Abstract The market is sometimes thought to be a largely neutral means for coordinating cooperation among strangers under complex conditions because it is, as Hayek noted, a ?spontaneous order.? But in fact the market actively shapes the kinds of values it rewards, as do other spontaneous orders. Recognizing these biases allows us to see how such orders impinge on one another and on other communities basic to human life, sometimes negatively. In this way we may come to acknowledge the inevitability (...) of placing limits on spontaneous orders. (shrink)

GREEN POLITICS: THE GLOBAL PROMISE, 2nd ed. by Charlene Spretnak and Fritjof Capra New York: E. P. Dutton, 1986; 224 pp., $12.95 SEEING GREEN: THE POLITICS OF ECOLOGY EXPLAINED by Jonathan Porritt Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985; 249 pp., $24.95, $6.95 paper THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION OF GREEN POLITICS by Charlene Spretnak Santa Fe, N.M.: Bear 95 pp., $4.95 paper.

A PREFACE TO ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY by Robert A. Dahl Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. 184 pp., $7.95.

Thomas Spragens attempts to rebuild liberal theory by arguing that realist, libertarian, egalitarian, and identity liberals all have valid insights, but develop them one‐sidedly. Re‐examining the work of sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐century liberals leads, he contends, to a more balanced liberalism. Spragens's often‐impressive effort to reconstruct liberalism is undermined by insufficient appreciation of the role of the scale of the polity and by confusions about civic friendship. Appreciation of Hayekian insights about spontaneous order, and of the limits of citizen knowledge in (...) large polities, would help him solve the first problem. Distinguishing between friendship, friendliness, and social capital would help resolve the second. (shrink)