New Accommodations

This chapter applies the theories to practice, describing the threads that may lead to radically different social and economic arrangements in the future. It shows how at decisive moments in history whole societies have remade themselves, not through violent revolutions but through rough agreements that allowed capitalism to evolve. Always these accommodations took ideas and organizations that already existed, albeit on the margins, and made them central; and always they had a strongly moral tone. Reformers, radicals, and what scholars now call social innovators provided the menus from which new deals could be cooked, and they helped capitalism to become more civilized by giving people a voice. The chapter sets out elements that can be drawn on to shape political programs in the years ahead, amplifying economic creativity and reining in predation.