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There are indeed liberal and productive forms of capitalism. Invariably, these bear the indelible imprint of Western socialism or of solidaristic social Christianity. The collapse of the Communist regimes by no means entails the imminent triumph of an enlightened capitalism across large areas of the earth's surface. An appreciably more savage version of capitalism is dominant in many societies (in Latin America, for instance). As they consider the economic and social costs of their integration into the world market, the peoples of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have good reason to be apprehensive. In our own nation, meanwhile, the loud, triumphant rejoicing of 1989 has given way to more sober reflection on our own condition. We struggle, after all, with cultural confusion, economic stagnation, and social conflict in equal measure--while our citizenry is increasingly ambivalent about the remnants of our public life. This essay asks if we in the United States have the intellectual and spiritual resources to think anew about the relationships of individual liberty and social obligation, market function and public sovereignty, public good and private interest. The metahistorical flatness of our imaginative horizon, the increasing fragmentation of our social existence, have so affected our cultural institutions that the sphere of public argument is constricted and deformed. We confront, instead, a situation rather like that depicted in Breughel's painting of the tower of Babel. Work on the edifice of our common life has all but ceased, as architects and artisans contend with one another in strange tongues. Political and social philosophy have become domains for yet another set of academic specialists, who hardly address a public. Those pursuing inquiry into history and society often suppose that they can dispense with questions of direction, purpose, and value --and so philosophize uncritically. The larger issues that underlie our problems, then, are often relegated to a background dimly perceived and even more dimly depicted.
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