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of the truth. After all, the evident wealth of European countries and of
North America cannot be dismissed as merely spurious. Material wealth
has produced more than junk, and has brought more than social pathol–
ogy. After all, people from poor countries like to migrate to wealthy
ones. The public does more than repair damages resulting from the char–
acteristics of modern society; its growth is not a burden on productivity
but rather a necessary precondition for further sustained economic
growth. This observation runs counter to conservative convictions, ac–
cording to which the public sector, higher taxes, extensive welfare, mag–
nanimous public investment are perceived as a drag on the quasi-natural
dynamics of private entrepreneurship. Surprisingly, the left often echoes
these sentiments. It too conceptualizes the public sector as something to
be wrought free from the private one, as something juxtaposed to the
private sectors' principles of efficiency and dynamism. The left does not
accept that those activities of the public sector may be solid investments
for long-term progress toward higher economic efficiency.
Marx assumed that societies are shaped by the way goods and services
are produced. He predicted that a more efficent method of production
would substitute itself for a less efficient one, and that the political order
would have to reflect the needs of the more efficient mode of produc–
tion. Marx thus predicted the downfall of capitalism not because of its
social injustice but because of its economic inefficiency. And he predicted
the victory of "socialism" not because it would be morally superior to
"capitalism" but because it would be more productive. Eventually,
societies and their politics would be shaped by the new mode of
production. What would this new mode of production be? According
to Marx it would emerge in the economically advanced countries.
Communism as practiced in Eastern Europe eevidently did not propel
these states towards economic leadership. Though there were some
successes in the early phases of industrialization, communism was
incapable of effectively organizing production at a more advanced stage.
The United States, Japan, and the Scandinavian and Central European
countries, all democracies and "capitalistic," have been more successful, in
spite of fundamental differences among them. It is to them we have to
look for the emergence of new political systems. Individual efforts are
central to the American system; a communal approach to the Japanese.
Europe is between these two extremes: the communality exorcised from
the realm of direct production is reintroduced by politics. The
centrifugal forces set in motion in the private sector are balanced by the
centripetal political efforts to maintain solidarity, equity, communality.
This "European approach" recently has become less exemplary and
enticing. At the core of this unease are doubts about the size, the func-
