Czeslaw Milosz wrote that European and American capitalism were different. In his view, the violence of human clashes in America took place on the surface, in the open, while the violence in Europe became formalized and fused with class divisions that had been sanctified over centuries. He described that violence as interiorized, ingrained, or baked in.

Milosz argued that American capitalism was founded on daring, resourcefulness, largesse, and waste, while European capitalism was founded on one powerful passion: miserliness. He said these patterns, which he believed still endure, help explain why the United States succeeded in creating a vast new sector of the economy adapted to needs that became increasingly evident as the world moved closer to the twenty-first century: universities, research institutes, and laboratories, with billions of dollars invested in them.

By contrast, he wrote, Western Europe, where education had long been the preserve of a narrow elite, failed to produce anything comparable. According to Milosz, the prodigality of private capital in America made the beginnings of this sector possible, with tax money joining in at the next stage. He said miserliness with capital in Europe effectively prevented the laying of foundations for such a sector, and he doubted whether government treasuries would ever be able to overcome the widening gap. The passage also points to a broader historical shift: in Milosz’s account, the modern research-and-university complex was not just a matter of public policy, but the result of how private capital, elite access, and state support interacted differently on each side of the Atlantic.

That passage is from Czeslaw Milosz’s Visions from San Francisco Bay.