JEFFREY HERF
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vent the free movement of/abor, economic growth does not take place. The
phenomenal economic success of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong
Kong has been a huge embarrassment for Latin American intellectuals
accustomed to blaming all their problems on Yankee imperialism, and to
African leaders whose visions of state socialism have crumbled in war and
economic disaster. Today, the argument that socialism denies freedom in or–
der to bring about economic growth is in shambles. It cannot offer either.
The work of Bauer, Berger, and Landes raises the issue of how a na–
tion's cultural attitudes towards capitalism aflect its capacity for economic
growth. One of the most famous hypotheses of modern social science was
Max Weber's argument that there was an aflinity between the spirit of
capitalism and Protestantism. He began with the observation that in Europe,
capitalism was most advanced in those places where Protestantism was
strongest. His explanation was that the Protestantism fostered an ethic of
individualist asceticism which legitimated in the eyes of believers the accu–
mulation of capital. It broke through Catholicism's disdain for money-making
and capitalist enterprise. Today, Berger argues that the Asian capitalist
economies benefit fi-om an Eastern form of asceticism which initially lacks the
individualism of Western capitalism. In both cases, what is decisive is a cul–
tural outlook which breaks through traditional hostility to the methodical ac–
cumulation of wealth and its use for long-term investments.
I've digressed a bit into this discussion because the historical moment of
political change in Eastern Europe is placing the distinctive features of the
countries of Eastern Europe into sharper relief. "Eastern Europe," like the
term 'Third World," gives way to more tangible historical communities, to
the individual nation-states of Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslo–
vakia, and Yugoslavia. The question for each of these states, including Poland,
is what cultural resources exist on which a thriving and dynamic economy
can be built. If newspaper reports are to be believed, there are more Marx–
ists in Western universities than in Poland, but assuming a few remain here,
Marxism is an important cultural barrier to economic growth. Yet European
anticapitalism is much older than Marxism. One of its oldest homes is the
Catholic Church. Internationally, the Church has generally spoken more
about redistribution of wealth than it has about the conditions for its creation.
How Polish Catholicism responds to capitalist economics will be a central
question
in
your future.
How will people who have participated in a movement entitled
"Solidarity" respond to the quite different, at times contrary, pulls of
individualism and competition? Where, in your national culture, are the re–
sources for economic individualism which every capitalist economy requires?
I should think you would want to talk a great deal to people from Catholic
