120
PARTISAN REVIEW
Italy
and Spain, both of which emerged from dictatorships, have experienced
rapid economic growth, and have managed to reconcile Catholic traditions
with the development of capitalism. How have they become richer without
losing their souls? The historical and contemporary evidence is that countries
do not become wealthier ifthey have a national culture hostile to capitalism.
The issue of how you reconcile Western political and economic liberalism
with Poland's national culture is as important as any you face.
I would like to make one last point about capitalism and culture. Daniel
Bell, one ofAmerica's foremost sociologists of the postwar era, in works such
as
The Coming of Post-Industrial Soriety
and
The Cultural Contradictions of
Capitalism,
has reiterated an important point made by Tocqueville, john
Stuart Mill, Emile Durkheim and a host of other social theorists: CapitaJjsm as
an economic system may undermine values that serve to hold a society
together and that create a basis for defining shared sacrifice and just reward.
Our budget deficit is a monument to the erosion of a shared national culture
upon which our government could ask us all to carry our fair share of taxa–
tion. Unfortunately, George Will has been one of the few American conser–
vative and centrist intellectuals in the past decade to point out that the
American people are undertaxed, not overtaxed, in relation to the tasks they
want government to perform. The root of this undertaxation, as great liber–
als such as Tocqueville and john Stuart Mill understood , was the deficiency
in
a common culture raising individual concerns beyond those of self-interest.
My point is that a functioning capitalist economy requires a culture whose
origins do not lie in capitalism, and which preserves values beyond those of
self~interest.
In
this sense, you may very well be able to turn your Catholic tradi–
tions, and - who knows - maybe even elements of your socialist traditions
into a set of national values that address political issues, such as protection of
the global environment, that the market alone will not address. Capitalism,
unlike communism, does not promise an end to politics. The politics of coun–
tries have made capitalism rather different in each. Contrary
to
the rhetorical
flourishes of the
Communi~t
Manifesto,
according to which capitalism would
eliminate all national differences in favor of one universal culture, it has ev–
erywhere born the stamp of the national cultures and polities in which it has
emerged. Polish capitalism would be quite different from capitalism in the
United States,japan, or West Germany.
I can summarize what I've said as follows: I
f
you want democracy,
over a long period of time, and if you want to improve the standard of living
in this country, you must, sooner or later, develop a capitalist economy.
Conversely, if you do not develop a capitalist economy, the democracy for
which you have struggled so courageously will not be secure. But, if you do
