursuit of material ends—is absurd iftaken literally. As noted in Chapter 6, ends are not mate-