Individualism and Morality in the Post-communist Capitalism

AbstractToday, there has been an increasing interest in the likely existence of a moral capitalism, which is able to combine the capitalist's own interest with the public good. In fact, real capitalisms could be positioned on a scale with the wild capitalism at one end and the moral capitalism at the other. This debate is even more important and topical in the former communist countries, which want to implement a capitalist economic system and which, unfortunately, are faced with extreme forms of wild or crony capitalism. On the other hand, the capitalist system involves individualism as its underlying ideology. However, individualism is far from being a unitary ideology; rather, it is more appropriate to discuss individualisms. For instance, the post-modern society has imposed the hedonistic individualism, which constitutes the foundation and drive of consumerism. In the communist regimes, which are officially connected to a collectivist ideology, forms of a survival individualism appear as a perverse effect of the economic, political, and social context, which continue even after the fall of communism. However, the deep vein of individualism, which has certain humanistic characteristics, is not in opposition to the moral capitalism; on the contrary, it sustains it. In the former communist countries, which are still in the process of building and consolidating their new political and economic system, the influence of these individualisms is deeply felt and they generate and manifest various and often contradictory forms of capitalism