Liberal Capitalism and Social Justice

Undergraduate

Today, the predominant economic system that reigns globally is a capitalist one: one in which most goods and services are distributed via market exchange; most people earn their means of livelihood by selling their labor for a wage to purchase what they need on the market, because they cannot produce sufficiently on their own to survive, because other people (a small minority) own the means of production. What should we think about this social order? On one hand, capitalism generates myriad social pathologies, including the impoverishment of masses of people, the entrenchment of inequalities that vitiate against democratic values, the abasement of all value by the value of capitalist accumulation, the inexorable drive of resource extraction barreling toward ecological fallout, among others. On the other hand, capitalism has proved an unparalleled engine for growth, enabled a variety of new forms of participation in social life, and embodies a coherent moral framework based around rights of private ownership. All this suggests that a society ordered by capitalism is a proper subject of questions of justice. In this class, we ask these questions. (How) can a capitalist society be just? In what ways might it fall short? What alternatives might there be? HU HTBA