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Notice of Caux Round Table 2022 Global Dialogue at Mountain House in Caux, Switzerland

In partnership with the Initiatives of Change Business and Economy Program, we are planning on a Global Dialogue at Mountain House in Caux, Switzerland, for July 30 and 31, 2022.  Most participants have, in the past, arrived on Friday before the meeting and then leave the following Monday.

If you have never been to Mountain House, travel is quite easy.  At the Geneva Airport, (or train station if you arrive by train) you buy a train ticket for Caux and then catch a train for Montreux. The trip is about an hour, as I remember, or less.  Once at the Montreux station, you walk via an underpass to another platform to catch a cog wheeled train up the mountainside to Caux, a small hamlet.  Then, you walk 2 minutes to Mountain House.

Alternatively, the drive from Geneva to Caux is easy and well-marked.

Mountain House has been the setting for many sessions on reconciliation since opening as a conference center after WWII.  The first sessions brought former enemies from France and Germany together and laid a moral foundation for the European Union.  In 1986, Mountain House welcomed business leaders from Japan, Europe and the U.S. to confront and rise above trade rivalries in the first gathering of the Caux Round Table.

Today, as we shift from one era – the post-WWII order seeking international comity and peaceful idealism – to something, as yet, undefined, but, perhaps, a return to the realpolitik of nation state willful self-assertion and geo-political rivalries among economies and cultures – dialogue and reconciliation is still most needed.

Please join us to make your personal contribution to the legacy of Mountain House.  You may find the proposed agenda for the Global Dialogue here.

We will confirm the agenda, conference fee and accommodation costs later.

Please do save the date.

Christmas Stockings and the Morality of Capitalism

A somewhat off the wall article in the Wall Street Journal makes a case, by accident, for the value of capitalism.

The article was a short note on the history of Christmas stockings, part of the Christmas holiday ritual developed in the 19th century in Europe, especially in England.

One part of the innovative middle class celebration of Christmas was for children – Santa Claus, who brought gifts to children who had been nice, not naughty, during the year, then ending. Small gifts were put in stockings, hung from a mantle over the fireplace.

Stockings used for that special purpose evolved from stockings made for daily wear.

The first modern stockings were knitted by hand and by a machine invented in 1589 called a stocking frame. Foot-powered stocking frames evolved over time. By the mid-18th century, England had some 14,000 stocking frames. Stockings were no longer only for the aristocracy. Very ordinary people could acquire such status coverings for their legs.

In mercantilist France, stocking frames were restricted to protect hand workers.

In 1758, Jedediah Strutt invented a way of incorporating the purl stitch into the making of the fabric, resulting in ribbed stockings. With his profits, Strutt financed the first spinning mills built by Richard Arkwright, whose invention of the water frame transformed cloth making from a low-productivity craft to an industrial product. Arkwright’s invention took only minutes to make enough wool yarn to make a pair of knee socks, when previously that task would have taken five hours.

Cotton hosiery, more desirable than wool, was one of the first consumer products made from the newly abundant thread. What could be produced in quantity could profitably be sold at lower prices and so could become more affordable to more people and so also more abundant in the lives of the many.

And Christmas stockings, too, could become part of most every English family’s Christmas celebration.

Thanks to the capacity of capitalism to evolve technology, expand and expand productivity, new wealth, including ownership of stockings, was created, which could more inclusively devolve to the people.

Your Support is Most Appreciated

Our thanks to those of you who recently contributed to the work of the Caux Round Table during the Give to the Max special day of fundraising for non-profits here in Minnesota.

During the last two weeks, I have surprisingly received many emails from all kinds of organizations asking me for a personal contribution.  These requests seem here in the U.S. to be a new part of our holiday season, perhaps encouraged by increased use of Zoom and internet relationships over these past 18 months.

It is the end of our fiscal year and so I presume on your goodwill and concern to ask again for your financial support, particularly to defray the costs of our monthly newsletter, Pegasus.

From its inception in 1986, the Caux Round Table has provided its thoughts, reflections, principles, metrics and commentaries to the global public domain without charge.

We rely upon donors to contribute with hope and courage in the midst of trials and disappointments.

You can contribute by PayPal, check or wire transfer (for wire transfer instructions, please respond to this message).

Our mailing address is 75 West Fifth Street, Suite 219, St. Paul, MN 55102.

I wish you all the best in the New Year.

John Brandl’s Uncommon Quest for Common Ground: Please Join Us for a Zoom Round Table on December 28

he Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism, with support from the Citizens League, Growth & Justice, Center of the American Experiment and Humphrey School of Public Affairs, invites you to a special Zoom round table on John Brandl’s “uncommon quest for common ground” at 9:00 am on Tuesday, December 28.

Mitch Pearlstein, whose initiative launched the Brandl program in 2008, will join us to recall his personal experience with John.

Our combined efforts reflect the leadership of John Brandl, former state legislator and Dean of the Humphrey Institute (now School).  John, a life-long Democrat, took, as his True North, the “uncommon quest for common ground.”  John was loath to “dis-include” anyone or their personal truths and narratives.  But he quietly and engagingly sought to find the harmonies and goodness which can affirm our common humanity.

This past July, the Pew Research Center surveyed 10,221 American adults.  Recently, it released a report categorizing all Americans as belonging to one or another of nine “tribes” in our politics.  These rivalrous tribes are: 1) faith and flag conservatives; 2) committed conservatives; 3) populist right; 4) ambivalent right; 5) stressed sideliners; 6) outsider left; 7) Democrat mainstays; 8) establishment liberals; 9) and progressive left.

For two decades, other commentators and analysts of our culture and politics have proposed that we Americans, in our culture and politics, have taken on a bimodal distribution of dispositions as follows:

In contrast to the bimodal distribution of political beliefs and agendas, past understandings of the American democracy (such as Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America) were more in line with a normal gaussian distribution of individual orientations as follows:

The urgent question is whether the American experiment in ordered liberty is collapsing, whether there is any common good left, but only various factional interests and ideologies, just as Madison feared might happen.

Knowing that most great nations and powers lasted about 250 years before disintegrating or collapsing, what kind of program might be most effective at this point in our nation’s history to improve our prospects?

To register, please click here.

The event is free and will last about an hour.

The Zoom link will be emailed to registrants the day before the event.