Inequality, Justice, and the Myth of Unsituated Market Exchange

Abstract

This article examines inequality from a framework of justice that attends to the socially situated nature of market activity, including exchange. I argue that accounts of unsituated exchange—accounts of market exchange that abstract from social situations, such as philosopher Robert Nozick’s influential libertarian account of justice—overlook various factors that contribute to growing economic inequality in contemporary society. Analyses of market exchange must incorporate the role of “third parties” who play a role in shaping and/or who are affected by economic transactions. The involvement of these additional parties, including the government and future generations, is not interference but, instead, an integral part of the economic and moral accounting of exchange. An approach to justice and inequality which embeds exchange within multiple dimensions of economy and society is needed; the latter part of this article traces such a socially situated approach.

Catholic Social Teaching, Economic Inequality, and American Society

“…As Douglas Hicks notes in his essay for this issue, the common good is the set of economic, political, social, and cultural conditions that permit an individual to realize their dignity and actualize their potential. Inequalities that undercut the necessary social conditions are contrary to the common good (Hicks , 337–54).…”

“…A lack of participation or the existence of obstacles to participation serves to mark a society as improperly ordered. Thus, Hicks declares, “social and economic inequalities must be limited to the point that they do not inhibit the poor or marginalized from full participation in their society” (Hicks , 349). Christians are called to participate in communal life since it is through such shared life that they can fulfill the commandment to love and serve their neighbors.…”

Religious Ethics and Economic Inequality

“…An economy in which participants have that virtue will be one in which they appreciate the many ways in which third parties contribute to and are affected by market activity. A society characterized by it will, he continues, be one that secures “the conditions for well‐being and participation” (, 348). And since those conditions are least likely to be available to the least well‐off, it demands special attention to those at the lower ends of the new inequality.…”