Economy and Justice: A Conflict Without Resolution?**

Zusammenfassung

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Problems of justice, such as high managerial salaries or the introduction of minimum wages, today arouse a lot of public attention and debate. This hints at the general fact that "justice" cannot be reduced to mere efficiency questions as economists very often tend to assume. Therefore, this paper deals with opportunities to include aspects of social justice in economic analyses. The authors describe the historical development from the Aristotelian concept of justice via the medieval idea of pretium iustum towards the classical liberal approach of Adam Smith. The limits of a pure liberal concept of justice even in modern market societies are revealed which in turn indicate the necessity of an integrated approach that applies the instruments of contemporary economics, but also allows for the restrictions of the liberal point of view.

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Auszug

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Economy and Justice: A Conflict Without Resolution?**

1. Introduction

A look at the current controversies in economic policy over issues such as minimum wages or high managerial salaries shows that economic and moral arguments are often put forward with equal determination in newspapers and political debates. So, for instance, both redistribution measures and a greater liberalisation of markets are being called for, in many cases also from the point of view of justice. In contrast, it is in particular economists that regularly warn against neglecting economic laws of matter by "moralising" issues of economic policy. A look at history shows the following: From the earliest days of Christianity, the relationship between the abstract ethics of economic conduct and the concrete behaviour of the actors in practice (including that of the Christian churches) has been characterised by fierce conflict but also by efforts to bring about practical compromise (see Brentano 2008 [1923], Essays II and III, for instance). However, the contradiction between economic practice and ethical norms had already been a typical feature of classical Greek philosophy as Aristotle reveals in his contrasting account of household management to meet actual needs (oikonomid) and chrematistics (the art of getting wealth) (Aristotle: Politics, Book I, 1253 b1). Therefore, this paper will attempt to not only go over the history of these conflicting relationships but to also outline a way in which moral postulates - based on traditional philosophical ethics and the demands of Christian social doctrines (which, besides Biblical sources, also avail themselves of the philosophical traditions of classical antiquity) - and the functional requirements of a modern and increasingly globalised economy may be connected with each other (even though they cannot be reconciled).

We'll proceed in six steps: Following a brief survey of the Aristotelian-Scholastic concept of the just price (Section 2), we'll outline how economics, in the works of Adam Smith (1723-1790), became a science in its own right by taking leave of the traditional Aristotelian-Scholastic notions of justice for the most part (Section 3). Section 4 will deal with the subsequent period where distributive and redistributive justice, both in economic theory and practice, were superseded to a great extent by the ideas of efficiency and increase in wealth. As a first attempt at reintegrating aspects of justice into economics, we will then discuss the idea of social justice by setting legal preconditions for economic activity with special emphasis on "ordoliberalism", which mainly developed in the German speaking countries. We'll also compare "ordoliberalism" with "neoliberalism", which was influenced decisively by Anglo-American liberalism and which takes a critical to negative attitude towards the provision of a legal environment by the state and prefers the spontaneous order that is supposed to develop in the long term and more or less on its own from the competitive activities of the market participants under the aspect of mutual advantage.

In the last section but one, we'll focus on the fascination exercised by the liberal reduction of justice to transactional justice and adherence to the legal order in force, especially on economic thinking. But we will also deal with the limitations imposed on this approach in a world where aspects of material justice cannot be excluded altogether, neither in practice nor in theory. For one thing, political recommendations that are technically well founded will fail to have an effect if people regard them as "unjust" and do not accept them. For another, the distinction between effi...

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