Market Justice, Political Justice

Robert E. Lane

American Political Science Review, 1986, vol. 80, issue 2, 383-402

Abstract: The defense of capitalism in America is rooted in a preference for the market's justice of earned deserts over the justices of equality and need associated with the polity. These preferences have structural roots in the way governments and markets serve different values and purposes, satisfy wants, focus on fairness or justice, enlist causal attributions, distribute or redistribute income, are limited by rights, and seem to offer either harmony or conflict of interest. Some of these “structural” differences, however, are themselves perceptual, and corrected by changed perceptions of the productivity of government and of our historic predecessors, and by a community point of view involving changed accounting systems, as well as by policies of full employment rather than guaranteed incomes. With few institutional changes, these altered perceptions may partially restore political justice to favor.

Date: 1986
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