Distributive justice versus commutative justice

摘要

Thomas Piketty is a prominent French economist who works in Paris at the Paris School of Economics and at the Ecole de Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Reading his latest book is a refreshing experience. In the first place, the book focusses on distribution as the main problem of Economics. This is a welcome surprise. Barring the contributions from certain quarters-such as Amartya Sen, Tony Atkinson and few others-as far as mainstream Economics is concerned, it has long ceased dealing with income distribution as a major theoretical issue. The idea has gained currency that income distribution is an aspect and an outcome of the pricing mechanism. In the world of general economic equilibrium, as well as in the libertarian economic order, only commutative justice can find its place. Distributive justice is a spurious construct. At best (as Hayek once wrote), it is just a name, relished by the socially oriented, and a toy for econometricians in search of 'facts', but it does not have a proper intellectual statute. In the severe quarters where economists live, there is hardly a place for multiple spheres of justice. To make of distribution a pillar of the economic discourse would appear to many as a step backward to David Ricardo, who had in fact argued in that sense in the classical period.