Theologian and author Michael Novak delivers a lecture on the ethics of capitalism from the Judeo-Christian perspective.
Bio
Tom Becker
Tom Becker is the president of Chautauqua Institution. Becker joined Chautauqua in March 1985 as a vice president of the Institution and vice president of the Chautauqua Foundation. Over the years he was promoted to executive vice president and CEO of the Foundation.
In 2001, he continued as chief executive officer of the Foundation and was named executive vice president of Chautauqua Institution. As chief executive, Becker oversaw the growth of the Foundation into a professional fund-raising organization and led it to raising over $100 million in support of the Institution.
Michael Novak
Michael Novak is an American Roman Catholic philosopher and diplomat. The author of some 25 books on the philosophy and theology of culture, Novak is most widely known for his book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982), which has also appeared in numerous translations. In 1994 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, a million-dollar purse awarded at Buckingham Palace. He writes on capitalism, religion, and the politics of democratization.
He served as U.S. chief ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1981 and also as the ambassador to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Novak is currently George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute.
Novak is a member of the Catholic Advisory Board for the Ave Maria Mutual Funds. Novak is also a board member of the Capital Research Center and the Center of the American Experiment.
Novak was born in 1933 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He earned an M.A. in history and philosophy of religion from Harvard University in 1966, a Sacrae Theologiae Baccalaureus (a degree in theology), from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1958, and a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and English (Summa Cum Laude) from Stonehill College in 1956.
Economic system in which most of the means of production are privately owned, and production is guided and income distributed largely through the operation of markets. Capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end of mercantilism. It was fostered by the Reformation, which sanctioned hard work and frugality, and by the rise of industry during the Industrial Revolution, especially the English textile industry (16th–18th centuries). Unlike earlier systems, capitalism used the excess of production over consumption to enlarge productive capacity rather than investing it in economically unproductive enterprises such as palaces or cathedrals. The strong national states of the mercantilist era provided the social conditions, such as uniform monetary systems and legal codes, necessary for the rise of capitalism. The ideology of classical capitalism was expressed in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), and Smith's free-market theories were widely adopted in the 19th century. In the 20th century the Great Depression effectively ended laissez-faire economics in most countries, but the demise of the state-run command economies of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (seecommunism) and the adoption of some free-market principles in China left capitalism unrivaled (if not untroubled) by the beginning of the 21st century.
Mr Novack is a bigot, narrow minded, destructive influence. Religion is not tolerant of freedom, it enslaves some and empowers the few. He preaches only inequity.
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