11 8
PARTISAN REVIEW
CajJitalism and Culture
A second issue I'd like to raise concerns capitalism and its cultural
prerequisites. The Polish opposition has dealt with the issue of a democratic
political culture. I ask if you have also examined the question of cultural pre–
requisites of capitalism. You need no lessons fi-om us about human rights, or
the value of pluralism, and certainly nor about the va lue of elections. One
question I have about Poland's fllture is whether or not is has a culture that is
conducive to economic growth, as well as to political democracy. In Britain,
P.
T.
Bauer, and in the United States, Peter Berger and David Landes, have
placed renewed emphasis on the importance of the cultural prerequisites of
economic growth. They all ask a most embarrassing question: "Why are
some nations rich and others poor?"
Since Rosa Luxembourg and Lenin developed their theories ofimperi–
alism, and since the coining of the term "third world" at the Bandung confer–
ence of 1955, many development economists thought they had the answer.
"They," meaning the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, were
poor, because "we," the capitalist countries of Europe, the United States, and
Japan were rich. Conversely, "we, " were rich because we had exploited
"them. " Proposals for global redistribution in the form ora new world eco–
nomic order in the United Nations rest on this tale of good and evil. From the
end of World War II to the
19705,
this myth of a unitary Third World re–
mained intact, until it fell to pieces under the impact of the OPEC cartel and
the Asian economic mirade.
P.T. Bauer, in works such as
Eq1lality, the Third World and Economic
Delusion
and
Reality and Rhetoric ,
and Peter Berger, in his recent book,
The
Callitntist Revolution,
have criticized the idea of a "third world." The idea of
"the third world," they argue, is condescending and racist, ignoring as it does
the multiplicity of over one hundred diflcrent nation states. By ignoring this
multiplicity, such a blanket notion obscures the embarrassing tact that these
one hundred or so countries are not equally poor. Instead, they mark points
on a gradation of wealth. Moreover , some of the wealthiest are those that
had most contact with former colonial powers, while most of the poorest
were never colonized at all. Rather than seek the causes for their economic
misery or success in the international economic system, Bauer and Berger
examine the specific, national economic cultures to understand why some
nations are richer than others.
The short and simple answer is that where governments allow mar–
kets, encourage entrepreneurship, and foster private investment decisions
and the fi-ee movement oflabor, economic gTowth takes place. Where, on the
other hand, government bureaucrats have tried
to
p lan economies, discour–
age entrepreneurship, concentrate investment decisions in the state, and pre-
