James Seaton reviews The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce by Deirdre McCloskey. McCloskey argues that capitalism "not only allows but encourages individuals to exercise the seven traditional virtues—courage, justice, temperance, prudence, faith, hope, and love— both in and outside the market":
Deirdre McCloskey is out to demonstrate that life under capitalism—bourgeois life—nourishes the virtues more than life under feudalism, socialism, or any other alternative. She claims that “actually existing capitalism, not the collectivisms of the left or of the right, has reached beyond mere consumption, producing the best art and the best people.” Even if capitalism were not able to do what almost all observers agree it does do—deliver the goods—McCloskey argues that it would, on moral grounds, still be the best economic and social system around: “Had capitalism not enriched the world by a cent nonetheless its bourgeois, antifeudal virtues would have made us better people than in the world we have lost.”
The Dish 