Years ago, I read David Landes’s Prometheus Unbound for a class in economic history, and I can still remember the fascination I experienced at his descriptions of the steel industry (though details are sadly forgotten). In his recent Wealth and Poverty of Nations , Landes, among many other . . . . Continue Reading »
We do not ordinarily publish official church statements. In fact, we never have before. This issue, however, includes a condensed version of John Paul II’s ninth encyclical, Centesimus Annus (“The Hundredth Year”), issued on the centenary of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (“New Things”).Any . . . . Continue Reading »
When I wrote The Capitalist Revolution five years ago, the word revolution was, of course, intended to denote the fundamental changes, the radical transformation, that capitalism brings about in a society. It did not imply an overthrow of existing regimes and, alas, did not constitute a prediction . . . . Continue Reading »
When we come to measure the success of a presidency, it matters a great deal whether the administration in question made life better or worse for the poor. A culture whose values spring from Judaism, Christianity, and a compassionate humanism cannot be satisfied unless the poor are well cared for. . . . . Continue Reading »
For most people in America, all those not familiar with the complicated ideological positioning on the right end of the political spectrum, the term “conservative” evokes images of the board room, the country club, and the Episcopal church located not far from the latter. In other words, the . . . . Continue Reading »
The 1980s may well be looked back upon as a decade of intellectual reformation in the so-called North-South debate. A burst of revisionist thinking has affected recent discussions of Third World economic development and may offer a harbinger of better policies vis-a-vis the world’s poor. There . . . . Continue Reading »
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