Your question is a good one.
If you have time, I recommend that you seek out the best thinkers on this matter, thinkers coming from the pro-Capitalist/Free Market side of things and thinkers coming more from the pro-Progressivism/Social Justice side of things.
Along the way, if you haven’t already, I recommend that you really make it your business to really understand Catholic Social Doctrine (the body of official Catholic teachings related to universal principles and values about how economic systems and government systems should be set up). Here’s a good intro:
skrason.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/the-conservative-weakness-and-the-solution-catholic-social-teaching/
I’m sure you’ve heard the theory help by many historians and social scientists that big, gruesome, no-hold-barred wars tend to result in periods of social liberalism following the war. They always cite the Roaring 20s and Weimar Republic, which followed World War One. These thinkers also cite the Sexual Revolution and Hippie period (1960s and 1970s) and try to say that this was really a consequence of World War Two, though this consequence was delayed for a decade or so because of all the fears early on in the Cold War.
Lots of people also say that the pointlessness and ultimate loss of the Vietnam War fueled all the vast sexual and moral changes in the 1960s and 1970s.
Some people who study the Hebrew Bible say that they see a recurring pattern: The Hebrew people would go through a difficult time and be moral and disciplined and organized and orderly in that time, because they had to in order to survive. But eventually they overcome whatever is threatening them, and they become “fat and happy.” The begin to accumulate wealth, and feel secure. That in turn leads to sexual adventures and family breakdown, and a general immorality. Eventually all this immorality lead to weakness which inevitable leads them back into some sort of grave danger. As things start to fall apart, a prophetic leader will bring them back to morality, discipline and group cohesion. Eventually they solve their problem, overcome the danger. And then the cycle just keeps playing out, over and over again.
Don’t we see this same cycle playing out in American and European history?
We had World War One, followed by the Roaring 20s, followed by the Great Depression, followed by World War Two, followed by the a post-war economic boom of the 50s, followed by the Social Revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s (free sex; gay rights; women’s rights; racial equality rights).
I think one legitimate view is that ANY economic or government system (socialism; capitalism; a democratic mixture of capitalism and socialism) that results in widespread economic security and physical safety will result in moral laxity. It is sad to say, but if people aren’t afraid, they won’t be moral. This goes for the rich, for the middle class, and for the lower working class and poor.
When people talk about a decline of morals, they are generally talking about this decline among the middle class and/or the lower working class and poor. They are hardly ever talking about the rich or the super rich. The truth that is shocking to many Americans is that the rich, as a group, are NEVER moral. Life among the rich is always one big bacchanalia. Don’t believe me. Read the histories and biographies of the royal families of Europe and of the tycoons of American history. Just pick one famous American family, the Kennedys of Massachusetts, and use them as a case study. You can’t blame socialism for the vast immorality and crime of Joseph Kennedy and his sons.
Nor can you blame socialism for the vast immorality and crimes of Italian organized crime "families."Nor can you blame socialism for the vast immorality and crimes among American settlers in the Old West during the period when it was the “wild west” (approx. 1865-1900).
There a whole loud and powerful movement political conservatives and libertarians who want to blame the progressivism of FDR’s New Deal and the progressivism of the 1960s/1970s for EVERYTHING that is wrong with America. They want to believe that the USA was a virtual Utopia before FDR was elected in 1933. I can tell you are too sophisticated to fall for this. It is so much more complicated that that. I am no fan of the “Sixties.” But we must ask: What really caused all that?
During the Cold War, the term “socialism” was hardly ever heard in the USA among the general public. Rather, the term “Communism” was used to refer to the USSR, PRC, North Vietnam, etc. Only in the last four years or so has there been an explosion of the term “socialism.” This is for a reason, I believe. I believe that they want to equate Social Security, Medicare, and Banking Regulations, Environmental Regulations, Antitrust Laws, Inheritance Tax Laws, Minimum Wage Laws, Health Insurance Laws, pro-Labor Union Laws, Food Stamps, College Student Aid, etc., with the sort of societies run by the dictatorships in the USSR and the PRC. Back when Communist Parties were powerful in the world, capitalists were eager to have wealth redistribution social programs for the lower working class and middle class as a means to prevent Communism in the USA. But now that Communism has been essentially vanquished everywhere, and Global Capitalism and Banking is dominant everywhere, they are now emboldened to declare all these social programs to be “unconstitutional,” “evil,” “socialism,” and “immorality promoting.”
Modern advances in scientific knowledge and technology are also changing economic,social and moral patterns in ways that are different from all of previous human history. This will probably continue, and the results may be different from what hardly anyone expects.
I will stop myself now. There many great books out there by honest, careful, objective historians and social scientists. Yes, read the “screed” books by partisans on both or all sides too, to see what they are saying. But unless you are content to be a tool of political manipulators, you go beyond the screaming, condemning politicos who are constantly on the radio and TV.
There are some very credible scholars out there who make the case that unregulated Capitalism is the greatest destroyer of morals and family values on the planet. Just think of all the novels of Charles Dickens, as one expression of that point of view.
Just please study both sides of this important question!
I can think of one great book by a fair, objective and thorough historian. The book is titled Eagles and Empire: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle for a Continent (2009). The author is David Clary. It cover the period of American history from about 1820 to about 1850. It is very eye opening. But to me, the real value is what is shows about enduring traits (mostly bad ones, such as greed, deceit, lust, callousness, personal ambition, but also some good ones such as honor, honesty, decently, generosity, intelligence, fairness, tolerance) of human beings in all times, all places.
