The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

New York: An American Enterprise Institute/Simon & Schuster Publication, 1982. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 433, [2] pages. Notes. Index. Inscribed by the author on fep. Inscription reads for Clare Booth Luce the heroine of our children (especially the two girls) and of their parents! Michael Novak Feb 26, 1983. Embossed seal of Ms. Luce on fep and following page. Michael John Novak Jr. (September 9, 1933 - February 17, 2017) was an American Roman Catholic philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat. The author of more than forty books on the philosophy and theology of culture, Novak is most widely known for his book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982). In 1993 Novak was honored with an honorary doctorate at Universidad Francisco Marroquín due to his commitment to the idea of liberty. In 1994 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, which included a million-dollar purse awarded at Buckingham Palace. He wrote books and articles focused on capitalism, religion, and the politics of democratization. Novak served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1981 and 1982 and led the US delegation to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1986. Additionally, Novak served on the board of directors of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, a conservative anti-Communist faction of the Democratic Party, which sought to influence the party's policies in the same direction that the Committee on the Present Danger later did. Novak was George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism is a 1982 book by philosopher Michael Novak, in which Novak aims to understand and analyze the theological assumptions of democratic capitalism, its spirit, its values, and its intentions. Novak defines democratic capitalism as a pluralistic social system that contrasts with the unitary state of the traditional society and the modern socialist state. He analyzes it as a differentiation of society into three power centers: a political sector, an economic sector, and a moral-cultural sector. Each sector needs the others. Democracy needs the market economy and both need a pluralistic liberal culture. Against the continuing growth of democratic capitalism, modern socialism has contracted from a robust utopian program into vague "idealism about equality" and overwrought criticism of capitalism, most notably in the "liberation theology" of Latin America. Novak ends with the "beginnings of a theological perspective on democratic capitalism" illuminated by the journey from Marxism to realism of Reinhold Niebuhr. Irving Kristol described Novak's book as "unquestionably a major work for our times." This book has not been about the practice of capitalism; it has been about grasping the ideals implied in its practice. It now becomes possible to compare it with socialism, ideal against ideal, practice against practice. If the real world of democratic capitalism is worse than its ideal, then how should it be judged? By what standard? It does not meet the ideals of democratic socialism because it has its own ideals. It does not meet the highest ideals of Judaism and Christianity, for no political economy can do that. But democratic capitalism stands ready for criticism and change. It is designed for that, the only known system designed for "transformation by peaceful means."(p359) God designed creation as an arena of free will, and democratic capitalism honors that with a "non-coercive society... within which individuals and peoples are called to realize, through democratic methods, the vocations to which they believe they are called."(p360)"