Text II. Creating economic systems in the global marketplace

Democratic societies are not perpetual motion machines. They require a continual investment of care and responsibility on the part of their citizen. The experience of both emerging democracies and long-established democracies confirms this. The most fundamental goods of democracy, such as the security of individual rights, can exist only as long as most citizens share a sense of solidarity and common destiny.

Contemporary life, however, is marked by increasing volatility in all areas of social relationship. In particular, the dynamism of technology and the market economy poses a mounting challenge. While democracies must find ways to cultivate a sense of moral equality and shared destiny among citizens, the rapid spread of market values to all aspects of life is teaching, and even enforcing, very different lessons.

Increasingly, national societies are split into a minority class of economic winners who inhabit a cosmopolitan world of affluence, and a growing underclass with little hope of economic ascent. Moreover, as economic competition grows more intense, the ties of social solidarity are placed under increasing strain. Systems of social provision are likewise threatened, further undermining the sense of common destiny among citizens.

However, the chief threat posed by the spread of market behavior into every sphere of life is that social relationships become stripped of their moral meaning. Thus, business ceases to acknowledge any responsibility to either its employees, the communities where it operates, or to the nation which protects it through law. In the same way, the individual is encouraged to think first of self-interest, not only in business affairs but in the civic sphere, with respect to the natural environment, and finally in community and family life.

The danger to democracy of the spread of market behavior is that society will become increasingly atomized. With this, public responsibility, like social solidarity, will wither away, leaving society incapable of dealing with large-scale and long-term threats to its well-being. The chief question in the face of these threats is: How can modern nations develop their economic and technological capacities without damaging the moral and social underpinnings needed to fulfill the promise of democracy?

Vocabulary notes

perpetual motion machines – вечные двигатели

emerging democracies – новые, появляющиеся демократии

destiny – судьба, shared destiny – общая судьба

volatility – изменчивость, непостоянность

areas of social relationship – сферы общественных отношений

to pose a mounting challenge – ставить всё новые задачи

to enforce – навязывать

to split – разделять, расчинять

affluence – изобилие, богатство

ascent – подъём, рост

strain – напряжение

to strip - лишать

to cease – прекращать, перестать

to encourage - поощрять

to acknowledge – признавать

to atomize – распылять

to wither away – отмирать, исчезать

well-being – благосостояние

underpinnings – основы