Social justice and political economy

Utilitarian theories do not define the limits of the market according to a notion of individual integrity that transcends the logic of market relations. For utilitarian theories, the limits of the market are defined by the logic of the market.

We can make this point in another way. For a utilitarian, the matter of the limits of the market is quantitative. If nonmarket allocation or regulation will lead to greater individual satisfaction, then nonmarket methods domi­nate. The line separating market from government does not distinguish be­tween kinds of needs and what is appropriate to their satisfaction, but between degrees of want satisfaction.

Justice-centered thinking begins with a notion of individual integrity. This notion defines the purpose and limits of the market. It is not a matter of degree of satisfaction, but of what is required to protect and ensure the integrity of the individual. These requirements vary, as we have seen, for the different justice-centered approaches. But, in each case, they determine the meaning and limits of the market.

In justice-centered approaches, the conception of the person is most im­portant. The more abstract that conception, as in the libertarian approach, the wider the scope of the market. Indeed, in the libertarian approach, the scope of the market is generally wider than it would be for a utilitarian. The more concretely defined the concept of the person, the more circumscribed the domain of the market.

In each case, however, the market has a domain of its own defined by the requirements of personal integrity satisfied by market relations. This means that justice-centered approaches distinguish between domains of social life according to (1) the mode of interrelatedness characteristic of each, and (2) the requirement of personhood linked to that mode of relating. Hegel refers to these as “moments” of the conception of ethical order.

Thinking this way has important implications for the relation of politics to economics. First, it protects the market from the kinds of incursion of politics suggested by reference to merger of the political and economic, or the economy as a political system. Justice-centered approaches insist on the integrity and separability of the economy.

Second, thinking in terms of spheres or domains defined qualitatively rather than in terms of market failure prevents economic reasoning, or the logic typical of the market, from dominating in nonmarket relations. The latter also have their own integrity linked to a qualitatively distinct social purpose. Politics, then, is not the pursuit of economic efficiency by other means; it is the pursuit of ends distinctly relevant to the political process.

For this to make sense, persons must have different kinds of ends; or, more accurately, they must have the need to enter into different kinds of relationships that characterize different social domains. Pursuit of the largest available measure of satisfaction does not characterize all that we do (it can also be debated whether it characterizes anything we do, of course). Justice­centered approaches focus our attention on the differences in kind among our human ends, and on the differences in kind among the processes and relationships by which we pursue those ends. In doing so, it makes it possible to consider those relations and processes ends in themselves. In the con­cluding chapter, we explore this idea more fully.