Adam Smith created a social model which subordinated faith to reason and reason to the instincts which, when released, drive the "system of natural liberty," facilitating peace, prosperity, and especially freedom. Smith's Faustian Bargain, which underlies the model, is to trade beneficence for self-preservation plus freedom. Without restraint, the social instincts would endanger private property and social stability. Smith recommends limited but effective government and a plethora of social devices, including a reconstituted, impotent collection of churches, to bolster morality and prevent instability. Transplanted to America, Smith's system and Biblical Christianity restrained immorality and allowed free enterprise to flourish yielding unprecedented freedom and prosperity. The decline of faith in the Biblical God and moral absolutes at the end of the nineteenth century upset the delicate balance between freedom and morality resulting in social problems not susceptible to voluntary solutions. Government intervention slowed economic growth and restricted individual freedom. Will a twenty-first century Biblical revival restore morality and permit once again the flourishing of individual liberty, or will government intervention continue to erode freedom?

Socialists and defenders of laissez-faire share the view that in the market agents pursue their self-interest, not the good of others. On this basis, socialists reject the market as an arena of immorality, while laissez-faire theorists attempt to defuse the charge by relying on the providential consequences of the "invisible hand," However, both stances presuppose a view of morality that too sharply separates self-interest and altruism. Some try to separate the economic arui morality into discrete spheres. In contrast, a compatibilist account shows the ways a concern for personal profit and a concern for others can come together. Such a motivationalist approach allows one to re-conceive the "invisible hand." It is no longer a serendipitous justification of the merely self-interested, but an invitation to think of the various mixtures of altruism and self-interest required to produce those results that may commend the market.

This essay armies that Kant's philosophy provides a justification for free markets. The myths about Kant are that he was a recluse, knew nothing about business, and that his epistemology divorced reason from reality, while his primary interest was metaphysics. Yet Kant's categorical imperative demands obedience even in the face of uncertainty about the external world. Adam Smith described this principle as the inward testimony of an impartial observer. Smith and Kant put individual decisions at the center of morality, but agreed that people have a tendency to make morally inferior choices. Those who propose to regulate the economy are as troubled by this tendency as those they regulate. The self-sacrifice prescription is economically, psychologically, and morally unstable. In recommending market competition. Smith was unconsciously applying a Kantian formula. Market decisions are individual decisions. Individuals prefer to do business with those they trust: this is an incentive to honesty. A morality that depends upon incentives is imperfect but superior to a morality imposed by force.

This essay compares five different conceptions of the nature of work: capitalist, Christian, Buddhist, republican, and environmentalist. The capitalist perspective on the nature of work profoundly affects our common conceptions about the nature of work as well as our experiences with work. Nevertheless, there are also non-economic conceptions of the nature of work that are effective, influential, and contribute to a moral marketplace. The four non-economic traditions suggest ideals of what work ought to be, and ways through which one may transform the experience of work while living in a democratic capitalist culture. Further, the fact that the four different non-economic traditions can agree in characterizing work as a calling gives credence to the notion that an interdisciplinary and interfaith conception about the ideals of work can be attained.

This essay examines market morality from a sociological perspective. Focusing upon a case study of Poland, it highlights the effects historical socio-political forces have upon popular attitudes toward unequal accumulation. Poland's unique mythology of wealth is rooted in both peasant and literary subcultures, and the communist experience. Public opinion surveys demonstrate that negative attitudes toward wealth accumulation were pervasive in Poland during the early 1990s. Actual capital accumulation suggests that, in the early years of the post-communist transition, Polish reality largely substantiated Polish mythology. Political connections were often used to enter the Polish business elite, and shady practices employed to maintain such positions. The essay explores this correlation, highligjhting social mythology's joint dependence on cultural residue and reality, as well as the effects of social, political, and economic forces upon societal attitudes toward morality in the marketplace.

Attempts by Christian social theorists to harmonize Austrian liberalism and Christian tradition ignore serious contradictions in their respective moral systems. Friedrich Hayek's conception of the "spontaneous order" portends potentially harmful consequences for corporate religion by elevating the subjective individual as the singular source of value in human culture. Thus, Hayek's ideas on cultural evolution may provide insight into the perceived loss of moral voice among American religious institutions, Reinhold Niebuhr's economic realism is more conducive to exploring the moral persistence of liberal society recognizing the need for balance between subjective and collective expressions of the good. Key concepts in Niebuhr's economic thought are a unique value theory, a holistic conception of the individual and society, an understanding of the moral ambiguities associated with technological innovation, and recognition that balances of power are necessary to preserve social organicism and the Christian conception of personality.

Market capitalism requires absolute private property, and both institutions appeared at about the same time in history. The morality of the market rests on the morality of property, which may be argued both from Scripture and secular perspectives. Both approaches yield a theory of property that supports private ownership conditional on obligations to the community. Apparent contradictions in Scripture regarding property are resolved by this approach. Property ownership confers economic power on its holder. Modernity assumes that this power must be controlled by external forces-either by the market, or the state-but both limit freedom. True moral action must be free. The moral opportunity of the market is to avoid using economic power to exploit others, especially the weak and needy. Christian thought supplies the outline principles for moral guidance for ethical market action that revolve about self-restraint.

Discussions about economics and politics often generate more heat than light. What do the dictates of Scripture and insights from the field of political economy bring to the table? Of greatest importance, in a world of sinful people, economic markets have the ability to constrain immoral behavior by connecting moral behavior with financial and social reward. Yet, freedom still allows the possibility of unjust actions in economic markets. Thus, some potential role for government obtains. From there, the tension is between the Utopian desire for government to constrain justly and the practical realities of government in a fallen world. At the end of the day, the Christian cannot be fully content with either economic or political markets. They are left with the clear Biblical call to act with righteousness and justice in their own spheres of influence and the possibility of defending the rights of others through politics in the limited occasions when government policy is an ethical, appropriate, and practical means to godly ends.

Most Americans in the 1920s and 1930s were unaware of the crimes committed in the Soviet Union. Even today, the full extent of the carnage is unknown. This essay explores the ways in which Presidents Kennedy and Reagan dealt with the contrast between the open societies of the West and the severely damage civil societies of the Soviet bloc through the rhetorical presidency. Key speeches throughout the two administrations stressed the use of presidential rhetoric as a way of challenging the communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the USSR. For both Presidents, the key rhetorical moment came in West Berlin, in 1963 and 1987, respectively. Using comparable language Kennedy and Reagan spoke of the hope offered by West Berlin to those suffering under communist rule. The highlight came when Reagan challenged the Soviet leaders to tear down the Wall separating the city. Ironically, the victory over Soviet bloc communism has not led to the elimination of communist regimes, notably China. That chapter in the struggle against communism remains yet to be written.

From the Adriatic to the Baltic, from the Elbe to the Urals and beyond, totalitarianism has collapsed. Yet the 1989 bloodless revolution in Eastem Europe caught most observers by surprise. This essay explores the signal socio-cultural forces which contributed to the sea-change. Throughout Eastem Europe, grassroots movements emerged in the 1970s and 1980s demanding greater participation in social, economic, cultural, and political life. Thus, the rise of a new civic culture and civil society preceded and fostered the momentous changes in Eastem Europe, This essay offers a model of transition from authoritarian systems to political democracy, highlighted by "The Menshevik Divide," and places East European nations and the USSR on a cognitive map which indicates the relative strength of civic values and autonomous action just before the revolution (1988), Curiously, this model also shows why the transition remains incomplete, since authoritarian values and political processes keep many post-communist systems in a twilight zone between democracy and dictatorship. Hence, the quest for universal human rights, democracy, pluralism, tolerance, and an open society is still a futuristic project in much of Eastem Europe and the Soviet successor states, suspended between democracy and "virtual communism."

This essay explores social forces which contributed to regaining independence by the Polish people and sovereignty by the Polish state after 45 years of Soviet domination There were four major factors or forces of historical change: workers' resistance (big-industry working class); intellectual opposition (dissidents); grass-roots movement (families, households and their microeconmuc activity); and the Catholic Church (in the late phase of the Polish People's Republic). The preliminary thesis is that Poland succeeded in transcending communism and Soviet domination as quickly as it did thanks to its civil society traditions. In particular, universities and their intellectual influence on the young generations of Poles helped nurture the political opposition Equally, the grass-roots movement of Polish family households undermined the unrealistic, strange system of national (planned) economy, which otherwise could have lasted much longer in Poland, as it did in all of Eastem Europe. The conclusion follows that the historically formed cultural capital of the Polish people was the decisive factor in the nation's liberation from totalitarian rule.

Aleksandras Shtromas (1931-1999), a British-American scholar, became an eminent figure in his native Lithuania, yet Westem social scientists have yet to discover this human rights activist, Soviet dissident, and political thinker. Shtromas had no doubts about the inexorable collapse of the Soviet Union, resting his analysis on the assumption that communism was unable to provide any viable social and moral order. The vast majority of the Soviet intelligentsia had become skilled at the ideological cat-and-mouse games, wrestling wth Soviet Newspeak and censorship, and employing an Aesopian language in order to survive and remain as decent as possible in a world of brainwashing and lies. A gifted prophet of post-communism, Shtromas was the only political scientist in the world who took the disintegration of the Soviet Union as early as the late 1970s as an ongoing process. This essay links Shtromas' legacy to the great East European dissenters.

The code name "Balkanization" has many aspects, but in all cases it is quite negative. Belated modernization in the region--the transition from traditional to modem society--has been subject to a constellation of contradictory factors externally dependent on the Great Powers' clashing geopolitical interests. Following World War II, this region, except for Greece and Turkey, became part of the Soviet Empire and the communist project. Totalitarian states are in radical opposition to civil society, and this incompatibility is evident even in the comparatively mild case of Tito's Yugoslavia. The implosion of communist totalitarianism represents a unique precondition for post-communist development, especially for the Balkans. One of the main tasks is the building and consolidation of civil societies, which involves surmounting various degrees of ethnic autism, suspicion, and hostility between neighboring countries. Paradoxically, former Yugoslavia of all countries went from implosion of the totalitarian system to an explosion of typical Balkanization. However, this does not apply to other Balkans countries and the reguion as a whole. The opening of Balkan societies to one another, and especially to Europe and the democratic world, is closely linked with the constmction of open societies, a process that is perhaps irreversible.

Apart from Mukovan Djilas, Mihajlo Mihajlov is considered as the most famous dissident in the Balkans--a former prisoner-of-conscience in Tito's Yugoslavia. This brief but comprehensive, autobiographical retrospective recounts some major hilights in Mihajlov's odyssey ushered in by his intellectual travelogue, Moscow Sunmer 1964, first published in full in The New Leader. Mihajlov became an embarrassment not only to Josip Broz Tito and the Soviet leaders, but also to those in die West who landed Tito's "independent path to socialism." Yet others correctly perceived Mihajlov's quest for freedom of thought, speech, press, association, religious, philosophical and political persuasion as a classic benchmark of basic human rights and freedoms characterizing open, pluralistic, democratic polities. Indeed, the Westem press contributed to the pressure of world public opinion, which helped free Mihajlov, and, as he claims, even kept him alive. In a region divided by inter-ethnic conflict and civil war, Mihajlov's struggle for the rule of law and human dignity epitomizes hopes for a better future.

The term "genocide" was first coined in the 1940s to describe the horrors of Nazi rule in occupied Europe. In Nazi Germany, the machine of oppression was the concentration camp; in the Soviet Union, the Gulag. In China, it is the Laogai, which means "reform through labor." In fact, Laogai is a brutal and inhumane system that enslaves millions of people throughout China. The govemment in conununist China divides people by class, politics, and religuious beliefs. Such divisions are based not on race, but individual economic status. If a person owns land, capital or property, he or she belongs to the landlord or capitalist classes. Both are considered "exploiting" classes, and their members, including their family, are subject to extermination, since they belong to "counter-revolutionary" classes. During the Cultural Revolution, many people were massacred for die sake of the "Red Revolution." Since 1949, when the Communist Party came to power, it sought to destroy all religjon in China, particularly Christian faiths. The Roman Catholic faith is still illegal in China today. It is common knowledge that people in China are not allowed to practice the religion of their choice Meanwhile, Laogai, or prison camps, throughout China, imprison countless people who belong to the "wrong" religion or hold "wrong* political ideas. The Chinese govemment uses the Laogai to control and eliminate those people. Yet, despite the prevalence of the Laogai and its multitude of victims, the world seems unwilling to acknowledge this widespread plague.

Religions have served various dissident movements in Vietnam. The two indigenous sects--Hoa Hao and Cao Dai--were founded in the early twentieth century and became forces for the anti-colonial, and later anti-communist, movements in Vietnam Catholics and Buddhists played major roles in South Viemam's political scene, while they were both suppressed in the North. Protestant Christians constitute only a small portion of the overall population, but have become linked to nationalist movements among the ethnic minorities of the Highlands. Viemam's communist regime has pursued a heavy-handed policy of anti-religious repression in North Vietnam since 1954, and continued this policy after reunification of the two Viemams in 1975. Capitalist-style economic reforms began in 1986, allowing for more openness in the society, and emboldening religious leaders and other dissidents. However, the regime still cracks down on religious groups and leaders perceived as a political threat to the Communist Party's monopoly of power. With the decline of Marxist-Leninist ideology in society, religions may become alternative repositories of moral values for Vietnam.

During the 1990s, the dissident movement in Cuba has grown in effectiveness, popular participation, and intemational support. While facing a first-generation totalitarian regime, with a sophisticated repressive apparatus, the civic movement in the Island has persevered and grown in spite of constant persecution, offering hope for political, social, and economic change from within Cuba itself. This essay seeks to provide a brief overview of the civic movement in Cuba covering its social origins and growth, theoretical repercussions of its existence, major leaders and initiatives, its relationship with the Cuban exile community, its ideological history and development, intemational support, and its current status in light of recent events affecting political conditions in the Island. Born initially out of dissident cells within Cuba's revolutionary movement and the Communist Party, the dissident movement in Cuba has transformed itself into a microcosm of a re-emerging civil society through which Cuban citizens are reclaiming their sovereignity and constructing the blueprint for a new Republic. The Varela Project is of particular significance for the development of the civic movement in Cuba.

Ecumenical dialogue and reconciliation among Christians, the dictates of academic freedom, and the very integrity of science and faith call for a new conceptual framework, episteme or paradigm for understanding the phenomenon of man, including the proper relationship between science and faith. Both science and Scripture suggest a more humane, charitable, and open-ended approach to science and religion. Freedom of inquiry and Christian charity constitute the essential prerequisites for a new episteme reflected by the imperative for a Second Reformation in the religious sphere, coupled with the prospects for a post-Kantian Second Copemican Revolution in the scientific sphere.

From roughly the 16th century onwards, religiously oriented persons have engaged in what might appear to be a losing battle against the scientific community. With each new success of scientific explanation, religious traditionalists have been forced to either renounce or radically reinterpret doctrines which were previously regarded as "factual descriptions" of the way the world is. The situation just described has been changed by recent advances in the philosophy of science. The present view of the status of scientific explanation as found in such thinkers as Feyerabend, Goodman, and Von Fraasen is a far cry from the 17th-19th century respresentational realism. This raises the possibility that we need to reassess the relationship of religious assertions to scientific assertions.