Spirit of Democratic Capitalism by Michael Novak

Spirit of Democratic Capitalismby Anonymous

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October 02, 2002: You are a very lucky person, because you are thinking of buying one of the most important books of our time. It was written by a Catholic to persuade Catholics that democratic capitalism is not a moral slum but a school of moral uplift. That is because democratic capitalism does three things. It tries to limit power--economic, political, and moral--and bring it under law. It encourages reciprocity and honest dealing. And it also teaches people that the way to thrive is to live and work to serve the needs of others. A similar point is made by Frederick Turner in ?Shakespeare?s Twenty-first Century Economics.? Democratic capitalism goes beyond the idea of limiting government power by the separation of powers. It differentiates the whole of society into a political sector, an economic sector, and a moral-cultural sector, and sets each as a balance to check the power of the other sectors. The socialists, of course, try to turn back the clock to a pre-democratic-capitalist society where everything is reabsorbed back into politics. This is a brilliant and intoxicating book. After finishing it, I immediately started back at the beginning so that I could possess all its knowledge and wisdom.