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Berger sees the reasons why there is as yet no socialist democracy but
cautiously hypothesizes that "if a socialist economy is opened up to
market forces, a point (not precisely specifiable at this time) will be
reached at which democratic governance becomes a possibility."
Despite this open-mindedness, he is not optimistic. One reason is
that the market gives independent power - independent of the
state - to individuals. And he doubts that this broadening of individ–
ual power can be carried out in a society where a political elite makes
all key economic decisions.
A decade ago, Peter Berger pondered and wrote about "under–
developed" countries and problems of development, and in recent
years he has been deeply interested in the one great example of a
non-Western country Oapan) that is both successfully capitalist and
a democracy, and in the "little dragons"-South Korea, Taiwan,
Hong Kong, and Singapore - which have shown such remarkable
economic success, but which are, with variations, not democracies
on the Western (or Japanese) model. Japan and its neighbors seem
to answer the question of whether there is some necessary relation–
ship between the history of the West and a successful capitalism.
Max Weber connected the rise of capitalism (he considered it an
example of rationality, at work in many spheres of Western life aside
from the economy) to the historical accident of the creation of a kind
of this-worldly asceticism embodied in Calvinism, which itself would
have to be traced back, in some degree, to ancient Israel. He raised
sharply the question of whether Western industrial capitalism could
be easily exported, or develop, or made indigenous to societies with
very different traditions and histories.
East Asia demonstrates that capitalism can develop and take
hold in conditions very different from those offered by early modern
Europe, in societies in which personal autonomy and individualism
are not greatly developed or highly valued, and under conditions in
which there is a greater degree of state intervention and guidance.
These realities challenge some simple-minded views of capitalism
which emphasize only the role of individual autonomy and entrepre–
neurship and see state action as only the enemy of capitalism. We
have in the East examples of what we might call a more "communal"
capitalism, as expressed in the social patterns of the Japanese firm.
But if Japanese capitalism is independent of distinctive Western
values, it is certainly dependent on
some
values deeply embodied in
traditional cultures . This suggests some hope for the economic
development of non-Western societies, but it also warns that this
