Michael Novak writes in The National Review, Democratic Capitalism  The prospering of free societies depends on certain moral and cultural practices. Sept 24, 2013

Excerpt:

What I have been trying to bring out in these brief remarks on the economy and the polity of democratic capitalism is the constitution of its third and most important part: its moral culture. For neither capitalism nor democracy can succeed without specific new virtues (virtues not often called upon in previous eras) and new sorts of institutions to support them. Thus, the moral-cultural system of democratic capitalism is more important, more fundamental, and deeper than its political system and its economic system.

Without certain virtues in the people, neither a capitalist economy nor a free polity will long endure. A free economy, for example, needs creativity, invention, self-sacrifice, and disciplined work. A free polity needs self-restraint. The first meaning of “self-government” is self-control — unless citizens can well govern their own lives individually, they cannot govern themselves as a polity. A free polity cannot long function unless there is intense cooperation among various parties. It must foster reasoned compromise, as against narrow-minded insistence on “my way or nothing.”

What is crucial about capitalism is the virtues that it inculcates and demands. What is crucial about democracy is the virtues that it inculcates and demands.

Briefly put, the third act in the history of democratic capitalism is the moral question: Granted that a people has gained economic liberty from poverty and political liberty from tyranny, what is the moral ecology necessary for its survival as a free people, its future improvement, and its prospering? A corrupt, lazy, dishonest, and decadent society cannot preserve human liberty. It will breed a nation of serfs and slaves, who do not want to carry the responsibilities of free persons, but want only to have others take care of their needs.

Rigorous reflection shows, therefore, that democratic capitalism is an exceedingly difficult model to live up to. Its costs in moral effort and moral training are formidable. That all nations fail at these preconditions in some respects is to be expected — free societies are made from poor clay such as us. But they must cultivate sufficient virtue among their people to survive and move ahead.

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