lawliberty.org
“A spectre is haunting capitalism,” says Paul Mueller – “the spectre of ‘higher things’.” An increasing number of thinkers on the right say that free enterprise and free trade have failed to deliver “cultural and spiritual goods” to large swathes of the population. Capitalism lacks soul, they say – we need “common-good capitalism” instead, a system that doesn’t glorify materialist consumption and greed, but gives virtue, justice, community and worship their proper place.
This makes the same mistake as some religious ascetics. Humans are both physical and spiritual beings, and it’s a mistake to neglect the lower in favour of the higher. As C.S. Lewis argued, “the highest does not stand without the lowest” nor should we “throw away our silver to make room for the gold”.
By analogy, the same applies to society as a whole. Free-market capitalism constitutes the body of society, and it is as good and necessary as are our physical bodies.
It is “the most natural structure and ordering of human society” that “respects moral agency, individual autonomy and responsibility, the rule of law, and voluntary and civil association”.
Similarly, just as eating poorly and not exercising may manifest as physical problems in the body – as obesity, say – yet are often “symptoms of spiritual issues that emerge from our actions”, so the shortcomings in market societies – “narcissism and consumerism, poor taste in entertainment, not
