ABSTRACT
Daniel Bell, following Max Weber, has pointed out that the religious values that undergird the culture persisted for some time in post-Revolutionary America, but they began to erode in the late nineteenth century. This chapter explicates the development of the United States in comparative perspective. It maintains that the unique form of individualistic, liberal-democratic capitalism that emerged in the United States derived from the nature of its Christian and more particularly its Calvinist heritage. The movement from small-town America to the city and the emergence of the metropolis contributed to a shift in values. In small towns, people had lived face to face. Every high civilization of which there is a record has developed a stratum of intellectuals. The emergence of liberal capitalism produced relative affluence and an ideology that supported, even insisted upon, a free market in ideas as well as in economic activity.
