In Chapter 8, I conclude by addressing the promise of capitalism from the perspective of those who have joined the search for a moral foundation. I first discuss how both classical and neoclassical economic theory have proven to be incomplete views of economic reality. Recent evidence suggests that, while highly descriptive of economic growth prior to the first industrial revolution in England, classical economic theory is incapable of explaining economic growth after around 1800. The neoclassical economic theory out of Chicago has also proven to be incomplete following persistent evidence of norm-based behavior in the lab and recurring market crashes, including the latest severe market crash in 2007–08. I then discuss three types of responses to the latest crisis of capitalism and how they have left the theoretical landscape ripe for future development and innovation. To further reveal the potential for theoretical development, I summarize key insights from the economists and philosophers covered in this book. After summarizing key insights from my own search, including a paper I presented at a recent research conference in Australia, I conclude by discussing why the search for a moral foundation for capitalism may be the critical challenge of our age.

In Chapter 3, I address religion as a moral foundation for capitalism by discussing the lives and writings of Max Weber and R. H. Tawney. Classical economists after J. S. Mill limited the motivations of economic man to narrow self-interest and increased the mathematical formalism of their discipline, which tied their hands in arguing for capitalism. I begin by discussing the narrowing of arguments for capitalism in the nineteenth century by classical economists and the resistance to this narrowing by historical economists in Germany. Next, I discuss Max Weber and his broad critique of capitalism which included important social and moral issues as well as economic considerations. Given their opposing views, I contrast Weber’s critique of capitalism with that of Karl Marx. I then discuss the British economist R. H. Tawney and his critique of capitalism as a devout Christian on the political left. Tawney’s attempts to address the social injustices of the British industrial revolution led him to support the British Labour Party, but he rejected Marx’s anti-religious views and his emphasis on class division. This sets up a discussion of the role of religion in the development of capitalism based on Weber and Tawney’s two seminal works.

Chapter 4 reconstruct how the zeitgeist, the political and economic practices, and the geopolitical and societal circumstances of the war times guided Western Europe to a path of deeper international and regional cooperation focused on free trade and valuta convertibility. During exile and occupation, European governments fleshed out plans and schemes for post-war cooperation, primordially in the domains of socio-economic and the financial-economic planning, in greater (practical) detail. Initially, however, the step from grand designs and lofty models for a post-war Western order that could ‘win the peace’ to the practices of policies of cooperation was taken via the institutional engineering in the Atlantic world, most prominently through the ‘system’ envisioned in Bretton Woods. However, the original ideas behind Bretton Woods soon proved a bridge too far in practice, which complicated global ambitions as well as the proper build-up of Atlantic-wide institutions—and pushed Western Europe to think and act ‘beyond Americanisation’.

In the framework of a critical illustration of the contemporary history of economics, this chapter illustrates the various streams of neo-liberalism, from Ordoliberalism to Mises’s new Austrian school and Hicks’s Austrian capital theory, from Friedman and the Chicago school to rational expectations and supply-side economics, from the public choice school to political economics, from the Mount Pélerin Society to the Washington consensus and the idea of expansionary austerity. Step by step, the feeble theoretical and conceptual foundations of this set of theories are critically discussed.