The Political Economy of the Just Price: What the School of Salamanca Has To Say in the Age of Corruption

Abstract

La tradition ethique en economie politique a ete regeneree par lEcole de Salamanque, mais nous ne sommes pas habitues a associer le liberalisme aux scholastiques qui avaient elabore une theorie du juste prix de validite universelle. Le marche a perdu sa dimension morale avec le rationalisme et, non dans une moindre mesure, a travers le biais religieux de la theorie de la valeur travail. Quand elle fut redecouverte en tant quorigine veritable de la valeur, lutilite ne recouvrit pas sa portee morale, en raison du traitement mathematique quon lui reserva. Le rationalisme a supprime toute conception devolution sociale en meme temps quil a favorise lintervention. Cependant, dans cette ere de corruption, un retour a lacception de sens commun des prix requiert, selon lauteur, le franchissement dune etape supplementaire, celui de maintenir lancrage ethique du juste prix ou du prix du marche.The ethical tradition in political economy was regenerated by the School of Salamanca, but we are not used to associating liberalism with these Scholastics who built a theory of the just price with universal validity. The market lost its moral dimension with rationalism, not least through the religious bias of the labor theory of value. When rediscovered as the correct source of value, utility did not regain its former moral significance because of mathematical treatment. Rationalism has suppressed any concept of social evolution while promoting intervention, but, in the age of corruption, a return to the common sense of prices, the author argues, requires the further step of upholding the ethical standards of the just price or market price.