One definition of economics ties it to the market. In so doing, it makes the notions of property rights definitive of economic action.

This notion demar­cates the economy, distinguishing it from the other spheres of social life, including the political. If we attempt to address the problems of political economy on this basis, we do so by exploring the nature, specification, and limits of property rights.

The concept of justice refers to social ordering principles we can use to define rights (including property rights) and the market system. These prin­ciples follow from an idea of personhood, especially of the integrity of persons. Justice-centered theories of political economy judge market institutions against the demands of personhood. But, these demands vary for differing conceptions. In particular, the demands of personhood vary with the con­creteness and richness of the idea of the person advanced in the different justice-centered theories. Some theories define personhood at the most ab­stract level, virtually identifying it with the purely formal condition of legal personality. The person is the legally recognized locus of property ownership and capacity to contract. Other theories define personhood in more concrete terms, identifying the capacities that underlie legal personality with varying degrees of richness. In this chapter, we consider a set of justice-centered approaches. We begin with those insisting on the most formal, and least concretized, notion, and proceed to theories incorporating a more determinate idea of personal integrity. We will attempt to indicate how the concreteness of the notion of personhood carries implications for the meaning, scope, and limits of the market.

Justice-centered approaches to determining the proper relation of public decisions to private affairs employ criteria viewed as antecedent to the welfare of individuals, the interests of classes, the needs of the state, and the relative power of persons. These criteria stem from conceptions of justice and of the just (or well-ordered) society.

Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.... [I]n a just society the liberties of equal citi­zenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interest. (Rawls, 1971:3-4)

In justice-centered theories, the basic principles for judging institutions pre­cede political deliberation and economic calculation.

The ideas of inviolability of persons and equal liberty focus our attention on individual rights. In a positive sense, rights define the circumstances under which individuals can act on their own initiative, molding themselves and their environments in accordance with their wants and aspirations. In a negative sense, rights limit the ways in which others can intrude on us. They thus protect the integrity of persons. Rights also limit the ways in which the state relates to citizens (see Dworkin, 1977). Because of this, a justice-centered theory can use the specification of rights (especially property rights) to de­termine the boundaries between market and state.

In Chapter 4, on neoclassical theories of political economy, we encountered a treatment of property right that made it depend on a welfare calculation. While a utilitarian approach may incorporate rights in this way, because it subordinates rights to the calculation of welfare, it is not a justice-centered approach in the sense used here. As one utilitarian puts it:

The concept of justice as a fundamental ethical concept is really quite foreign to utilitarianism. A utilitarian would compromise his utilitarianism if he allowed prin­ciples of justice which might conflict with the maximization of happiness....

Indeed, respect for rights may lead us away from welfare maximization. The two criteria not only differ, but can be in conflict. Rights-based considerations “can be inconsistent even with Pareto optimality - perhaps the mildest utility­based condition and the most widely used welfare criterion in economics” (Sen and Williams, 1982:7).

From a utilitarian perspective, justice-centered approaches make the wel­fare of the individual and of the community vulnerable. Equally, however, because welfare-oriented arguments make rights contingent on the service they do in enhancing our material well-being, they make our rights vulner­able. A demonstration that the limitation or violation of rights enhances group welfare can justify abrogating those rights. If, in fact, a centrally planned economy without markets and private property can be shown to grow more rapidly and provide more (even substantially more) wealth to individuals, then arguments centering on material welfare become arguments against (a broad interpretation of) property rights.

For some theorists, this is a disturbing outcome. These theorists consider rights irreducible. While our material welfare may improve when our rights are limited, this does not imply an improvement in our well-being if that depends on the security of our persons, our freedom to define and pursue our own goals (including our self-interest), and the general requisites of individual integrity and self-determination. We create confusion when we try to separate the idea of individual right from the ideas of individual ini­tiative, self-determination, and integrity. Retaining the connection between these ideas can lead to an interpretation of welfare that dominates interpre­tations centering on material provisioning, utility maximization, or choice.

In this chapter we explore three justice-centered approaches: the libertar­ian, contractarian, and Hegelian. The first builds an argument against state intervention into economic life on the basis of a strong identification between justice and property rights. Because a market economy consists of a system of property relations, the broader and more uncompromising the conception of private property right, the less room for state involvement. The second approach builds an argument capable of supporting government involvement by locating justice not primarily in defense of property, but in the terms of collective judgment regarding a just social order. Property right plays a role but only as one part of the construction of just institutions. The third ap­proach emphasizes the social determination of persons. It connects rights and justice to the mutual dependence of persons, especially in the recognition of their personhood. Hegelian approaches judge economic intervention ac­cording to principles of equal opportunity and equal regard.