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  3. One of the principal of Walzer’s critique of liberal capitalism is that it i

One of the principal of Walzer’s critique of liberal capitalism is that it i

游客2024-11-18  37
问题     One of the principal of Walzer’s critique of liberal capitalism is that it is insufficiently egalitarian. Walzer’s case against the economic inequality generated by capitalism and in favor of "a radical redistribution of wealth" is presented in a widely cited essay entitled In Defense of Equality.
    The most striking feature of Walzer’s critique is that, far from rejecting the principle of reward according to merit, Walzer insists on its validity. People who excel should receive the superior benefits appropriate to their excellence. But people exhibit a great variety of qualities— "intelligence, physical strength, agility and grace, artistic creativity, mechanical skill, leadership, endurance, memory, psychological insight, the capacity for hard work—even moral strength, sensitivity, the ability to express compassion. "Each deserves its proper recompense and hence a proper distribution of material goods should reflect human differences as measured on all these different scales. Yet, under capitalism, the ability to make money ("the green thumb of bourgeois society") enables its possessor to acquire almost "every other sort of social goods"such as the respect and esteem of others.
    The centerpiece of Walzer’s argument is the invocation of a quotation from Pascal’s Pensees, which concludes: "Tyranny is the wish to obtain by one means what can only be had by another." Pascal believes that we owe different duties to different qualities. So we might say that infatuation is the proper response to charm, and awe the proper response to strength. In this light, Walzer characterizes capitalism as the tyranny of money (or of the ability to make it) and Walzer advocates as the means of eliminating this tyranny and of restoring genuine equality "the abolition of the power of money outside its sphere". What Walzer envisions is a society in which wealth is no longer convertible into social goods with which it has no intrinsic connection.
    Walzer’s argument is a puzzling one. After all, why should those qualities unrelated to the production of material goods be rewarded with material goods? Is it not tyrannical, in Pascal’s sense, to insist that those who excel in "sensitivity" or "the ability to express compassion" merit equal wealth with those who excel in qualities (such as "the capacity for hard work") essential in producing wealth? Yes. Walzer’s argument, however deficient, does point to one of the most serious weaknesses of capitalism—namely, that it brings to predominant positions in a society people who, no matter how legitimately they have earned their material rewards, often lack those other qualities that evoke affection or admiration. Some even argue plausibly that this weakness may be irremediable: in any society that, like a capitalist society, seeks to become ever wealthier in material terms disproportionate rewards are bound to flow to the people who are instrumental in producing the increase in its wealth.  [br] The argumentation in the passage attaches importance to the question of what should be the proper relation between________.
选项 A、sensitivityand "the ability to express compassion"
B、liberal capitalismand "bourgeois society"
C、social goodsand "material goods"
D、rewardand "recompense"
答案 C
解析 推断题。第二段提到了“按劳取酬”的原则以及人类不同的品质。第三段最后一句指出，沃尔泽所设想的是这样一个社会：在这个社会中，物质财富将不再能转化成为与之没有内在联系的社会商品。第四段继续论述：沃尔泽的论点是令人困惑的。说到底，为什么那些与物质财富的创造毫无联系的品质非得以物质财富来作为报酬呢?可见，全文都在探讨“物质财富”与“社会财富”之间的关系，故[C]为答案。“敏感”和“善于表达怜悯之心”是论述物质财富和社会财富的关系时提到的内容，非论点，故排除[A]；“自由资本主义”和“资产阶级社会”在文中并没有作为论点出现，故排除[B]：“reward”和“recompense”意思相近，无法构成对比关系，故排除[D]。
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