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After the Greeks
Abstract
Aquinas in his analysis of the just price continues Aristotle’s analysis of exchange within the context of justice. In the long periods from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, there was a growing understanding of the merits of markets but some mild reservations about them.
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From an analytical point of view, some aspects of Just Price theory, probably the most famous and lasting scholastic concept, remain controversial: the cost-of-production versus the subjective-utility theory of value is a main controversy as well as the question of whether the natural just price is conceptually the same as the current market price. Strictly speaking, just price isconceptually the same as the current market price. Of concern is whether the meaning behind the label is the same in both scholastic and liberal traditions. There are different interpretations among scholars. One is that the just price is merely the current market price, and common estimation plays the same role as market forces in a competitive context. Another group states that the just price is quite different from the market price; the fundamental reason is that the ethical framework of the scholastic paradigm sets a corpus of principles that greatly differs from the neoclassical homo economicus. Is it possible to speak of a collaborative market price (scholastic tradition) and competitive market price (liberal tradition)? This article tries to dig into such debate and reflects on the morality of the market price.
I. The goal of full employment, 467. — II. The means to full employment, 473. — III. Economic freedom in mercantilist doctrine,
486. — IV. The exceptions to free exchange, 492. — V. The historical roots of mercantilism, 496. — VI. Economists on mercantilism,
499.
In The concept view of many economists the just price is a nebulous concept invented by pious monks who knew nothing of business or economics and were blissfully unaware of market mechanisms. It is true that certain writers, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, have done their best to accredit this fairy tale and to propagate the notion that the just price, instead of being set by the allegedly blind and unconscionable forces of the market, was determined by criteria of fairness without regard to the elements of supply and demand or at least with the purpose of eliminating the evils of unrestrained competition.
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