1 Meaningful Work and Market Socialism Revisited

Is economic justice inherently opposed to a competitive market economy? Or are the two natural allies? Theorists of justice and critics and defenders of capitalism have been debating these issues for hundred of years. In my view, we do not yet have a sufficiently clear understanding either of what justice requires or of what the market economy might deliver to reach a definitive resolution of these debates. I took several broad swipes at these issues in essays published decades ago. One of these essays (Arneson 1987) has elicited an intelligent and thoughtful critique by Russell Keat (this journal). I welcome the opportunity to revisit these issues, which still seem to me to be of great significance, even if my own attempts to engage them now appear to shed more heat than light. I find myself thoroughly is disagreement both with the main claims advanced by my 1987 essay and with Keat's criticisms of them. In the first three sections of this paper I explain what is wrong with the views of my earlier self, and in the final section I explain why I do not find Keat's critique compelling. I start with a brief rehearsal of my earlier arguments. Readers may consult Keat's essay for excellent and accurate statements of my 1987 conclusions and the arguments I offered in their support. Arneson 1987 argues that if a market socialist economy of a syndicalist sort is established, if the distribution of resources is continuously adjusted to be fair, and if the market operates efficiently, further intervention in the market to bring it about that people gain more of the benefits of meaningful work would be unjust and unfair. 1 The just economy maximizes a function of people's preference satisfaction that balances two concerns: other things being equal, a greater aggregate degree of satisfaction of the ensemble of people's preferences (each preference weighted by its importance to the individual who has it) is better, and other things being equal, a more equal degree of satisfaction of the preferences of each person is better. Intervening in the market processes to bring about greater satisfaction of the particular preference for meaningful work unfairly privileges certain preferences (and the people to whom they happen to be important) over other preferences (and people), and this is morally wrong. The key point is that there are a great many goods other than meaningful work that people might …