1. FOR THE GOOD OF ALL MANKIND
Public Culture and the Morality of Capitalism in the United States
by
Tobin Spratte
Bachelor of Science, Journalism
University of Colorado, 2007
A thesis presented to the faculty of
the Graduate School of the University of Colorado, Boulder
in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of
Master's of Arts in Mass Communication
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
2010

2. This thesis entitled:
For the Good of All Mankind
Public Opinion and the Morality of Capitalism in the United States
written by Tobin Spratte
has been approved for the School of Journalism and Mass Communication
___________________________________________
Professor Michael Tracey, PhD; Mass Communication
____________________________________________
Professor Andrew Calabrese, PhD; Mass Communication
____________________________________________
Professor Lee Alston, PhD; Economics
The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we
find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation
standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline.

3. ABSTRACT
Adamant support for a market economy has long been a staple of public
culture in the United States. Nowhere else in the world do citizens rigidly
adhere to the underlying values of capitalism: liberty, self-interest, and in-
dividualism. However, beneath these values rests a profound moral sense,
one based on the predominant Judeo-Christian ethics of altruism. Because
of this, Americans are willing to support a market economy insofar as they
perceive the outcome to be moral, that is, capitalism must serve the good
of all.
iii

4. Dedicated to all who value the sovereignty of the individual...
The mind of a man is the single-greatest treasure the natural world has to offer us. It is
not to be devalued, destroyed, or diminished. It must be free from constraint so that a
man may think, act, and create as he sees fit, even if only for his own end.

5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks goes out to all my fellow liberty-loving friends from the
Front Range Objectivists and Liberty on the Rocks, especially to Orson
Olson, without whose cocktail conversations this thesis would not have
been possible; to Diana Hsieh, for her invaluable knowledge of ethics; to
Jeff O'Holleran, whose friendship has more than inspired me to continue
the battle in the face of adversity; to Zach, Tex, Darren, and Isaiah for be-
ing there when I needed it most; to Pelka and Doyle for our conversations
criticizing American culture; to the entire Hawkins family and Ian for your
outstanding friendship and support; to Steve Bodman, who encouraged me
to pursue graduate school; to my parents for fostering intellectualism in
our family; to my grandparents, for your indispensable help throughout
college; to all my professors, each one of you has influenced me in some
manner; to Professor Lee Alston for his invaluable assistance; and of
course, to Professor Michael Tracey, without whose teaching, support, and
encouragement, I would be lost.
v

6. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract.......................................................................................................iii
Acknowledgments........................................................................................v
The American Ethos.....................................................................................1
The Relationship Between Capitalism and Democracy..........................3
Capitalism in the United States...............................................................9
Reconciling Capitalism and Democracy...............................................32
The Morality of Capitalism in America.....................................................47
Amoral Defenses of Capitalism............................................................51
Altruism: Is Capitalism Moral?.............................................................61
Capitalism: Ayn Rand's Unknown Ideal................................................86
Capitalism and Egoism.........................................................................94
The Morality of Capitalism and the American Ethos............................99
Conclusion...........................................................................................110
Bibliography.............................................................................................112
Appendix..................................................................................................125
Table 1.1: The Prevalence of Libertarian Economic Attitudes in the
United States (2000-2010)..................................................................125
Chart 1.2: American Attitudes Toward Regulation of Business and
Industry...............................................................................................126
vi

7. THE AMERICAN ETHOS
American public culture is built on a series of paradoxes. Citizens
often demand the United States government take action, only to later con-
demn it. The most obvious of such examples comes in the realm of
campaign finance legislation. In 2002, just prior to the passage of the Bi-
partisan Campaign Reform Act, 72 percent of the American public
supported the law, which included restrictions on campaign contributions
and banned issue advocacy advertisements paid for by corporations and
non-profit issue organizations.1
Yet, on January 21, 2010, in Citizens Unit-
ed v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled the latter part
of the McCain Feingold Act unconstitutional on the grounds that it violat-
ed the First Amendment rights of corporations and non-profit
organizations.2
Fifty-seven percent of Americans (almost equally distrib-
uted among Democrats and Republicans) agree with the Supreme Court's
decision. Oddly, they do not understand the impact of the Court's decision,
as 52 percent of American adults also wish to place equal limits on cam-
paign contributions for individuals, corporations, and unions.3
While it is
easy to interpret this data to mean the public supports equal limits for all
1 Jeffrey M. Jones, “Seven in 10 Support New Campaign Finance Legislation,” Gallup
(February 13, 2002), http://www.gallup.com/poll/5329/seven-support-new-campaign-
finance-legislation.aspx.
2 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. ___ (2010).
3 Lydia Saad, “Public Agrees With Court: Campaign Money Is Free Speech,” Gallup
(January 22, 2010), http://www.gallup.com/poll/125333/Public-Agrees-Court-
Campaign-Money-Free-Speech.aspx?CSTS=alert.
1

8. campaign contributors, rather than to single out corporations and unions,
this Fourteenth Amendment argument misses two crucial points. For one,
it does not address the question polled, and further, it would still imply
that 20 percent of Americans changed their mind about campaign finance
law between 2002 and 2010. Rather, what this data truly exposes is the
poor understanding many Americans have of their own government and
even their own attitudes. Unfortunately, this public opinion phenomenon is
not isolated to individual issues, nor even to constitutional law. Indeed, it
permeates American culture to its very core.
For more than two centuries, observers and critics of American
culture have noted that the American ethos is an ideological oddity. It “can
be described in five terms: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, pop-
ulism, and laissez-faire.”4
Though such beliefs can be found in other parts
of the world, nowhere do these seemingly-polarized values harmoniously
exist with such prominence as in the United States. As Alexis De Toc-
queville first remarked, nowhere else in the world do people demonstrate
such religious devotion to a national identity, an identity built not on bor-
ders, classes, or ethnicities, but on a singular, all-encompassing ideology.
The historian Richard Hofstadter comments, “It has been our fate as a na-
tion not to have ideologies but to be one.”5
As Louis Hartz observes:
4 Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New
York: W.W. Norton, 1996), 19.
5 Trevor B. McCrisken, “Exceptionalism,” in Vol. 2 of Encyclopedia of American
Foreign Policy, 2nd
ed., ed. Alexander DeConde, Richard Dean Burns, and Fredrik
Logevall (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2002), 63-65.
2

9. In a society evolving along the pattern of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian
eras, where the aristocracy, peasantries, and proletariats of Europe are
missing, where virtually everyone, including the nascent industrial
worker, has the mentality of an independent entrepreneur, two national
impulses are bound to make themselves known: the impulse toward
democracy and the impulse toward capitalism. The mass of people, in
other words, are bound to be capitalistic, and capitalism, with its spirit
disseminated widely, is bound to be democratic.6
Hartz adds that the irony of these impulses is that while in the modern
United States, they walk hand-in-hand as staples of what it means to be an
American, in the nation's infancy, these sentiments fought “a tremendous
political battle.”7
Hartz's statement about the stability of the American ide-
ology is, however, premature. To say that the people of America have built
their ethos, like the biblical wise man, on a steady foundation of rock is er-
roneous. Rather, they have chosen for themselves an unstable foundation
of antagonistic values, one constructed of two pillars: the first, capitalism,
the second, democracy.
The Relationship Between Capitalism and Democracy
Both capitalism and democracy have a rich, storied tradition, in the
case of the latter, dating back to fifth-century B.C. Athens, in the case of
the former, dating back to the collapse of feudalism in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. And yet, at no time in human history have either exist-
ed in a pure form. No nation in the world has ever been truly democratic.
No economy in the world has ever been truly laissez-faire. More impor-
tantly, no nation has ever officially adopted both together, and where
6 Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt and Brace,
1955), 89.
7 Ibid., 89-90.
3

10. elements of democracy and capitalism have co-existed, one system ulti-
mately met its demise, save for one exception: the United States.
Scholars attribute this phenomenon to the antagonistic nature of
capitalism and democracy. This wildly-popular thesis stems from Joseph
Schumpeter's 1942 study Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, in which
contrary to the Marxist prophecy, the economist argues if left to run freely
without government interference, capitalism can “generate enough eco-
nomic growth to raise all social classes to a decent, continually improving,
standard of living.”8
However, he does not believe “unfettered capitalism”
can survive in a democratic climate because the public, “led by alienated
and irresponsible intellectuals,” will vote for increasing governmental in-
terference in the economy, greatly impeding economic activity.9
With a
rope around its neck, placed on the gallows of public opinion, capitalism
will no longer function as it should; it will only be a matter of time before
the public votes to pull the trap door.
Countless scholars agree with Schumpeter, though their reasoning
varies as widely as their academic disciplines. The first of such amenable
theories comes from rational-actor models of political economy: If the
masses possess political power, they will vote in their own economic inter-
ests. Simply put, the socioeconomic system of any democratic nation
8 Herbert McClosky and John Zaller, The American Ethos: Public Attitudes toward
Capitalism and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 130.
9 Ibid.; Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 2nd
ed. (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1947), 145-155.
4

11. should reflect the preferences of the socioeconomic class with the most
political power (assuming the majority opinion truly rules, whether con-
strained by representative government or not).10
Douglass North develops
a more sophisticated version of the above analysis, arguing that “in a pop-
ular democracy, the losers try to recoup their losses from free-market
economic processes through the political system, where their vote
counts.”11
The best example of this phenomenon is Great Britain. After
“the working classes got the vote – in 1867, but especially in 1884-5 – it
became only too obvious that they would demand – and receive – substan-
tial public intervention for greater welfare.”12
Such rational-actor theories suggest something about capitalism is
undesirable by the majority of citizens, something that must be reconciled
through government action. What it refers to is what few politicians will-
ingly, openly discuss: the wealth inequality generated by laissez-faire
capitalism. Economists dating back to Adam Smith recognize that free
markets generate vast amounts of wealth. And for most scholars, there is
little question capitalism raises the standard of living for all citizens in any
nation which practices the socioeconomic system.13
However, the majority
10 See Seymour Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1981), 469.
11 Jonathan Hughes and Louis P. McCain, American Economic History, 6th
ed. (Boston:
Addison Wesley, 2003), 367; Douglass North, “Structure and Performance: The Task
of Economic History,” Journal of Economic Literature 16, no. 3 (September 1978).
12 Eric Hobsbawn, Industry and Empire (1968, repr., New York: The New Press, 1999),
216.
13 For those who dispute this claim, see Stanley Lebergott, The American Economy:
Income, Wealth, and Want (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976); Peter T.
Leeson, “Escaping Poverty: Foreign Aid, Private Property, and Economic
Development ,” Journal of Private Enterprise 23, no. 2 (2008): 39-64.
5

12. of the wealth remains in the hands of a few. Eric Hobsbawm notes this
phenomenon in Great Britain. “Before the First World War, the top five
percent of the population owned 87 percent of personal wealth, the bottom
90 percent, eight percent.”14
And in 1889, 86.5 percent of Britons were de-
scribed as poor or struggling, one percent as millionaires, 2.2 percent as
rich.15
Whether or not such disparities are moral is a highly-contentious
matter, one which, according to Rousseau, has been subject to debate since
the first man first claimed ownership of the first property.16
Regardless, the
basic fact of the matter remains: Capitalism produces great wealth inequal-
ities.
A socioeconomic system that produces inequality, of course, is po-
tentially a major problem for democracy, a political system predicated on
egalitarianism. Aristotle first made this observation in his criticisms of
democracy, noting that democracy in its truest form is “based upon the
recognized principle of democratic justice, that all should count equally.”
He adds, “If justice is the will of the majority, they will unjustly confiscate
the property of the wealthy minority.”17
The Greek philosopher's admoni-
tion is not without warrant. The father of modern democracy, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, in challenging the inequality of men, writes:
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, thought of saying,
14 Hobsbawn, Industry and Empire, 258.
15 Ibid., Diagram 41.
16 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on Inequality,” Rousseau's Political Writings,
trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella, ed. Alan Ritter and Julia Conaway Bondanella
(New York: Norton, 1988), 34-44.
17 Aristotle Politics 6.2.1318a4-6, 6.3.1318a25-26.
6

13. 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him was the
true founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how
many miseries and horrors might the human race have been spared by
the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had
shouted to his fellow men: 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you
are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all and that
the earth belongs to no one.'18
Rousseau's proto-Marxist argument is very much a rail against private
property, and thus, a rail not only against aristocracy but also against capi-
talism.19
Property rights, for him, are theft, the origins of all inequality
among men. Because of this, the purpose of the just democratic state, by
Rousseau's account, is to ensure the communal ownership of property,
thereby, maintaining equality among all people.20
To Rousseau, democracy
and economic egalitarianism are synonymous, therefore, democracy and
capitalism are fundamentally incompatible.
Many scholars have successfully proven capitalism and democracy
to be at odds with each other, and most of their theories are backed by his-
torical data. Rousseau's work manifested itself in the the tripartite battle
cry of the French Revolution, liberté, egalité, fraternité, and though the
Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) asserts property rights, to say
capitalism survived in France would be a joke. Following World War II,
the nation embraced socialist policies, and even today, despite liberaliza-
tion, the government owns significant shares in many economic sectors,
and public spending in France is higher than any country in the Group of
18 Rousseau, “Social Contract,” 34.
19 See Eric Engle, “Social Contract and Capital: Rousseau, Marx, Revolution, and the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat, ” (working paper, Harvard University, Cambridge,
MA, September 17, 2008).
20 Ibid., 9-11.
7

14. Eight. And Rousseau need only point to the modern French to show their
democracy's extremely limited support for capitalism.21
The rational-actor
models are exemplified in Great Britain (though governments since the
1980s have significantly liberalized the economy, ironically, mostly
through the efforts of elected politicians). And Schumpeter's asphyxiation
hypothesis, while not coming to complete fruition, has a significant kernel
of truth, especially in Europe, but even in the United States. Schumpeter
himself, only four years after the publication of Capitalism, Socialism,
and Democracy, writes “Government control of the capital and labour
markets, of price policies, and by means of taxation, income distribution is
already established.”22
He adds:
Control needs only to be complemented systematically by government
initiative in indicating the general lines of production (housing pro-
grams, foreign investment) in order to transform, even without
extensive nationalization of industries, regulated, or fettered, capitalism
into a guided capitalism that might, with almost equal justice, be called
socialism.23
His above prediction, however, is a bit hyperbolic. As much as govern-
ment has grown in the last century, the United States is by no means a
socialist nation. In fact, if Schumpeter were alive today, he may wonder
why his prognosis was wrong, why in this country, capitalism and its val-
ues have survived.
21 Only six percent of French believe free-market capitalism works, 43 percent say
capitalism is fatally flawed. BBC World Service, “Wide Dissatisfaction with
Capitalism – Twenty Years after Fall of Berlin Wall ,” news release, November 9,
2009.
22 Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th
ed., rev. 1946, s.v. “Capitalism.”
23 Richard V. Clemence, ed., Essays of J.A. Schumpeter (Cambridge, MA: Addison-
Wesley Press, 1951), 204.
8

15. Capitalism in the United States
Each year, since 1995, the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street
Journal publish the Index of Economic Freedom, which scores the eco-
nomic liberty of countries around the world and ranks them accordingly.
Its purpose is to show the link between economic prosperity and liberty, an
idea as old as Adam Smith's 1776 book, The Wealth of Nations, though it
can be said that the list is a really an ideological statement about which
countries best adhere to the practice of free-market capitalism.24
Every
year, unsurprisingly, the United States scores in the top ten, making it one
of the freest economies in the world. In other words, even by some of the
country's harshest critics of recent fiscal and monetary policy, it is by and
large a capitalist nation.25
As one would expect from a free-market nation, public support for
capitalism in the United States has, in its past, and continues, in its
present, to remain high. An October 2007 poll reveals that 70 percent of
Americans support free markets, and even in the aftermath of the recent fi-
nancial crisis, according to a January 2010 Gallup poll, 86 percent
24 Despite its obvious free-market bend, the index can hardly be said to be partisan, as
its ranking of the United States falls and rises in both Republican and Democratic
presidencies and Congresses. Nor is it biased against ethnicities or nations, as
Denmark, who ranked as low as 34th
in 1998, has since risen to ninth, and Hong Kong
and Singapore have ranked first and second, respectively, since the list began in 1995.
25 Terry Miller, Kim R. Holmes, and Anthony B. Kim, “2010 Index of Economic
Freedom,” The Heritage Foundation (January 20, 2010), http://www.heritage.org/
index/. Past editions of the index are available in summary at Wikipedia, “Index of
Economic Freedom historical rankings” (February 10, 2010), http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom_historical_rankings.
9

16. maintain a positive image of “free enterprise.”26
However, whether or not
the public truly understands what these terms mean is somewhat unclear.27
When specifically asked about capitalism in the same January Gallup poll,
only 61 percent of Americans report a positive view.28
And another April
2009 Rasmussen poll found public support for capitalism to be as low as
53 percent, however, it is clear this poll was influenced by the fresh mem-
ories of Wall Street's investment crisis.29
When Rasmussen asked
Americans the same question exactly one year later, hostilities decreased,
with 60 percent expressing positive feelings toward capitalism.30
But as
many public opinion scholars agree, the word capitalism carries a strong
negative connotation, often appearing only when criticized, even in the
United States, where business leaders consciously avoid its use.31
One for-
mer Chamber of Commerce president comments, “We fear that the word
capitalism is unpopular.”32
Its practices and its values, however, are not.
26 Pew Global Attitudes Project, “World Public Welcome Global Trade – But Not
Immigration,” Pew Research Center (October 4, 2007),
http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=258; Gallup, “Just off the top of
your head, would you say you have a positive or negative image of each of the
following,” PollingReport.com (January 26-27, 2010), http://www.pollingreport.com/
institut.htm.
27 A 1989 survey found only 35 percent of the public correctly defined capitalism. See
Robert A. Peterson, Gerald Albaum, and George Kozmetsky, Modern American
Capitalism (New York: Quorum Books, 1990), 120.
28 Gallup, January 26-27, 2010.
29 Scott Rasmussen, “Just 53% Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism,” Rasmussen
Reports (April 9, 2009), http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/
general_politics/april_2009/just_53_say_capitalism_better_than_socialism.
30 Scott Rasmussen, “60% Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism,” Rasmussen Reports
(April 23, 2010), http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/
general_business/april_2010/60_say_capitalism_better_than_socialism.
31 McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos, 102.
32 Francis X. Sutton et al., The American Business Creed (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1956), 3.
10

17. “There is probably no people on earth with whom business consti-
tutes pleasure, and industry amusement, in an equal degree with the
inhabitants of the United States of America,” writes Francis J. Grund, a
nineteenth-century Austrian immigrant. “Business is the very soul of an
American.”33
A recent poll shows Americans cling to this attitude as much
as ever; 95 percent of Americans have a positive image of small business-
es, 84 percent think the same of entrepreneurs.34
And though positive and
negative views of “big businesses” are evenly divided at 49 percent each,
this figure should be looked at as testament to Americans' beliefs in com-
petition and individualism more than a hatred of large corporations.35
To
them, as will be discussed later, any institution that threatens the American
ethos is looked at with skepticism, if not disgust. To underscore this point,
far more individuals fear big government than big business.36
Even in the
midst of economic chaos, to quote Max Weber, for Americans, “business
is indispensable to life.”37
33 Quoted in George E. Probst, ed., The Happy Republic (New York: Harper and Row,
1962), 7.
34 Gallup, January 26-27, 2010.
35 Also, to conclude Americans are tired of big business from polling data is hardly
prudent. Every year, they spend billions of dollars freely supporting them, which
suggests most people do not hate corporations as much as polls may indicate. For
example, in fiscal year 2009, Americans dumped $401.2 billion into big-box giant
Wal-Mart, a figure that matches more than 15 percent of the federal government's
budget, yet Wal-Mart endures countless criticisms in the public sphere. John Simley,
“Wal-Mart Reports Financial Results for Fiscal Year and Fourth Quarter,” Wal-Mart
Stores, Inc. (February 17, 2009), http://www.walmartstores.com/news.
36 Gallup, “In your opinion, which of the following will be the biggest threat to the
country in the future: big business, big labor, or big government?” PollingReport.com
(March 27-29, 2009), http://pollingreport.com/institut.htm. Thirty-two percent
answered “big business,” 10 percent “big labor,” 55 percent “big government.”
37 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Stephen Kalberg, trans.
(Los Angeles: Roxbury, 2002), 31.
11

18. Such widespread public support for business requires equally wide
support for the underlying values of capitalism, values the nineteenth-cen-
tury essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson perfectly summarizes.
Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes noth-
ing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who
knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will
always be his boss.38
Simply put, they are ambition, hard work, competition, and individualism.
While recent polling data on the actual values themselves is difficult to
come by, surveys taken in 1958 show massive public support for all of
them. Seventy-five percent believe there is something wrong with a person
who is not willing to work hard, an additional 77 percent call laziness “a
sin.”39
When asked about competition, 81 percent view it as a path to “bet-
ter performance and a desire for excellence,” and fully 88 percent agree
that “having to compete with others keeps a person on his toes.”40
Desires
for success are equally high, with 74 percent calling themselves ambitious;
the same number believe that a person should try to amount to more than
his parents did. Though the survey data of these Protestant-based attitudes
(McClosky and Zaller prove the Weberian thesis quite successfully) is
more than a half-century old, many of the same values are still quite evi-
dent in twenty-first-century culture.
For example, when the Pew Research Center asked Americans
38 Ted Goodman, ed., The Forbes Book of Business Quotations, 90th
ed. (New York:
Black Dog and Leventhal, 1997), 51.
39 McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos, 108.
40 Ibid., 122.
12

19. which life goals are “very important” to them, 61 percent identify being
successful in their careers, while only 53 percent include marriage, though
61 percent include having children.41
And when asked about their present
outlook on their future lives (“five years from now”), 49 percent of adults
are optimistic, only 12 percent pessimistic. Positive attitudes are even
higher among young people, as 72 percent of adults aged 18 to 29 and 60
percent of adults aged 30 to 49 report an optimistic outlook.42
When
specifically questioned about their future economic prospects, these age
groups were again very optimistic, as 88 percent of Millenials (American
adults born after 1980) and 76 percent of Generation X (those born be-
tween 1964-1980) say they will earn enough in their future to lead a
happy, fulfilling life.43
All three of these surveys exhibit Americans' strong
commitment to ambition, particularly in their economic lives.
As countless scholars have noted over the years, Americans obsess
over their labor. Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, in a classic
demonstration of the Protestant work ethic, began work at age sixteen and
by twenty, formed his own produce-shipping partnership with Maurice
Clark. Clark later recalled that Rockefeller frequently held “intimate con-
versations with himself, counseling himself, repeating homilies, warning
41 Richard Morin, “Who Wants to Be Rich?” Pew Social and Demographic Trends
Project (April 30, 2008), http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/713/who-wants-to-be-rich.
42 Paul Taylor, Cary Funk, and Peyton Craighill, Looking Backward and Forward,
Americans See Less Progress in Their Lives (Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center,
2006), 3.
43 Andrew Kohut et. al, Millenials: A Portrait of Generation Next (Washington, D.C.:
Pew Research Center, 2010), 20.
13

20. himself to beware of pitfalls, moral as well as practical.”44
While few
Americans can relate to Rockefeller's success, virtually all recognize his
ascetic nature, his self-induced psychological torture. Numerous “psycho-
logical studies have found that individuals often express feelings of guilt if
they are unable to work, or if they are unable to work as hard as they
would like to.”45
Several other studies have found a strong correlation be-
tween unemployment and clinical depression.46
And other authors still
“found that making internal attributions for economic success was related
to increased feelings of happiness and confidence.”47
These psychology
studies demonstrate people in the United States still maintain a profound
belief in the Protestant work ethic, a belief confirmed by surveys about
American attitudes toward economic inequality. When asked in 1987
about the reason people become wealthy, 95 percent said personal drive
and the willingness to take risks play an important part, 91 percent said
hard work and initiative are important factors, and another 88 percent
mentioned great ability or talent. And while substantial majorities cited
dishonesty, luck, and taking “unfair advantage of the poor” as factors in
economic success, less than 27 percent said any of the three are very im-
44 Daniel Yergin, The Prize (1992, repr., New York: Free Press, 1993), 36.
45 Issac Heacock, “Defining the Work Ethic” (paper presented at the annual meeting of
the American Sociological Association, Philadelphia, August 12, 2005), 3.
46 David Dooley, Ralph Catalano, and Georjeanna Wilson, “Depression and
Unemployment: Panel Findings from the Epidemiological Catchment Area Study,”
American Journal of Community Psychology 22, no. 6 (1994): 745-765.
47 Diane M. Quinn and Jennifer Crocker, “When Ideology Hurts: Effects of Belief in the
Protestant Ethic and Feeling Overweight on the Psychological Well-Being of
Women,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77, no. 2 (1999): 402-414.
14

21. portant, and a third of the interviewees said they are not important at all.48
More recent data shows this belief in personal empowerment actually in-
creased. In 1987, just 37 percent of Americans attributed personal success
to forces beyond their control, while twenty years later, that number de-
creased to 34 percent. More interestingly, in 1987, 44 percent of
Democrats, the statistically most economically deterministic party, thought
an individual's success in life is beyond her control, while today, only 35
percent of Democrats express the same view. And even among Republi-
cans, these deterministic sentiments sunk by ten whole percentage points
since the 1980s. In fact, since Pew Research first asked the question, only
independent voters have become more discouraged with the American
work ethic, but even among this segment, only 38 percent believe eco-
nomic success is out of their hands.49
Clearly, the view that most men earn
their wealth through legitimate success, that is, ambition and hard work, is
still dominant.
A value closely related to worth ethic is individualism. Again, to
understand what this means to Americans, it is best to defer to the value's
nineteenth-century champion, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He writes:
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the convic-
tion that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take
himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide uni-
verse is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but
through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him
48 James R. Kluegel and Eliot R. Smith, Beliefs About Inequality: Americans View of
What Is and What Ought to Be (Piscataway, NJ: Aldine Transaction, 1986), 77.
49 Andrew Kohut et al., Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes (Washington,
D.C.: Pew Research Center, 2007), 15.
15

22. to till.50
While Emerson's language is somewhat equivocal, its meaning is not. As
Tara Smith comments on the subject, “More colloquially, it is a matter of
making one's own way in the world.”51
This is one of the United States'
most unique values, one to which her citizens tightly cling. Stanley Feld-
man and John Zaller's research on public attitudes toward welfare
demonstrate this phenomenon. During interviews about job guarantees and
living standards, “a high proportion of respondents invoked some value or
principle. Altogether, about three out of four people invoke [individual-
ism] in some way.”52
While government-funding policies prevent the
authors from including verbatim transcripts of individual responses, Feld-
man and Zaller “convey the flavor” of respondents' remarks.
Individuals should make it on their own; people must make use of the
opportunities they have; people should be responsible for themselves;
people should just work harder; people have the right to work as much
or as little as they want; they control their own fate.
Dependency; living off handouts is bad; welfare makes people depen-
dent; “if it's too easy to get welfare, no one would work anymore”;
people become lazy or lose self-respect if they are on welfare; “the
more you give, the more they want.”
People who don't/won't work don't deserve help; people who are poor
deserve to be poor; “if you can't make it in America, you have only
yourself to blame”; anyone who really tries can make it.53
Such remarks are consistent with the lack of support for strong welfare
50 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” (1841, available online at the National Center
for Public Policy Research, accessed February 14, 2010), http://www.nationalcenter.
org/SelfReliance.html.
51 Tara Smith, Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2006), 107.
52 Stanley Feldman and John Zaller, “The Political Culture of Ambivalence: Ideological
Responses to the Welfare State,” American Journal of Political Science 36, no. 1
(February 1992): 278.
53 Ibid., 280.
16

23. programs in the United States, as well as earlier research by Kluegel and-
Smith, McClosky and Zaller.54
And such remarks have changed little in
decades, even among the nation's youth. In 1924, Helen and Robert Lynd
administered a famous survey to the students of a local high school, asking
them if the following statement was true or false: “It is entirely the fault of
the man himself if he cannot succeed.” Forty-seven percent answered true.
When the “Middletown” study, as it was called, was precisely reproduced
in 1977, the results were exactly the same.55
Similarly, in a contemporary
Harris poll, 45 percent of American adults say the poor mainly have them-
selves to blame for their poverty, and 77 percent believe most people who
are unemployed can find work if they really want.56
Americans, both
young and old, believe in the power of the individual.
Trying to prove the existence of competition in the United States is
easy, for it is everywhere, in the classroom, on the practice field, in the
arena, in the country's media, on the mouths of its people, even its chil-
dren. If American attitudes from the 1958 survey remain relatively
unchanged, as I contend, the strong belief in competition easily translates
to the economic realm. Proof of its existence in the twenty-first century, as
is the case with other capitalist values, is not difficult to find. For instance,
54 Kluegel and Smith, Beliefs about Inequality; McClosky and Zaller, The American
Ethos, 123-127.
55 Theodore Caplow and Howard M. Bahr, “Half a Century of Change in Adolescent
Attitudes: Replication of a Middletown Survey by the Lynds,” Public Opinion
Quarterly 43 (Spring 1979): 1-17.
56 Humphrey Taylor, “The public tends to blame the poor, the unemployed, and those on
welfare for their problems,” Harris Interactive (May 3, 2000), http://www.harrisi.org/
harris_poll/index.asp?PID=87.
17

24. in 2008, college enrollment hit an all-time high, mostly attributed to “diffi-
cult labor market prospects facing youths.” In other words, American
youths want to remain competitive in the U.S. labor market, and a college
diploma is becoming increasingly important to do so. Likewise, the num-
ber of high-school graduates are also at a peak (84.9 percent of today's
young adults finish high school), again, an indication that education is im-
portant to stay ahead in the job market.57
Rather than blaming capitalism
or the government for their problems, most young Americans are content
to take action themselves, to remain competitive. Further, even though
American citizens remain adamantly committed to free enterprise and dis-
like government intervention in the economy, they also fear any inhibitor
of free, open competition, whether from large corporations or from the
government itself. Historically, Progressive Era legislation was political
leaders' response to a public belief that “big businesses” ruled the United
States, not outrage against capitalism itself. As the Supreme Court ex-
plains:
Every violation of the antitrust laws is a blow to the free-enterprise sys-
tem envisaged by Congress. This system depends on strong
competition for its health and vigor, and strong competition.58
The purpose of the [Sherman Antitrust] Act is not to protect businesses
from the working of the market; it is to protect the public from the fail-
ure of the market. The law directs itself not against conduct which is
competitive, even severely so, but against conduct which unfairly tends
to destroy competition itself.59
57 Richard Fry, “College Enrollment Hits All-Time High,” Pew Research Center
(October 29, 2009), http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/747/college-enrollment-hits-all-
time-high-fueled-by-community-college-surge.
58 Hawaii v. Standard Oil Co. of California, 405 U.S. 251 (1972).
59 Spectrum Sports, Inc. v. McQuillan, 506 U.S. 447 (1993).
18

25. While conservative commentators claim such remarks are merely elitist
views forced onto an undiscerning, uninterested public, regardless of their
origin, there is little question similar sentiments exist in the public sphere.
For instance, public demand for health care reform during the first year of
Barack Obama's presidency was largely the result of concerns over rising
health insurance costs, those costs themselves believed to be a result of
“corporate greed” and the absence of competition in the health insurance
industry.60
Surveys show that 51 percent of Americans approve of the cre-
ation of a government-run insurance plan to compete with private
insurance plans, a figure that despite perceived opposition toward the infa-
mous “public option” remains quite steady.61
And most opposition to the
proposed bills comes from the public perception that a government-run
health care system lacks competition.62
So ingrained is the value of com-
petition in American society, one can safely state, it is not markets that the
public fears, but rather the absence of them.
To further this point, that Americans fear the absence of markets,
one need only examine public opinion about alternatives to capitalism.
Only 36 percent show a positive image of socialism, while 58 percent hold
60 Ben Furnas and Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, “Health Care Competition” (report,
Center for American Progress, Washington, D.C., June 2009), http://www.
americanprogress.org/issues/2009/06/health_competition_map.html.
61 Ipsos Public Affairs, “Do you favor or oppose the creation of a public entity to
directly compete with existing health insurance companies?” PollingReport.com
(January 28-31, 2010), http://pollingreport.com/health.htm.
62 John Stossel, “Health Care Competition,” Townhall.com (July 15, 2009),
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2009/07/15/health-care_competition; Tea
Party Patriots, “Tea Party Patriots is Fighting Government Take Over of Our Health
Care,” (accessed February 16, 2010), http://www.teapartypatriots.org/HC.aspx.
19

26. a negative view.63
When broken down into political ideology, a mere 20
percent of conservatives express a positive view of socialism, and though
that figure is significantly higher for liberals (61 percent), an equally high
number of liberals express a positive image of capitalism. And when the
federal government is mentioned alongside market-oriented institutions,
only 46 percent express a favorable image, 51 percent a negative.64
Further
still, a strong majority (66 percent) of Americans see tax cuts as a better
way to create jobs than government spending.65
However, again, as is the
case with capitalism, public understanding of what socialism is or what a
socialist economy entails is lackluster at best. Despite conservative opin-
ion leaders' insistence that America is headed for socialism in the near
future, such admonishments have little empirical backbone.66
According to
McClosky and Zaller, only 11 percent of Americans actually support the
adoption of socialism (though this figure is from 1958, so it may have
been tainted by the rampant anticommunism of the 1950s), and 87 percent
of the public believe private ownership of property to be “as important to a
63 Gallup notes, “Exactly how Americans define socialism or what exactly they think of
when they hear the word is not known. The research simply measures Americans'
reactions when a survey interviewer reads the word to them – an exercise that helps
shed light on connotations associated with this frequently used term.”
64 Frank Newport, “Socialism Viewed Positively by 36% of Americans,” Gallup,
(February 4, 2010), http://www.gallup.com/poll/125645/socialism-viewed-positively-
americans.aspx.
65 Scott Rasmussen, “66% See Tax Cuts As Better Way To Create Jobs Than More
Government Spending,” RasmussenReports.com (April 30, 2010), http://www.
rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/jobs_employment/april_2010/66_see_
tax_cuts_as_better_way_to_create_jobs_than_more_government_spending.
66 Jodie Allen and Richard Auxier, “Socialism, American-Style,” The Atlantic (March
16, 2009), http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/03/socialism_american-style.php.
20

27. good society as freedom.”67
However, despite the significant public support for capitalist values
demonstrated in opinion polls, one should not be too quick to jump to con-
clusions about the American ethos. While there is little doubt that most
Americans cling to the values of economic individualism and embrace the
free market in general, to suggest the public welcomes all “varieties of
capitalism” would be a monumental mistake.68
Just as various institutions
in various countries the world over create different interpretations of capi-
talism, so too does the United States have its own version of the free
market, a version grounded in the ideals of its citizenry. But unlike most
other nations, where opinions about capitalism are quite homogeneous,
American attitudes toward the socioeconomic system are comparatively
diverse.69
Because of this diversity of opinion, precise measurements of how
Americans feel about “free-market capitalism” tells scholars almost noth-
67 McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos, 135, 140.
68 For the first common usage of this term, see Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, “An
Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism,” in Varieties of Capitalism, Peter A. Hall and
David Soskice, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 1-70. While the idea that
capitalism can take different forms dates back to at least Karl Marx, the term itself
seems to have been coined by Geoffrey M. Hodgson in “Varieties of Capitalism from
the Perspectives of Veblen and Marx,” Journal of Economic Issues 29, no. 2 (1995):
575-584.
69 According to a recent worldwide poll, citizens from most countries overwhelmingly
say free-market capitalism is either fatally flawed or it requires regulation and reform.
Only 11 percent on average believe the system works as is. However, in the United
States, 25 percent say free-market capitalism works, 53 percent say it needs reform,
and only 13 percent say it should be replaced. Opinions about the role of government
in the economy are also far more mixed among Americans than other nations. BBC
World Service, “Wide Dissatisfaction with Capitalism – Twenty Years after Fall of
Berlin Wall ,” news release, November 9, 2009.
21

28. ing. As shown in the second paragraph of this section, aggregate opinions
of the socioeconomic system are inconsistent, primarily due to semantics.
To borrow some terms from structuralist semiotics, the referents of the
signs “free market” and “capitalism” are completely obfuscated by one's
Weltanschauung. In other words, what the phrase free-market capitalism
means for one person is not what it means for another. While most Ameri-
cans define capitalism to be an economic system characterized by the
private ownership of capital, beyond this, they agree upon little about its
exact characteristics. Indeed, to find two neighbors on the same street of
America who agree on what capitalism truly is, who conjure up the same
image in their heads, is next to impossible.
For members of the far Left (speaking in terms of the clichéd left-
-right continuum), relying mostly on the works of Karl Marx, any market
economy which has not yet transitioned to a true socialist economy can be
called capitalist, even to the point where Marxist diehards refuse to ac-
knowledge several allegedly communist nations, such as the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics, as possessing socialist economies.70
Capital-
ism, nor any state-backed economic system for that matter, for Marx and
his followers, does not provide true freedom, competition, individualism,
or any of the values purported by liberalism. In fact, the goal of all revolu-
70 Raya Dunayevskaya, “The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a Capitalist
Society,” Internal Discussion Bulletin of the Workers Party (March 1941),
http://www.marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/1941/ussr-capitalist.htm;
Samuel Kucherov, “The Soviet Union is Not a Socialist Society,” Political Science
Quarterly 71, no. 2 (June 1956): 182-202.
22

29. tionary activities is to liberate the people, intellectually, economically, so-
cially, and politically. Any advocacy for government control of the modes
of production serves only a teleological goal: the destruction of capital-
ism.71
But for all their rhetoric on the people's will and liberation, such
views on capitalism are extremely limited among members of the Ameri-
can public, isolated mostly to universities and other intellectual circles;
even there, they rarely appear in their purist form. However, the influence
of Marxist beliefs on the development of American attitudes toward capi-
talism cannot be ignored. While few Americans believe in a genuine class
struggle, much less, economic determinism, as will be discussed later, ele-
ments of socialism span across many American ideologies, including those
which many would regard as very mainstream.
Libertarian tenets of capitalism stand in stark contrast to the sys-
tem's Marxist interpretations, so much so that both worldviews have but
one common belief (though for entirely different reasons): a moral socioe-
conomic system is one where government stays away, far, far away (While
this is counterintuitive to popular left-wing discourse on government in-
volvement in the economy, which tends toward state control, it should be
remembered that Marx, Engels, and Lenin all believed proper socialism
only exists after, to paraphrase Engels, the state withers away. This society
71 Vladimir Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” in The Lenin Anthology, Robert C.
Tucker, ed. (New York: Norton, 1975), 311-325.
23

30. then becomes pure, classless, stateless communism).72
For most libertari-
ans, capitalism is synonymous with freedom, and a free market means a
free market: one in which the socioeconomic system is largely, if not, en-
tirely unregulated. As the French minister René de Voyer, Marquis
d'Argenson, famously outburst, Laissez faire, telle devrait être la devise de
toute puissance publique, depuis que le monde est civilisé...Laissez-faire,
morbleu! Laissez-faire!73
The passionate advocate of free trade added,
Pour gouverner mieux, il faudrait gouverner moins.74
Most libertarians,
echoing this motto, would prefer the United States in 1870, prior to the
Slaughter-House Cases and Munn v. Illinois, both milestones of constitu-
tional law that broadly expanded the government's ability to regulate the
economy.75
But like many ideologies throughout the history of the world,
sundry meanings of laissez-faire capitalism make pinpointing an exact in-
terpretation impossible. Views of the role of government in a laissez-faire
society range from the anarcho-capitalism of Murray Rothbard to the strict
separation of state and economy taught by Ayn Rand to the classical liber-
alism advocated by Fredrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman.76
But since
72 See Lenin, “The State and Revolution,” 320-325.
73 “Let it be, such should be the motto of every public power, ever since the world is
civilized...Let it be, damn it! Let it be!” in John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez-
Faire (London: Hogarth Press, 1926), chap. 2.
74 “To govern better, one must govern less.” in Ibid.
75 See Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873); Munn v. Illinois 94 U.S. 113 (1877).
76 Whether or not Hayek and Friedman are supporters of laissez-faire economics is
matter of some controversy among libertarians. Austrian economist Ludwig von
Mises once called both men “a bunch of socialists” for their discussion of certain
economic policies, and libertarian historian Walter Block comments Hayek is only a
lukewarm laissez-faire capitalist, and that his seminal work, The Road to Serfdom,
while “a war cry against central planning,” gives undue credence to state intervention
in the economy. Brian Doherty, “Best of Both Worlds,” Reason, June 1995; Walter
24

31. the purpose of this section is to contrast American attitudes on capitalism,
not to chip at the mammoth iceberg that is libertarian philosophy, for all
intents and purposes, the term laissez-faire broadly refers to any form of
capitalism in which the government takes a very weak role in economic
affairs, if any at all, and in which the individual remains sovereign.77
While opinion polls show a greater support for economic libertari-
anism than for outright socialism (likely because of the dominance of
individualism in nineteenth-century America) laissez-faire capitalism still
exists mainly as a fringe ideology, most prominently among registered
Libertarians and neoliberal Republicans (not to be confused with neocon-
servatives), who, by one estimation, make up around 21 percent of the
population.78
The vast majority of the American public, however, is not made of
ideologues (a term, which though used pejoratively in the mass media,
refers to individuals who strongly adhere to an ideology). Despite hyper-
bolic language in recent election cycles, the United States is not made of
red states and blue states, red people and blue people, laissez-faire capital-
ists and democratic socialists. Morris Fiorina quickly dispels this myth in
Block, “Hayek's Road to Serfdom,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 12, no. 2 (Fall
1996): 339-365.
77 For a complete discussion on laissez-faire capitalism, see George Reisman,
Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, IL: Jameson Books, 1998).
78 See Table 1.1, page 125. This figure is an average of respondents with libertarian
economic leanings amalgamated from questions from several polling organizations
and may contain some degree of error. Also, most Americans who possess
economically libertarian beliefs are likely not as laissez-faire as Rothbard, Rand, or
even Hayek.
25

32. Culture War, showing that the majority of the American public is not po-
larized about any political issue, let alone economic policy. Since 1976, 40
percent of Americans self-identify as ideological moderates, and when
self-placed on a seven-point scale, the ideologies of the majority of voters
land between three and five; less than five percent of combined respon-
dents identify as either extreme, one or seven. In fact, the political
ideology of the American electorate is basically a bell curve.79
A 2006 Pew
Research Center study supports his research, finding that few individuals
fit into the liberal-conservative dichotomy (18 percent liberals, 15 percent
conservatives), and even fewer support radical forms of either. When put
on a four-directional axis, 16 percent of the public tests as statist (or pop-
ulist, as Pew labels them, meaning they support stricter governmental
control of both social and economic spheres) and 9 percent libertarian (fa-
voring less control in both spheres). Exactly how libertarian the
libertarians are and how statist the statists are is impossible to tell from the
six-question survey, same with both conservatives and liberals. But such a
limited questioning does not render the survey useless. The most revealing
fact from the study is that 42 percent of the United States population tests
as politically ambivalent (not meaning apathetic but indescribably moder-
ate).80
79 Morris P. Fiorina, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, 3rd
ed. (Boston:
Pearson Longman, 2010), 33-56, 262.
80 Scott Keeter, “In Search of Ideologues,” Pew Center for Research and the Press
(April 11, 2006), http://pewresearch.org/pubs/17/in-search-of-ideologues-in-america.
26

33. What this means for capitalism is that most Americans identify nei-
ther with laissez-faire capitalism nor social democracy. As McClosky and
Zaller remind readers, while the public remains deeply committed to capi-
talism, as both a socioeconomic and value system, such strong beliefs
exist only insofar as capitalism fits the Weltanschauung of most Ameri-
cans.81
To revisit the discussion on semantics, this means that for the
majority of Americans, the referent of “free market” is not absolute free-
dom. Nor is it pure Orwellian doublethink for socialism.82
Rather, it is
...a system in which the basic institutions of private enterprise are re-
tained, but in which the government plays a major role in regulating the
economy and redirecting resources to individuals, groups, and even
business enterprises in need of help.83
For example, in their study, McClosky and Zaller find that 67 per-
cent of Americans on average support increased federal regulation of
business, with the highest demand naturally going to industries with the
most frequent public interaction or industries whose goods and services
are most likely to cause irrevocable harm, that is, disease or death. For in-
stance, in 1979, 80 percent of Americans favored increasing federal
involvement in the drug industry, 73 percent for oil (which incidentally
followed the late 1970s energy crisis), 73 percent for food, 71 percent for
utilities, and 68 percent for the chemical industry.84
Such data is consistent
with the historical advent of federal and state regulation, beginning first
81 McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos, 290-302.
82 See George Reisman, “Freedom is Slavery: Laissez-Faire Capitalism is Government
Intervention,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 20, no. 1 (Winter 2006): 47-86; Ludwig
von Mises, “Freedom Is Slavery,” Freeman, March 9, 1953.
83 McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos, 301.
84 McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos, 146-147. This data from 1979.
27

34. with railroads (Munn v. Illinois), followed by antitrust legislation (Sher-
man Antitrust Act of 1890) aimed at Standard Oil, then continuing with
the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
Recent polling data shows much more mixed feelings about regu-
lation. Even in the wake of the financial crisis, one poll shows only 50
percent of Americans think government regulation of business is necessary
to protect the public interest, while fully 57 percent believe government is
almost always wasteful and inefficient.85
Another poll shows 50 percent of
the population thinks the government should be less involved, and 57 per-
cent worries about too much regulation of government business. Yet, as
recently as February 2010, Pew Research finds 59 percent of Americans in
favor of stricter regulations for financial institutions.86
Initially, such data
discrepancies suggest substantial inconsistency in attitudes on regulation,
inconsistency best illustrated by the following line graph:87
85 “Public Not Desperate About Economy or Personal Finances,” Pew Research Center
for People and the Press (October 15, 2008), http://people-press.org/report/?
pageid=1400.
86 Gallup, “Which of the following do you most agree with? The federal government
should become more involved in regulating and controlling business. The federal
government should become less involved in regulating and controlling business, or
things are about right the way they are,” and “Which worries you more -- that there
will be too much regulation of business by the government, or not enough regulation
of business by the government?” PollingReport.com (January 26-27, 2010); Pew
Research Center, "All in all, do you think it is a good idea or a bad idea for the
government to more strictly regulate the way major financial companies do
business?" PollingReport.com (February 3-9, 2010), http://pollingreport.com/
business.htm.
87 See Chart 1.2, page 126.
28

35. 03/24/93
09/10/01
02/10/02
06/30/02
09/06/02
09/10/03
09/15/04
09/15/05
09/21/08
12/21/08
12/20/09
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Government Regulation of Business and Industry
Too Much Right Amount Too Little
Polling Date
Percent
However, such scattered results show three common trends: (1) business is
too broad of a category for most Americans to blanket with unspecified
regulations, (2) public support for regulation, as shown by the McClosky
and Zaller study, depends on what industry is being discussed, and (3) sup-
port for regulating a specific industry shares some relationship with
current events. As seen in the above chart, most of the time, the public is
evenly split in their opinions about whether to decrease or maintain cur-
rent levels of government regulation, with few Americans clamoring for
more controls. But in times of well-publicized scandals or crises, public
opinion inverts, as observed in June 2002, when demands for increased
business regulation resulted from sustained press coverage of the Enron
and WorldCom scandals, and September 2008, when similar desires fol-
lowed the investment crisis, particularly in the financial sector, as some
29

36. polling organizations reported as much as 76 percent of the public in favor
of stricter government controls.88
Likewise, most regulatory legislation has
been passed following public outcries for government involvement, the
most famous examples being the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and
Drug Act, both of which followed the publication of Upton Sinclair's nov-
el, The Jungle.89
Contrary to the belief of many pundits, there is a large amount of
support in the United States for minimal welfare programs (what some de-
scribe as a social safety net), though not on the same scale as other
Western nations. For example, a Pew Research Center survey finds that 69
percent of the public believe the government should care for those who
cannot care for themselves, an additional 54 percent say the government
should help the needy, even if it means greater debt (both figures are in-
creases from their 1994 lows). Probably the most astounding statistic in
the Pew report is that 69 percent of Americans think the government is ob-
ligated to guarantee food and shelter for all its citizens, including 47
percent of Republicans, long-time criticizers of the welfare state.
Americans also seek some level of distributive fairness in their so-
88 ABC News and Washington Post, “Do you support or oppose stricter federal
regulations on the way banks and other financial institutions conduct their business?”
PollingReport.com (February 19-22, 2009), http://pollingreport.com/business.htm.
89 Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 111.
The irony of The Jungle is that Sinclair, an avowed socialist, wrote the novel to
highlight the plight of the working class, famously remarking, “I aimed at the public's
heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” The author actually despised the
legislation and said that it unjustly placed the $30 million-a-year inspection burden on
the American taxpayers.
30

37. cioeconomic system. For instance, in 2007, prior to the passage of the
then-new law, more than eight out of ten people, regardless of party or in-
come level favored increasing the federal minimum wage.90
The public
also shows high levels of support for progressive taxation, with strong ma-
jorities believing that both upper-income people and corporations do not
pay enough in taxes, while significant portions of the population say both
lower and middle-income Americans pay too much.91
While there is a risk
here that such preferences are nonattitudes (most people seem to be un-
aware that the richest five percent of Americans pay over half of all
federal income tax and that forty percent pay no income tax at all92
), when
heads of United States households (presumably, those who actually file the
taxes) were asked specific questions about what taxation rate would be
fair, respondents express a preference for a distribution similar to what
currently exists, that is, most Americans prefer a progressive system.93
As shown by the preceding polling data, most American's defini-
tion of capitalism is neither laissez-faire nor completely statist, but rather,
a combination of the two, featuring both freedom as well as control.
90 Andrew Kohut et al., “Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes,” (report, Pew
Research Center for People and the Press, Washington, D.C., March 22, 2007).
91 Gallup, “As I read off some different groups, please tell me if you think they are
paying their fair share in federal taxes, paying too much, or paying too little,”
PollingReport.com (April 6-9, 2009), http://pollingreport.com/budget.htm.
92 Charles Babington, “Spreading the wealth? US already does it,” USA Today (October
21, 2008), http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2008-10-21-2191142216_x.htm;
For other information on nonattitudes about progressive taxation, see Michael L.
Roberts, Peggy A. Hite, and Cassie F. Bradley, “Understanding Attitudes Toward
Progressive Taxation,” Public Opinion Quarterly 58, no. 2 (1994): 165-190.
93 Michael L. Roberts and Peggy A. Hite, “Progressive Taxation, Fairness, and
Compliance,” Law and Policy 16, no. 1 (1994).
31

38. Numerous laws now cover such matters as industrial and banking prac-
tice, labor relations, the hiring of minorities, the safety of manufactured
products, protection against environmental damage, minimum wages
and pension programs, and in some cases, even the prices a business
enterprise may charge for its products or services. The laissez-faire
economy of the nineteenth century, in short, has given way to a more
regulated economy in which business and government share responsi-
bility for many key economic decisions.94
It is what McClosky and Zaller call welfare capitalism, what other authors
call a mixed economy.95
It is a uniquely American brand of capitalism, a
capitalism invented by and maintained for the American ethos.
Reconciling Capitalism and Democracy
As examined earlier, sundry scholars across diverse disciplines
have long maintained that capitalism and democracy are fundamentally
opposed to each other. History seems to have proven their presuppositions
correct in all but one country, the United States, a representative democra-
cy where, as just shown, the practice and values of capitalism are alive and
well. Thus, those same scholars remain perplexed, asking what it is about
the United States that allows the preservation of a socioeconomic system
that results in inequality in a political system grounded in equality.
The most popular response to the above conundrum is to begin a
discussion on ideology. What this phrase means is a matter of some dis-
pute, and as Giovanni Sartori points out, “The word ideology points to a
black box...[T]he growing popularity of the term has been matched, if any-
thing, by its growing obscurity.”96
Further, the phrase has come under
94 McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos, 291.
95 McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos, 301.
96 Giovanni Sartori, “Politics, Ideology, and Belief Systems,” American Political
32

39. some attack in recent decades by social scientists, particularly as a liberal
backlash to Marxist scholarship. Many scholars refuse to recognize the ex-
istence of an American ideology at all, basing this claim on empirical
analyses that show dissension and inconsistency among the public, even in
relatively simple matters, such as fundamental beliefs about the nature of
democracy.97
However, such criticisms miss the point. Ideology is not
about social consensus, about a given population sharing the same funda-
mental attitudes and opinions about every detail of a given social order. It
is not about whitewashing the grey matter of society's collective brain. It is
about basic maintenance of the social order, nothing more, nothing less. To
put a definition on it, an ideology is a broadly coherent framework of be-
liefs and values that both economizes and limits the options available for
social and political action in society. It does not mean, as many political
scientists contend, that an ideologically-constrained society is free from
internal dissent. Even the most ideologically-driven societies in history
had their detractors.98
Nor does it mean, as some Marxists contend, that in-
dividuals in an society containing a dominant ideology are without free
will. Rather, what ideology involves is that the substantial majority agrees
upon a set of basic values, values which may be extremely broad, such as
Science Review 63 (June 1969): 398.
97 See Herbert McClosky, “Consensus and Ideology in American Politics,” The
American Political Science Review 58, no. 2 (June 1964): 361-382; Philip E.
Converse, “The nature of belief systems in mass publics,” in Ideology and Discontent,
David E. Apter, ed. (London: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964).
98 See Tobin Spratte, “Illusions of Legitimacy: Ideology and the State in Non-Capitalist
Societies” (paper, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, December 2009).
33

40. freedom or equality, adopted by many civilizations, albeit in very different
forms, or values which may be more narrowly-defined, such as the altru-
ism and self-sacrifice taught in Christianity. In the United States, both
types exist.
It is the opinion of many fine historians that the uniqueness of the
American ethos is its peaceful maintenance of a unified, national ideology.
Unlike other nations, where ideological differences violently magnify
themselves to the point of permanent division or insurrection (for some
examples, see the French and Russian Revolutions, the Korean War, the
Vietnam War, the conflict between Northern Ireland and the Irish Repub-
lic, modern revolutionary violence in Chechnya, the 1995 Bosnian War),
Americans seem content to bask in the effervescent glow of their shining
city on a hill. Save for the Civil War, the political story of the United
States is the story of a predestined church, “one nation under God, indivis-
ible, with liberty and justice for all.” “Its articles of faith, a sort of
American Holy Writ, are perfectability [sic], progress, liberty, equality,
democracy, and individualism,” writes the historian Clinton Rossiter.99
Few figures in American history have challenged this confession of faith.
Fewer still have challenged it publicly. As Hofstadter comments:
The fierceness of the political struggles in American history has often
been misleading; for the range of vision embraced by the primary con-
testants in the major parties has always been bounded by the horizons
of property and enterprise. However much at odds on specific issues,
the major political traditions have shared a belief in the rights of prop-
99 Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America: The Thankless Persuasion (New York:
Vintage Books, 1962), 71.
34

41. erty, the philosophy of economic individualism, the values of competi-
tion; they have accepted the economic virtues of a capitalist culture as
the necessary qualities of a man...American traditions also show a
strong bias in favor of egalitarian democracy, but it has been democra-
cy in cupidity rather than a democracy in fraternity.100
What Hofstadter means is that both capitalism and democracy, for Ameri-
cans, are not about avarice and mob rule; they are about values, those of
liberty, equality, and individualism. Capitalism lives in the United States
not as a slave to the iron fist of egalitarianism. Democracy lives not as a
subject of the new aristocracy, the interested industrialists. Rather, both are
intravenously kept alive with the same blood type: the American ethos.
Such a strong claim seems intuitively correct. Better yet, it is historically
and empirically supported. Samuel Huntington writes:
Prevailing ideas of the American creed have included liberalism, indi-
vidualism, equality, constitutionalism, rights against the state. They
have been opposed to hierarchy, discipline, government, organization,
and specialization. The major periods of fundamental change in Ameri-
can history have occurred when social forces have emerged to
reinvigorate the creed and hence stimulate new attacks on established
authority. Such a confrontation took place during the Jacksonian period
with the attack on the undemocratic elements of the constitutional sys-
tem, at the time of the Civil War with the opposition to the extension of
slavery and the slave system in the southern states, and in the 1890s
with the populist and progressive responses to the rise of industrial or-
ganizations. The confrontation between ideology and institutions in
postindustrial society thus fits into a well-established American pat-
tern.101
McClosky and Zaller prove this statement beautifully in their work on the
American ethos, remarking that the decline of laissez-faire capitalism was
not a fundamental shift in the American ideology but the democratic main-
tenance of the ideology. “Certain components of the ethos have been used
100 Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition (New York: New Vintage
Edition, 1972, xxxviii.
101 Samuel Huntington, “Postindustrial Politics: How Benign Will It Be?” Comparative
Politics (January 1974): 188.
35

42. at times to justify strong government action.”102
This helps to explain the
rise of regulation, as Huntington notes, the growth of government, and the
majority view of the government's role in a capitalist society.
However, this consistent ideology thesis (to parody Marx) contains
one major flaw, one McClosky and Zaller more than hint at in their con-
clusion, one public opinion researchers have criticized for decades: that
even if one recognizes any semblance of consistency of the American
ethos, as Lipset, Rossiter, Hofstadter, and Huntington do, ideological con-
sistency has not translated into consistent attitudes toward policy. As has
been observable in polling data since the 1950s, Americans' support for
government welfare programs remains high, but when asked specific ques-
tions about their ideology, Americans more than remain committed to an
ethos of economic individualism. Scholars explain this contradiction in
three ways: (1) this inconsistency between values and practice is an inte-
gral part of the American ethos, (2) this consistency reveals Americans
true commitment to egalitarianism, or (3) there is another factor at work.
The first explanation, while an observable fact, is overly simple.103
It ig-
nores the overall consistency of the American ethos (meaning values, not
attitudes), and more importantly, does not explain the United States' trans-
formation from the land of laissez-faire to the home of welfare capitalism.
102 McClosky and Zaller, The American Ethos, 322.
103 Free and Cantril famously described public opinion as “a schizoid combination of
operational liberalism with ideological conservatism.” Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril,
The Political Beliefs of Americans: A Study of Public Opinion (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1968).
36

43. If anything, this explanation would be better addressed in a paper on mass
society theory, in which the totality of American culture is evaluated, not
just political beliefs. The second theory seems more promising and is
therefore worth examining.
Alexis De Tocqueville says the distinguishing characteristic of the
democratic age, its ruling passion, is the love of equality.104
He writes:
Democratic nations are at all times fond of equality, but there are cer-
tain epochs at which the passion they entertain for it swells to the
height of fury. This occurs at the moment when the old social system,
long menaced, is overthrown after a severe internal struggle. At such
times men pounce upon equality as their booty, and they cling to it as
some precious treasure which they fear to lose. The passion for equality
penetrates on every side into men's hearts, expands there, and fills them
entirely. Tell them not that by this blind surrender of themselves to an
exclusive passion they risk their dearest interests; they are deaf. Show
them not freedom escaping from their grasp while they are looking an-
other way; they are blind, or rather they can discern but one object to be
desired in the universe.105
Such an astute observation is an attractive explanation for the growth of
government welfare programs and the rise of big government. And
Rousseau's animosity toward property rights surely proves that true
democrats possess an ardent “passion for equality,” so much so that capi-
talism and democracy, for the democratic radical, are fundamentally
incompatible. Stanley Feldman logically restates this argument.
Societal arrangements to encourage achievement invariably lead to
some measure of inequality, and equality of results limits the ability of
people to pursue individualism to its extreme.106
However, as Feldman points out, this has not happened in the United
104 Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America Vol. 2, trans. Henry Reeve, ed.
Phillips Bradley (New York: Knopf, 1994), 95.
105 Ibid., 96-97.
106 Stanley Feldman, “Economic Individualism and American Public Opinion,”
American Politics Quarterly 11, no. 1 (1983): 6.
37

44. States for two reasons. First, “[t]his conflict has been at least partly re-
solved by refashioning equality into formal or political equality rather than
equality of results.”107
As David Potter writes, equality, for Americans,
means “parity in competition...a means to advancement rather than as an
asset in itself,” equality of opportunity, not of outcome.108
And secondly,
economic individualism plays such a large ideological role in the Ameri-
can ethos that it has managed to keep opposition to a total welfare state
high, even if the public supports a minimal social safety net. Because of
these two factors, Feldman says scholars should be careful in their as-
sumption that opinion polling on welfare lacks internal structure or
constraint.109
Just because 69 percent of Americans agree that the govern-
ment should help those who cannot help themselves does not indicate
public support for a massive welfare state, much less a rejection of capital-
ism. And the 69 percent who believe the government should provide food
and shelter may indicate support for homeless shelters and soup kitchens,
not for public housing projects and bread lines. “Paradoxically,” Feldman
says, “patterns of individualistic beliefs may simultaneously generate sup-
port for and hostility toward government programs to help the poor and
unemployed.”110
Consensus on this “individualism hypothesis,” as
Lawrence Bobo calls it, is not unanimous.
107 Ibid.
108 David M. Potter, People of Plenty (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1954), 92.
109 Feldman, “Economic Individualism,” 20.
110 Ibid.
38

45. Bobo concedes that economic individualism remains an extremely
important factor in the shaping policy attitudes, but rejects the notion that
egalitarianism has no part whatsoever in American beliefs about economic
policy. For one, polling data shows “a pattern of commitment...to the idea
that government should provide a basic minimum standard of living.”111
He also cites several studies that show individualistic beliefs have “a small
to moderate positive relationship to socioeconomic status,” most notably,
that lower-income individuals are more likely to perceive inequality and
support redistributive policies. He then hypothesizes that “a commitment
to a certain kind of egalitarianism is a basic and consequential component
of U.S. Stratification ideology.”112
Bobo's claims are further supported by
recent polling data on progressive taxation, a federal policy that cannot
possibly be justified under the auspices of economic individualism. Bobo
concludes from his study that it is not egalitarianism per se that motivates
attitudes toward economic policy to address inequality but a closely-relat-
ed value, social responsibility.
Responding to Bobo's thesis, Feldman and Zaller revisit the Ameri-
can commitment to economic individualism in a later study, again, trying
to explain the lack of support for a massive welfare state in a democratic
nation. After extensive analysis of attitudes toward various government
programs, the authors find, “The American political culture provides few
111 Lawrence Bobo, “Social Responsibility, Individualism, and Redistributive Policies,”
Sociological Forum 6, no. 1 (1991): 74.
112 Ibid.
39

46. explicitly egalitarian (as against pragmatic or humanitarian) arguments
that are useful for justifying welfare state policies.”113
Jennifer
Hochschild's qualitative research backs Feldman and Zaller. Using in-
-depth interviews she finds that people are aware of the tension between
support for social welfare policies and economic individualism, but few
resolve the conflict through an appeal to equality.114
And most importantly,
as Feldman writes in a separate study:
Egalitarianism cannot easily account for the nature of welfare policy
support in the United States. If egalitarianism was the driving force be-
hind public attitudes toward welfare, we would expect Americans to
express greater support for redistributive policies since these most
clearly contribute to equality.115
Because the authors find only minimal evidence for egalitarianism in
American attitudes toward economic policy, they search for another expla-
nation (the third option, as it was previously refered to). What Feldman
and Zaller uncover is a new a dimension to the American ethos, one which
proves crucial to understanding the development of capitalism and democ-
racy in the United States: humanitarianism.116
Feldman and Steenbergen define humanitarianism as “a sense of
responsbility for one's fellow human beings that translates into the belief
113 Stanley Feldman and John Zaller, “The Political Culture of Ambivalence: Ideological
Responses to the Welfare State,” American Journal of Political Science 36, no. 1
(1992): 286.
114 See Jennifer L. Hochschild, What Is Fair? American Beliefs About Distributive
Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981).
115 Stanley Feldman and Marco R. Steenbergen, “The Humanitarian Foundation of
Public Support for Social Welfare,” American Journal of Political Science 45, no. 3
(July 2001): 659.
116 Feldman and Zaller, “Ideological Responses to the Welfare State.”
40

47. that one should help those who are in need.”117
While it has many features
in common with social responsibility (as Feldman and Steenbergen admit
in a footnote), it is not the same. Bobo derives social responsibility from
egalitarianism. Humanitarianism is entirely its own component of the
American ethos. As the authors write:
Although egalitarianism – and limited government and economic indi-
vidualism – undeniably are important components of the American
political and social creed, they do not exhaust it...Humanitarianism is
not only an important element of the American ethos, but it also has a
distinctive character...a prosocial orientation.
According to the social psychologist Staub, “a prosocial orientation con-
sists of (a) a positive evaluation of human beings, (b) concern about their
welfare and (c) feelings of personal responsibility for people's welfare.”118
This differs from egalitarianism because it depends on an emotional com-
ponent, while egalitarianism is more cognitive, more closely tied to
normative values. Normally, such assumptive distinctions raise eyebrows,
but Feldman and Steenbergen make it work, backing the distinction with
results. In their study, individuals with humanitarian values want to pro-
vide direct assistance to the disadvantaged; such people support only a
residual welfare state. Egalitarians “perceive structural problems in soci-
ety,” advocating an institutional welfare state. The authors then remark
that because most Americans are not egalitarians, but humanitarians, the
public rejects policies of the institutional welfare state (such as those
117 Feldman and Steenbergen, “The Humanitarian Foundation,” 660.
118 Ervin Staub, “Individual and Societal (Group) Values in a Motivational Perspective
and Their Role in Benevolence and Harmdoing,” in Social and Moral Values:
Individual and Societal Perspectives, Nancy Eisenberg, Janusz Reykowski, and Ervin
Staub, ed. (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1989), 50.
41

48. found in many European nations), while they widely support residual poli-
cies (for example, assistance to the elderly and poor).119
“Thus,” the
authors conclude, “humanitarianism makes it possible for people to sup-
port specific welfare policies without embracing the welfare state as an
alternative to capitalism.”120
Feldman and Steenbergen underscore one crucial point about hu-
manitarianism: It does not erode the cultural foundations of capitalism,
economic individualism. In fact, for the authors, capitalist values do not
exist in conflict with those of humanitarianism but in harmony. “As De
Tocqueville noted, Americans are humanitarian not in spite of their indi-
vidualism, but because of it.”121
Initially, this poignant, nineteenth-century
observation seems to miss the mark. To suggest that humanitarianism, said
to be based on the ethics of altruism, is interrelated with, if not, born of
economic individualism, said to be based on the ethics of egoism, seems
nothing short of absurd. Yet, history proves De Tocqueville correct. Re-
search on the origins of humanitarianism and capitalism finds that indeed,
both ideologies grew up as a product of Enlightenment thought. Recall
that the great liberal theorist John Locke, an adamant supporter of property
rights, establishes his state of nature on two principles, liberty and equali-
ty.
To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we
119 Feldman and Steenbergen, “The Humanitarian Foundation,” 673.
120 Ibid.
121 Ibid., 660.
42

49. must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of
perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions
and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature,
without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.
A state also of equality, wherein all power and jurisdiction is recipro-
cal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more
evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuous-
ly born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same
faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordina-
tion or subjection...This equality of men by nature, the judicious
Hooker looks upon as so evident in itself, and beyond all question, that
he makes it the foundation of the obligation to mutual love amongst
men, on which he builds the duties they owe one another, from whence
he derives the great maxims of justice and charity.122
The first principle in the Lockean state of nature, liberty, gives way to
property rights, to capitalism, the second, equality, to moral obligations, to
justice and charity, the underlying values of humanitarianism. Locke's lib-
eral successors write similarly, including the classical economist Adam
Smith, who most remember only for his invisible-hand capitalism. Yet,
Smith also expresses much interest in humanitarianism.
[W]ould a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hun-
dred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human
nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest
depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be ca-
pable of entertaining it. But what makes this difference? When our
passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes
it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble?
When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever con-
cerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men; what is it which
prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to
sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not
the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence
which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of
counteracting the strongest impulses of self-love...[W]e are but one of
the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it; and that when we
prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the
proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration.123
122 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, C.B. MacPherson, ed. (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1980), 8.
123 Adam Smith, “On the Influences and Authority of Conscience,” in Theory of Moral
Sentiments (1759; Marxists Internet Archive Library, 2010), sec. 3, pt. 3, chap. 3,
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/moral/part03/
part3b.htm.
43

50. Such lucid statements about humanitarian moral obligations coming from
champions of individualism vis à vis capitalism demonstrate their similar
philosophical origins (more than likely such sentiments stem from Protes-
tantism). But the dual nature of these ideologies does not end at words.
Voltaire writes of the tolerance and humanity of capitalists in eighteenth-
century England.
Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more venerable
than many courts of justice, where the representatives of all nations
meet for the benefit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and
the Christian transact together, as though they all professed the same re-
ligion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts.124
As significant as such behavior was in Voltaire's time, exhibitions of capi-
talists' humanity extends far beyond religious tolerance. The historians
Howard Temperley and Thomas Haskell successfully argue that contrary
to orthodox beliefs among historiographers that free-markets perpetuated
slavery, that it was humanitarian sensibilities born as the Enlightenment
twin of capitalism that eventually eliminated the slave trade. Temperley
writes:
Here we have a system – a highly successful system – of large-scale
capitalist agriculture, mass producing raw materials for sale in distant
markets, growing up at a time when most production was still small
scale and designed to meet the needs of local consumers. But precisely
at a time when capitalist ideas were in the ascendant, and large-scale
production of all kinds of goods was beginning, we find this system
dismantled. How could this happen unless “capitalism” had something
to with it? If our reasoning leads to the conclusion that “capitalism” had
nothing to do with it, the chances are that there is something wrong
with our reasoning.125
124 Voltaire, “On Presbyterians,” in Lettres Philosophiques (1910; Modern History
Sourcebook, August 1998), http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1778voltaire-
lettres.html.
125 Howard Temperley, “Capitalism, Slavery, and Ideology,” Past and Present 75
(1977): 105.
44

51. Haskell adds, “In explaining the new humanitarianism, historians have re-
peatedly pointed to changes in what Marxists generally call the economic
base...that is, the growth of capitalism.”126
While the historians' argument
is more structuralist than anything, their point remains: Capitalism and hu-
manitarianism have substantially parallel historical and philosophical ties.
It is no accident that the man who spearheaded the abolition of the British
slave trade, William Wilberforce, was a wealthy merchant. It is no acci-
dent that Lysander Spooner, author of The Unconstitutionality of Slavery,
was a staunch individualist. It is no accident that most American abolition-
ists lived in the industrialized, wealthy North. But the firmly-tied knot
between humanitarianism and capitalism does not end with slavery. John
D. Rockefeller, himself an ardent abolitionist, set an industry standard not
only in petroleum but also in humanitarian endeavors, donating millions to
scientific and medical research, various religious charities, and universi-
ties, including Spelman College, the first black female college in history.
Following suit, Andrew Carnegie preaches both philanthropy and individ-
ualism in “The Gospel of Wealth.”127
In the contemporary United States,
the world's wealthiest billionaire, Bill Gates, is a self-admitted admirer of
Rockefeller and Carnegie's work, personally giving more than $28 billion
to charity.128
And finally and most importantly, as Feldman and Steenber-
126 Thomas L. Haskell, “Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Part
1,” The American Historical Review 90, no. 2 (April 1985): 339.
127 Andrew Carnegie, “The Gospel of Wealth,” North American Review, 148 (June
1889): 653-664.
128 “The 50 Most Generous Philanthropists,” BusinessWeek (April 21, 2010),
http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/philanthropy_individual/.
45

52. gen prove in their research, the knot between individualism and humani-
tarianism lives extraordinarily well in the American ethos.
Americans believe that people should take responsibility for solving
their own problems. At the same time, problems are sometimes too
large for a single individual to solve, and when this is the case it is a
moral right to ask for help and a moral duty to provide it.129
The co-existence of individualism and humanitarianism in the
American ethos is undeniable. And though Feldman and Steenbergen do
an excellent job proving this, they unknowingly open the doors to the
wardrobe of another academic universe, that of philosophy, more specifi-
cally, that of morality. To make public support for capitalism contingent on
the relationship between individualist and humanitarian values, as Feld-
man, Zaller, and Steenbergen do, is to invite a discussion on morality. For
morality is nothing but a code of values. Therefore, in an attempt to re-
solve the contradictions that are so prevalent in American public culture, I
suggest the discussion on the American ethos, more specifically, attitudes
toward capitalism be moved from one of empirical inconsistency and ideo-
logical abstractions to one on morality. In that spirit, I propose the
following thesis: American support for capitalism is conditional on
whether or not its outcome is perceived to be moral.
129 Feldman and Steenbergen, “The Humanitarian Foundation,” 673.
46

53. THE MORALITY OF CAPITALISM IN AMERICA
Morality has been a strong component of American civilization
since the nation's inception. Indeed, it could be said the very essence of
American public culture is an innate moral notion that the land and its in-
habitants are set apart by God, that it truly is Winthrop's “city upon a hill,”
and as such, its people, united as one, are bound by their Creator to obey
his commandments, to always uphold the moral and the righteous, to be a
model of virtue for the entire world.130
Such a notion first manifested itself
in the early law codes of New England, in which, as De Tocqueville notes,
many statutes were regulations on proper moral conduct, which “constant-
ly invaded the domain of conscience,” enacted “as if their allegiance was
due only to God.”131
The moral tradition was eventually extended to revo-
lutionary activities, which never shied away from vitriolic condemnations
of British rule and passionate ebullience of the virtues of independence
and liberty. Thomas Paine's incendiary pamphlet Common Sense reads
more like a sermon than a political document (hence, its appeal to eigh-
teenth-century colonial society), again reflecting the moral nature of the
American cause.
130 “The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as his one people, and
will command a blessing upon us in all our ways. So that we shall see much more of
his wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with.
We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist
a thousand of our enemies...For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a
hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian
Charity,” (1630; Wikisource, 2008), http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/City_upon_a_Hill.
131 De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1:37-38.
47

54. The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind.
Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but uni-
versal, and through which the principles of all lovers of mankind are
affected, and in the event of which, their affections are interested. The
laying a country desolate with fire and sword, declaring war against the
natural rights of all mankind, and extirpating the defenders thereof from
the face of the earth, is the concern of every man to whom nature hath
given the power of feeling.132
Paine's first line is particularly powerful, capturing the spirit of Enlighten-
ment philosophy and bringing it to the American public: not only is it a
noble idea to throw off the chains of despotism but it is a moral impera-
tive, one demanded of all men by virtue of being human. This
deontological notion eventually was used as the primary justification for
the American Revolution, one immortalized in the Declaration of Indepen-
dence.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably
the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despo-
tism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and
to provide new Guards for their future security.
As Morton White adds, “The notion that they had a duty to rebel is ex-
tremely important to stress, for it shows that they thought they were
complying with the commands of natural law and of nature's God when
they threw off absolute despotism.”133
Thus, breaking off from Britain was
not about what was pragmatic or expedient but about what was right; do-
ing nothing was not an option, as Paine notes.134
This revolutionary sense
of moral righteousness never left the United States, returning only decades
132 Thomas Paine, Common Sense (New York: Peter Eckler, 1918), x.
133 Morton White, The Philosophy of the American Revolution (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1978). Natural duty is by definition a moral concept. See H.L.A
Hart, “Are There Any Natural Rights?” Philosophical Review 64 (1955).
134 Paine, Common Sense, ix.
48

55. later in the debate on slavery, wherein arguments against the slave trade
were not about its inefficiency or its economic downside (on the contrary,
the slave trade was incredibly efficient, if such a phrase means anything
when discussing human bondage135
), but about its inherent immortality.
The prominent abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison writes:
That those laws which are now in force, admitting the right of slavery,
are therefore, before God, utterly null and void; being an audacious
usurpation of the Divine prerogative, a daring infringement on the law
of nature, a base overthrow of the very foundations of the social com-
pact, a complete extinction of all the relations, endearments and
obligations of mankind, and a presumptuous transgression of all the
holy commandments; and that therefore they ought instantly to be abro-
gated.136
Such strong words need little commentary, however, their significance
cannot be overstressed. It was these arguments that dismantled the slave
trade in Great Britain, that tore apart the United States and caused the Civ-
il War, that eventually emancipated the slaves in America. But again,
moral arguments did not disappear from politics at the close of the nine-
teenth century or even the twentieth. Moral values have played huge roles
in recent election campaigns and opinion formation, causing many aca-
demics and other public intellectuals to prematurely conclude the re-
election of George W. Bush in 2004 was exclusively the result of the so-
called moral majority.137
Nonetheless, their confusion is understandable.
Karl Rove's brilliant campaign strategy, his “politics of base
135 See Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of
American Negro Slavery (1974, repr., New York: Norton, 1995).
136 William Lloyd Garrison, “Man Cannot Hold Property in Man,” in The Libertarian
Reader, 78-79.
137 See Larry M. Bartels, “What's the Matter with What's the Matter with Kansas?”
(paper presented at the meeting of the American Political Science Association,
Washington, D.C., September 1-4, 2005).
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