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Subject Area: Political Theory

Justice under Capitalism - Leonard P. Liggio, Literature of Liberty, January/March 1978, vol. 1, No. 1 [1978]

Edition used:

Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought was published first by the Cato Institute (1978-1979) and later by the Institute for Humane Studies (1980-1982) under the editorial direction of Leonard P. Liggio.

Part of: Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought, 20 vols. 19781-982

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Justice under Capitalism

Van Den Haag, Ernest

  • The New School, New York

“Economics Is Not Enough: Notes on the Anticapitalist Spirit.” The Public Interest (USA), 45 (1976):109–122.

Capitalism is almost a can't win situation. Each person who judges an economic system asks not merely if it raises the general living standard, but more importantly, does it distribute wealth by his individual notions of what is morally just, fair, and equal. But no system of equality or inequality can possibly satisfy everyone's sense of justice, for neither rewards our own moral desert exactly as each of us feels it ought to be rewarded. Quite apart from their lower efficiency and consequent aggravation of the burden of inequality, alternatives to the free market, once realized, tend to arouse no less hostility than the market does. Such nonmarket or political attempts to eradicate “poverty” or economic inequality would only magnify demands for an unachievable “equality.”

Intellectuals resent the market because it measures value by consumers' demand and lets people pay only for economic value. As purveyors of nonmarketable, nonmeasurable moral value, intellectuals feel deprived of the power and income they believe they deserve by virtue of their virtue. Thus, they seek to abolish the economic decision mechanism of the market (consumers' choices) and replace them with political mechanisms for distribution. Their alternative to the market—whether intervention or full socialism—is bureaucracy. Each intellectual socialist imagines the bureaucrats in charge will distribute rewards as the intellectuals believe it should be done. Yet owing to the divergent subjective notions of justice, the intellectual cannot achieve his fantasy. Bureaucrats, seldom intellectuals themselves, win their positions by manipulating power, not by philosophically dispensing just deserts.

Capitalism sorely needs a moral justification. Lacking that, it is only from experience that people may learn that abolishing markets will actually aggravate their grievances rather than satisfy their desire for a “fairer” slice of the economic pie. Perhaps the cautionary examples of communist nonmarket tragedies and misallocations will educate us to preserve the market elsewhere.