This afternoon, the Cato Institute hosted a debate between Deepak Lal (UCLA) and Ethan Kapstein (Center for Global Development) on the topic of ‘Two Views on Global Development: Revive the Invisible Hand (Lal) or Strengthen a ‘Society of States’ (Kapstein)’.
But the debate suffered from an excess of abstraction. There was much talk about ‘capitalism’, ‘dirigisme’, ‘cosmopolitanism’, ‘communitarianism’, ‘individualism’, reciprocity, ‘distributive justice’, etc. but no attempt to adequately define these concepts or illustrate their meaning using examples. It was unclear to what extent the two speakers disagreed on actual policies (e.g. they both like free trade, they both accept that government has a certain role to play in a society, they both worry about the growing influence of NGOs).
But there was a theme to the discussion: the relationship between morality and capitalism.
Deepak Lal’s speech—which was essentially a shorter version of this 2002 paper (pdf)—argued that “it is possible for countries to modernise (i.e embrace capitalism) without Westernising (i.e accepting the West's morality - its cosmological beliefs).”
But Kapstein argued—in a shorter version of this 2002 paper—that such a view entails “wishing politics away” because economic efficiency does not satisfy the requirement for “distributive or economic justice”, an inherently political concept.
Kapstein’s view is disingenuous. He assumes a very specific, modern definition of “distributive justice” without explaining what it is, where it comes from and why it is necessary. He stacks the deck in his favor. One can immediately appreciate this by reading the beginning of Professor Samuel Fleischacker’s book A Short History of Distributive Justice (pdf).
But Deepak Lal’s analysis is also problematic. He argues that capitalism requires a ‘restraint’ on human behavior which the ‘institution’ of morality provides. Very well. In the West, the traditional anchor of that morality has been Christianity. But Nietzsche showed, quotes Lal, that "moral sensibilities are nowadays at such cross purposes that to one man a morality is proved by its utility, while to another its utility refutes it". In other words, one man’s sin is another man’s virtue. Lal then acknowledges that Western philosophical ‘liberalism’ is “incoherent”. Interesting.
But Lal argues that David Hume had actually discovered a solution long ago as Hume:
“does not try to ground morality either in a belief in God or reason but rather in tradition. As he notes: ‘the sense of justice and injustice is not derived from nature, but arises artificially, tho’ necessarily from education and human conventions’”.
Thus according to Lal, the solution to the Western crisis of liberalism and capitalism is to accept that:
“the only source of morality must be local traditions which socialize children through the moral emotions of shame and guilt to 'be good'.”
Now if only we could figure out what “being good” actually entails…
--Isaac Post
