The moral justification for markets finds itself on the defensive in the face of aggressive challenges issuing from progressives but also from economic nationalists on the right. Many of those on the right don’t understand themselves to be challenging markets as such – only certain economic forces that, they contend, have drained the middle class of its vitality, produced excessive concentrations of power in certain sectors, and that regularly challenge and undermine America’s cultural order. What the economic nationalists and progressives share in common is the position that markets in the post-Cold War period have failed and require a substantial degree of government intervention via industrial policy, child and family subsidies, health-care programs, and a much tighter nexus among corporations, workers, and the government.
The market economy’s detractors emphasize not only its faults but also the moral reasons for why it should be replaced. Those who defend markets in the face of mounting attacks must provide a vigorous response that speaks morally, culturally, and politically to Americans. One acute problem defenders face, as the late Irving Kristol saw it, is that work, investment, and commerce in America were formerly justified by both a biblical understanding of man and by a bourgeois work ethic of integrity, thrift, diligence, and honesty. With biblical faith removed from its exalted position in American life and the dethronement of the bourgeois work ethic in the aftermath of the 1960s cultural revolution, the moral foundations of the market economy are vulnerable as never before.
