Moral Economy

Abstract

‘Moralism’ is the doctrine that morality is the supreme and necessary resource for the comprehension and solution to the world’s problems. It is in moralism that economics finds one of its most uncomprehending, gloomy and malevolent adversaries. This enmity is fated on account of economics’ attraction to science, and moralism’s repulsion from it. To science the world will be made better by knowing more; to the moralist the world will made better by becoming more moral. So whereas to the scientist economics is a system of knowledge, to the moralist economics should be ‘but a system of conduct and legislature’ (Ruskin quoted in Groenewegen 2000, p. 5).² In as much as economics has thrown its lot in with science, the claims of economics, however logically drawn from its premises, and however circumstantially true, will be without significance to the moralist. And until economics forsakes science, the moralist will be disaffected and confounded by it.