The Moral Economy

Severyn Bruyn

Review of Social Economy, 1999, vol. 57, issue 1, 25-46

Abstract: Scottish philosophers in the eighteenth century interpreted the market economy as a “civil society,” a path toward freedom and a new morality, separate from monarchal government. They expected markets to be self regulating and expected them to function with ties to a moral life. The market was a civil order, but that vision was destroyed when corporations rose to power in succeeding centuries, and governments were enlarged to regulate markets. Today we see a concern about big corporations and government bureaucracy, and a return to the idea of a “civil society.” This article proposes that today's vision of “civil society” is advanced by an economy that returns to its principles of self (civil) regulation. Markets become civil and self regulating when government, business, and nonprofits cooperate to create systems of social accountability for the common good. A self-regulating market is constructed experimentally through civil associations with self-enforceable codes of conduct, civic-oriented partnerships, legislation, banking, investments, and corporations whose policies are based on stakeholder studies that reduce moral and financial costs. Modest steps toward a self-regulating economy offers a foundation for today's version of a “civil society.”

Keywords: civil society; self regulation; civil markets; common goods; countervailing powers; social inventions; stakeholder theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00346769900000025 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:57:y:1999:i:1:p:25-46

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RRSE20

DOI: 10.1080/00346769900000025

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Social Economy is currently edited by Wilfred Dolfsma and John Davis

More articles in Review of Social Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().