ABSTRACT
This chapter brings recent changes back to their true proportion. It starts with George Santayana's truth that those who do not learn from history will be forced to relive it. Business fundamentalism supports policy regimes that may serve the short-term financial interests of business, but always at the expense of its long-term ones. Business fundamentalism is undemocratic in striving to reduce the ambit of public affairs, of effective, deliberative self-rule in a democratic society. The interest business has in maintaining the good society in fact extends into the moral values expressed in Western civilization's signature institutions of civil society and democracy. The currently growing socio-economic polarization and social exclusion are morally abhorrent. They also destabilize both political arrangements and the safety of individuals and property civility, to give this condition its original name that business needs in order to be heard in public affairs and to function in the market place.
