Is Capitalism Good for You?
A review of Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce by Deirdre N. McCloskey
By Alan Ryan
Volume 53, Number 20, December 21, 2006 of The New York Review of Books
Filed under academic interests [bourgeois virtues][reviews]
The idea of providing an exuberant defense of bourgeois virtues seems on the face of it absurd. In common parlance, 'bourgeois' is synonymous with 'humdrum' and 'conventional.' The ideal bourgeois citizen is cautious and anxious; given to deferred gratification, to considering the rainy days ahead, and to paying the price in present pleasures foregone. The bourgeois emulates the ant, not the grasshopper, working hard during the good times to survive the bad times that must lie ahead. When critics talk of 'bourgeois virtues,' it is often with a sneer. Prudence is a virtue, but 'bourgeois prudence' is a synonym for timidity and meanness; and 'bourgeois courage' sounds very like a contradiction in terms. Exuberance seems foreign to the bourgeois soul; but a book that opens with the ringing declaration 'I bring good news about our bourgeois lives' promises to be long on exuberance and short on anxiety. And so it proves.
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Continues at the Review's electronic edition. Subscription required. 4648 words.
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RELATED ARTICLES
See also McCloskey's published articles on "Ethics, Bourgeois Virtues, and Economics"
Praise for The Bourgeois Virtues
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"The Bourgeois Virtues by Deirdre McCloskey"
Interesting write-up by the anonymous blogger of Big Sky Ideas, 20 February 2012.
McCloskey "has written a bracingly well-informed and original book. She argues that capitalism, far from being immoral as much of the left think, or amoral as many libertarians believe, is in fact fully compatible with human and ethical flourishing. And its record on actually encouraging flourishing is much better than the alternatives."Benjamin M. Freidman, Harvard Robert W. Fogel, Nobel laureate in economics Martha Nussbaum, Professor of Law and Ethics, University of Chicago Ellen Charry, Professor of Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Professor of Psychology, author of Flow Jean Bethke Elshtain, Political Science and School of Religion, University of Chicago
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An Obvious Secret, James Seaton, The Weekly Standard Magazine 16(36), 6 June 2011.
Ethics for an Age of Commerce," Kasey Dufresne, Open Economics, 5 June 2011.
Why Business is Good for Your Soul, Tom R. Wells, 2011.
Peter Boettke, Economic Affairs, 2007
Capital Virtues, James Halteman, 2007
Steve Goddard, History Wire, 2007
Sten Jönsson, Scandinavian Journal of Management 23, 2007
Deirdre McCloskey's Market Path to Virtue, Andrea Gabor, Strategy+Business 43
Paul Oslington, forthcoming in Faith and Economics
Class Act, James R. Otteson, Azure Online, Winter 5768 / 2008, no. 31.
Feeling Capitalist Guilt?, Neil Reynolds, Toronto Globe and Mail, 2006
Is Capitalism Good for You? Alan Ryan, New York Review of Books, 2006
Capitalism Without Tears, Matt Ridley, Wall Street Journal, 2006
In defence of ... the bourgeoisie and capitalism?, Scott Taylor, ephemeraweb.org
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Reply to David Wootton
Letter to John Wilson, editor, Books and Culture
Reply to McCarraher
Reply to McInturf
Reply to comments by Sandra Pert and David Levy, June 2007.
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[Audio file] "Session on Socialism, Racism, and Method," Gustavo Morles on McCloskey's Bourgeois Virtues, Mises Institute, 12 March 2011.
Radio broadcast on Bourgeois Virtues, "Isn't Capitalism Basically Corrupt?" Host: Michael McKay. 16 January 2010.
Video: (36:25 min.) Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0, 26 December 2007.
Podcast: The Bourgeois Virtues from Russell Robert's "EconTalk," 3-31-08 (60 min.)
Podcast: Sam Tanenhaus andJennifer Shuessler on The Bourgeois Virtues, July 30, 2006. Portion on McCloskey begins at 9:08.
Podcast: Nick Shulz and McCloskey, "What's the Big Idea?" TCS Daily, September 12, 2006
Podcast: The Invisible Hand with Chris Gondek, September, 2006
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Bourgeois Virtues?, DNM, May 2012
"Good Commercial Faith and the City," Mark Roark, 13 December 2011.
"Whether we segregate capitalists from capitalist poets, we nonetheless come to the same conclusion as Emerson and McCloskey — that commerce creates the potential for humans to be good."The Buchanan Lecture, 7 April 2006 Bourgeois Ideology as Rhetoric, 2007 Thrift as a Virtue, Historically Criticized, 2007, Revue de Philosophe Economique 8 and Hedgehog Review Who is Prudentia?, January 2007 The Discreet Virtues of the Bourgeoisie, History Today, September 2006 Bourgeois Virtues? Cato Institute, May 2006 Comments on The Bourgeois Virtues, April 2007: Spurgin | Hunt | Heath Bourgeois Deeds, (draft) 14 August 2008 The Faithful and Hopeful Economic Agent (Faith and Hope, AEA 2008), a version of Chps. 10-13 of The Bourgeois Virtues Why Economists Should Not Be Ashamed of Being the Philosophers of Prudence, Eastern Economic Journal 2003 A Review of The Economics of Sin: Rational Choice or No Choice at All?
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Peter Babiak: 12 Questions for Deirdre McCloskey
The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. 616 + xviii pp. University of Chicago Press, July 2006, as a trade book (reviewed by Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2006; NYTimes Sunday Book Review, July 30, 2006; Time Literary Supplement, November; New York Review of Books, December 21, 2006). Trans. license for Korean (Da Vinci via Besun Korea Agency), June 2006. Volume 2, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World was published in autumn, 2010. Volumes 3 and 4, still a-writing, and a précis version on the subject, are also under contract to the Press.
Deirdre N. McCloskey is Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago;
and Professor of Economic History, Gothenburg University, Sweden
Prudentia
Luis Abrigo, Editor
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