Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts

of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org

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Deirdre McCluskey is Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication

at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And the author of most recently, the bourgeois

virtues, ethics for an age of commerce. Deirdre, welcome to Econ Talk.

Thanks for coming, Russ. I'm pleased to be here.

The bourgeois virtues, the first volume, which is the volume we're going to talk about today,

is a part of a rather ambitious project. Part of that is a defensive capitalism. And when

I hear people criticize capitalism, one of the things I often hear them say is that sure

capitalism delivers the goods, but it deidens the soul. I think you disagree. Why?

Yeah, the whole project is, as you'd say, is a defense of capitalism. But first of the

standard way that we as economists defend capitalism is precisely this claim that which I think

is correct, that it delivers the goods, and we get air-conditioners, and blood, cars,

and so forth. But if we're going to really answer the concerns of our friends on both

the left and the right, we need to look into whether or not it's true that participation

in a market is correct, and there's, you know, since the sermon on the mountain before,

there has been claims that that's true. And I don't think it is. I think that on the contrary,

participation in a market is the French said in the 18th century with the matter of

decommissioned sweet commerce. And that in fact, you can make a case that we're

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