ABSTRACT
The legacy of Weimar rather than Nazism lives on in the German social and economic system. The flaws in German national character may be a factor in the special rise of Nazism, but it hardly explains the globalization of the welfare state. The roots of the welfare state go deep into the technology no less than economy of Western culture. The rise of the welfare state, of the benevolent state, has limited its capacity for evil, but also trimmed its excesses in the process. The capital of the new global economy is neatly tucked away in cyberspace rather than located in the counting houses of New York, Tokyo, London, Paris, Frankfurt, and now Moscow and Beijing. The struggle between the welfare state and the technological economy may profoundly reshape the forces that contend for power at the new millennium, but they do not necessarily alter the factors that comprise the moral foundations of human association; shaky though they may appear.
