The Re-Enchanted Critique of Capitalism

Abstract

The long-term aim of the moral critique of international affairs is the reform of the various power centers. Its denunciation of insensitivity covers both the political and the economic spheres. One of its first targets lies at the point where the two fields meet. The moral indictment of the forces of capitalism has the advantage of being both a critique of the economics of big corporations and a stigmatization of the power of states that support a market in which fine feelings can be said to have no place: this is one of the reasons for its success; it has become the rallying point for a critical discourse that calls the world to witness. The moral indictment of capitalism and the efforts to reform globalization are the paths taken by the revolution in the perception of the “world order.”

Honesty pays.

—Thomas Jefferson, president of the United States, 1801–1809.