Among other things, what Soros is suggesting are the outlines for a global political strategy. Build an alliance of democratic nations, rich and poor, in which all roughly agree on the common values of free speech, freedom of assembly and religion, the right to human dignity. Then begin to recapture the failed international institutions, like the United Nations, in which tin-pot dictators and totalitarians are treated as equal partners. This alliance would accept the need for patience--we are not all on the same pageof history and development--in order to nurture those countries struggling in the progressive direction (and to exclude those that trample on our shared values).

I think this approach is entirely plausible (though it does sound visionary alongside our own small-minded, ad hoc foreign policy). It will succeed, however, only if social reality is fully integrated with the rules and mechanisms of a reformed economic system. As Soros himself emphasizes, the two realms of market and society are now treated as separate entities, one based upon raw, unregulated, self-interested energies of commerce and finance, the other on our collective responsibilities to community and one another.

Fusion is the great uncharted challenge of our time (although teaching capitalism about humanity is a very old struggle). Soros is much too sketchy about how this might be accomplished, but I am not sure that's a fair complaint. He is painting a big picture of the future, a vision now widely disparaged as unnecessary and unworkable, even dangerous to our well-being. When a financial titan known for his brutal market plays is willing to articulate a progressive social vision sure to draw ridicule from his peers, I think we should congratulate his courage, not search for quibbles.

I have a similar reaction to his ideas for reforming the international financial system. These are bold and heretical strokes toward re-regulating global financial markets, but they might be more persuasive if fleshed out more precisely. One yearns for more detail and is disappointed.

The crucial point, however, is that Soros proposes a "new architecture" far beyond anything being discussed now in the timid debates among governments. He envisions the reintroduction of national controls that would dampen speculation and the "hot money" of short-term lending, impose new regulatory obligations on both banks and hedge funds, and extract penalty costs for the errant behavior of creditors, instead of the usual bailouts when they get into trouble.

The most ambitious (and most obviously flawed) idea in his catalogue is the tentative outline for an international central bank--a global credit-insurance agency that would offer loan guarantees to cross-border lenders and regulate credit flows by withdrawing those guarantees whenever a developing nation becomes dangerously overextended in its commitments.

I admire his boldness, but the concept is suspect on many levels. It sounds a lot like a new security blanket for the creditor classes. If the function is assigned to the International Monetary Fund, as Soros suggests, it would end up serving the same old crowd and probably injuring the same victims.

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