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2016 | Book

Suspicions of Markets

Critical Attacks from Aristotle to the Twenty-First Century

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About this book

In this work, Rutherford reviews why Adam Smith, Hayek, Mises and others praised economic markets, with a view to understanding, in contrast, historical attacks on markets dating as far back as Aristotle. The market has long been criticized as an inappropriate method of allocation, encouraging market participants to misbehave for the sake of personal gain, and creating an impersonal new market culture. This book traces how such attacks have become more vociferous in recent centuries, especially with the rise of socialism. Most recently the critique has broadened to include toxic markets and the excessive marketization of activities hitherto external to the market. Analysing these major criticisms, as well as the value of regulation, utopias and virtue ethics as a means of avoiding future suspicions of markets, the author lays the groundwork for the reader’s own assessment of the arguments, and concludes by posing suggestions of how best we might cope with flawed markets in the future.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
1. Introduction
Abstract
“The market” is often used as a term of abuse as is “the free market economy” it creates. Markets are blamed for unemployment, exploitation and the commercialisation of society. Suspicions of markets are long-standing: for millennia, price controls have been used to reduce disliked market outcomes. Criticisms can be of market mechanisms, the market culture and behaviour in markets.
Donald Rutherford
2. The Case for Markets
Abstract
The market is defined. Adam Smith made the most influential case for markets, arguing that exchange is a natural human propensity and essential to the division of labour and increasing economic welfare. Bastiat, Mises and Hayek also explain the beneficial power of markets.
Donald Rutherford
3. The Start of the Criticism: Aristotle
Abstract
Plato, precursor and mentor of Aristotle, understood that even a utopian society requires markets but raised doubts about the retail trade. But Aristotle provided a powerful critique of markets by distinguishing value in use from value in exchange and explaining that the retail trade, by exchanging more than necessities, encourages an activity based on private gain.
Donald Rutherford
4. 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.
Donald Rutherford
5. Nineteenth-Century Critics
Abstract
Marx’s precursors in the nineteenth century widened the critique of markets to consider competition and profit. By asserting that exchange creates commodities he attempted to explain how markets are exploitative. Ruskin and Morris also provided important critiques.
Donald Rutherford
6. Later Critics
Abstract
Of these, Karl Polanyi’s critique of 1944 provided the most powerful in the recent period, denying that markets are natural and arguing they are a poor way of allocating resources. Later objections to markets, particularly Sandel’s, Marquand’s, Hutton’s and Jenkins’ include the marketisation of society, the extension of commodification, and failure to respect persons and the environment.
Donald Rutherford
7. An Analysis of the Principal Criticisms
Abstract
A consideration of the arguments that markets are inadequate and inefficient, impersonal, encourage extensive commodification, are guided by poor motivation, unfavourably affect the income distribution and create a different culture.
Donald Rutherford
8. How to Deal With Flawed Markets
Abstract
Possible solutions to the problems raised by markets, regulation and utopias have their own problems. Virtue ethics is suggested as a way for taming markets.
Donald Rutherford
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Suspicions of Markets
Author
Donald Rutherford
Copyright Year
2016
Electronic ISBN
978-3-319-40808-8
Print ISBN
978-3-319-40807-1
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40808-8