The Soul of Civil Society by Eberly Don;Streeter Ryan;

Author:Eberly, Don;Streeter, Ryan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1351213
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2013-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

Röpke was a well-known skeptic of a centralized government’s ability to preserve the integrity of civil society, but he also considered unguarded, laissez-faire market activity as a threat to our moral and social stability. He called the individual’s sense of responsibility “the secret mainspring of society,” which large welfare states undermine. Likewise, the “cult of the standard of living,” as he preferred to call it, leads to a “misjudgment of the true scale of vital values” when it runs amok and becomes an all-consuming society unto itself, separate from the humanizing forces of family, faith, and community.7

It is only by preserving a connection between the humane sentiments most likely to be found in the institutions of civil society, or the social sector, and the engines of commerce and market vitality that a healthy societal balance is achieved. This balance is important, for the principles and habits of each make the other stronger the more they can inform and play off one another. Röpke has said that “we need a combination of supreme moral sensitivity and economic knowledge. Economically ignorant moralism is as objectionable as morally callous economism.”8 And just as moral sensitivity needs to be refined by the calculating reason of economics, so too does economic thought and activity need “humane values.”9

In our sectored society, we assign “social problems” to our nonprofit organizations, foundations, and public agencies, which are rooted in principled moral commitments, at least in their origins if not in their present conceptions of themselves. But they are too often “economically ignorant.” Likewise, by relieving market institutions and actors of any serious moral commitments as they fulfill their assignment to create wealth, we make “moral callousness” an easy prospect.

The question, then, remains: to whom do we turn to preserve, or create, this connection between the world of humane values and market life? The answer Röpke gives is twofold, and it applies to us today. Instead of turning to government or a multisector task force or celebrity spokespeople, we should first look to those who are already leading on this front in their communities and in public life. This is the first point. Look to the exemplary among you, Röpke says, who have committed themselves to a “life of dedicated endeavor on behalf of all, unimpeachable integrity, constant restraint of our common greed, proved soundness of judgment, a spotless private life, indomitable courage in standing up for truth and law, and generally the highest example.”10

Röpke, who fled the Germany he loved after receiving threats for speaking out against National Socialism early in Hitler’s rise to power, calls such leaders a “moral aristocracy,” a kind of “natural nobility”—an obvious riposte to the perverted racial aristocracy envisioned by the Nazis. Moral aristocrats rise to leadership status not by their race or class or anything other than their moral habits and judgments. The “ultimate fate of the market economy,” Röpke says, depends on whether these are “people who, by position and conviction, have close ties to the market economy and who feel responsible for it in the moral sphere.

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