The Social Conscience; Can a Caring Society Exist in a Market Economy?

The author discusses the nature of the Social Conscience and the moral values that it embodies. Seeking to do what is right, motivated by a sympathetic awareness of others, driven by the instinct to care and acknowledging the necessity to share, the Social Conscience expresses innate moral values. In these troubled times, satisfactory solutions to economic and social problems will not be found through either capitalism or socialism. The Social Conscience is the third way to defining social policy that reconciles economic progress, social justice and individual freedom. Glautier poses the two questions above in the context of: - The social effects of globalisation - Rapid scientific and technological changes and their impact on society worldwide - Moral values, family values and shareholder value - Problems of identity and social cohesion - The role of education in a society that seems to have lost a sense of purpose and direction - A market economy with a value system that affronts the Social Conscience - Freedom that rejects authority and is surrendered to permissiveness - The widespread loss of confidence in government. He argues that, driven by profit seeking and emphasising shareholder value as the primary objective of business, the market economy undermines traditional values of caring and sharing. By identifying family values as those that explain, sustain and justify a caring society, he reaches out to man's fundamental nature and to what is common to all beliefs.