Economic Justice and Market Economy: A Remark on Hayek’s Position on Social Justice

Authors

  • Andre Ata Ujan

Abstract

Is social justice or economic justice a utopia? This would be one of the questions that anyone might immediately raise as he/she reads Friedrich August von Hayek’s position on the idea of social or economic justice. As a classic liberal thinker, Hayek believed that free market is the ideal economic system for it in nature promotes freedom and equality in free and open societies. Is Hayek’s defense of free market economy sufficiently convincing to eliminate any room for social or economic justice to take place? In this essay I want to argue that there is actually no free market in a pure sense. Market is in fact not entirely free from selfish interests potentially developed by market players themselves in doing business. It is therefore not entirely reasonable to see market as purely spontaneous and independent entity. Since it is in fact open for selfish interest, its outcomes can be just or unjust. Free competition prompted systematically by free market system, therefore, could risk human life prospect. For this reason, state’s intervention to a certain extent is necessary to prevent market competition from endangering citizens’ basic right to enjoy a decent life. State’s intervention is, therefore, important for it is necessary to secure social or economic justice. Social or economic justice is of course an ideal but not necessarily a utopia in a radical sense. Taking the unfortunates’ quality of life as the benchmark in designing and enacting economic policies, social or economic justice might be, at least partially, realized. John Rawls’ idea of maximin rule or maximin strategy can pave the way for the realization of such ideal that every civilized person or society is essentially ever craving to.

Author Biography

Andre Ata Ujan

Atma Jaya Catholic University, Indonesia

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Issue

Vol. 14 No. 1-2 (2013): January - December 2013

Section

Articles

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