Reconsidering Profit and Vice

Over the past one hundred years – and most conspicuously during the period of the Cold War – a central issue for political theorists of all persuasions has been the question of the relative merits of market and non-market societies. That debate, for all intents and purposes, ended with the demise of the Communist bloc. The pro-market forces won not only the geopolitical battle but also the battle for rhetorical supremacy. Whatever philosophical lessons one might wish to draw from the end of the Communist Dream – and that I would suggest is an open question – it is clear that the ideal of a socially progressive non-market society is not one which is currently part of any realisable political programme. However, the free market advocate would be mistaken if she were to think that the end of communism as a political force would have thereby eliminated all critical questioning of the moral standing of market institutions and economic theory. If anything, the dissolution of the Cold War has opened a space for a form of critical analysis of market practices that effectively did not exist during the Cold War, namely ethical analysis which attempts to distinguish between moral and immoral market practices.