The Moral Economy of Saint Thomas Aquinas: Agent Sovereignty, Customary Law and Market Convention

Abstract

The ethical authority carried in the conventions of fairness and human well-being has been widely adopted under the idea of “moral economy,” forming an eclectic and interdisciplinary debate. Significant, though external to this debate, is a corpus of medieval thought which exhibits a fundamental interest in legitimate market protocols, and the political rights and obligations of agents in relation to the common good of the community. This article asserts the imperative status of a customary basis for understanding not just the analytic version of moral economy but the legacy contained in what might be termed the “the moral economy of Aquinas.”

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Tony Lynch, Adrian Walsh, David Kent, Steven Avery and the anonymous reviewers for their many helpful suggestions and criticisms.

Notes

NOTES

1.  E. P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past & Present No. 50 (1971): 76–136.

2.  R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (Middlesex: Pelican, 1938), 24.

3.  Eric Roll, A History of Economic Thought (London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 1973), 45.

4.  Adrian Walsh, “The Morality of the Market and the Medieval Schoolmen,” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 3 (2004): 244.

5.  John Baldwin, “Medieval Theories of the Just Price: Romanists, Canonists, and Theologians in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 49 (1959): Part 4, 14.

6.  Walsh, “Morality of the Market and the Medieval Schoolmen,” 244.

7.  Baldwin, “Medieval Theories of the Just Price,” 14, citing Augustine, Ennaratio in Psalmum XXXIII, 14, P.L. 36:315. It must be said, so as not to misrepresent Augustine's position on such matters, that whatever this statement captures of the older notions, Augustine was atypical of this tradition.

8.  Baldwin, “Medieval Theories of the Just Price,” 14.

9.  Walsh, “Morality of the Market and the Medieval Schoolmen,” 245. This view is also supported by Gras, noting that in an era of “ecclesiastical conservatism” the church did progressively change its attitude to commerce, leading to a “refinement,” and in some instances “exceptions,” on its views on particular market practices. One such example was the ongoing commitment to the just price doctrine while prohibitions on usury were gradually relaxed. See N. Gras, “Economic Rationalism in the Late Middle Ages,” Speculum: A Journal of Mediaeval Studies 8 (1933): 308-9. Similar, albeit crude, distinctions can also be found amongst medieval rulers, with King Ervigius (circa A.D. 681) of the Visigothic Kingdom declaring that “whoever shall have debased, clipped, or shaved the coinage should be arrested as soon as the judge learns of it, and, if he be a serf, his right hand should be cut off.” See Roy Cave and Herbert. Coulson, A Source Book for Medieval Economic History (New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1965), 129.

10.  For a survey of Aquinas’ life and writings, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996). For a recent bibliography of work on Saint Thomas Aquinas, see Richard. Ingardia, Thomas Aquinas: International Bibliography, 1977-1990 (Ohio: Bowling Green, 1993).

11.  Roll, History of Economic Thought, 45.

12.  Arthur Monroe, Early Economic Thought: Selections from Economic Literature Prior to Adam Smith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924), 52. Also under the strong influence of Aristotle Islamic philosophers were likewise concerned with the compatibility of religious morality with commercial life. See J. B. Sauer, “Religious Texts, Moral Prescriptions and Economy: The Case of Interest,” Managerial Finance 25 (1999); and S. M Ghazanfar, “The Economic Thought of Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali and St. Thomas Aquinas: Some Comparative Parallels and Links,” History of Political Economy 32 (2000). A more recent examination can be found in A. R. Hardie and M. Rabooy, “Risk, Piety, and the Islamic Investor,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 18 (1991).

13.  For recent explorations of this question, see Adrian Walsh and Tony Lynch, “The Very Idea of Justice in Pricing,” Business & Professional Ethics Journal 21 (2002), and Yngve Ramstad, “John R. Commons's Reasonable Value and the Problem of the Just Price,” Journal of Economic Issues 35 (2001). See also R. De Roover, “The Concept of the Justice Price: Theory and Economic Policy,” Journal of Economic History 18 (1958); Samuel Hollander, “On the Interpretation of the Just Price,” Kyklos 18 (1965); G. W. Wilson, “The Economics of the Just Price,” History of Political Economy 7 (1975); S. T. Worland, “Justum Pretium: One More Round in an Endless Series,” History of Political Economy 9 (1977); D. D. Friedman, “In Defense of Thomas Aquinas and the Just Price,” History of Political Economy 12 (1980).

14.  See John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), and Stephen. Pope, ed., The Ethics of Aquinas (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2002).

15.  Monroe, Early Economic Thought, 56.

16.  Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (London: Burns Oats and Washbourne, 1911-42), 2a, 2ae, q. 77, a. 1.

17.  Ibid.

18.  Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 1132b19.

19.  One area where sellers are particularly vulnerable is in the context of labor. According to Albino Barrera, the problem of just wages continues to concern modern Catholic scholars. From the modern Catholic perspective, “economic agents have a moral responsibility to make sure that market prices generate an adequate livelihood for those who produce or bring such goods to the marketplace.” In the context of employer-employee relations, Barrera writes that “the concept of employer is expanded to include not only the immediate (direct) employer, but anyone else who substantially affects and sustains such an employer-employee relationship, even in an indirect manner. Alibino Barrera, “Exchange-Value Determination: Scholastic Just Price, Economic Theory, and Modern Catholic Social Thought,” History of Political Economy 29 (1997): 84. See also Sister Joseph Marie, “Catholocizing the Teaching of Economic Principles,” The Journal of Higher Education 13 (1942): 30--32. In contrast, consider the following Smithian interpretation of the “just wage” by Glenn Hoover, who writes: “In the determination of wages, the ‘just’ process, the process which will result in ‘just’ wages, is the competitive process. Labourers may demand in the name of justice, not a particular wage, but that they be permitted to move about and sell their labor on the most favourable terms, free from the interference of either government or monopolistic organizations, whether of labourers or employers. The resultant wage will be a ‘just wage’. To use the phrase in a different way seems a very mischievous sort of nonsense.” Glen Hoover, “Justice and Wages,” Social Forces 6 (1927): 272.

20.  It is worthwhile to note that in one sense this presents an opportunity to introduce rental or interest bearing agreements where questions of profitability and loss arise.

21.  Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a, 2ae, q. 77, a. 1.

22.  Saint Augustine, Opera Omnia (Paris, 1841), vol. 8, De Trinitae, Liber XIII, chap. 3, sec. 6, cols. 1017-1018, cited in Bernard Dempsey, “Just Price in a Functional Economy,” American Economic Review 25 (1935): 475.

23.  In this current work I am mindful to maintain a distinction between the supposed ethical nature of agents in relation to activities such as commercial exchanges and debates regarding agency and Aquinas’ preferred configuration of the political state. For a discussion of Ptolemy of Lucca's (d. circa 1328) concerns as to how the two conceptions of individual liberty might be reconciled, see Quinton Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Vol 1: The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 53-64.

24.  Julius. Stone, Human Law and Human Justice (Sydney: Maitland Publishing, 1965), 54-55.

25.  Mary T. Clark, An Aquinas Reader (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1972), 345; 345-46.

26.  Eleanore Stump, “Aquinas's Account of Freedom: Intellect and Will,” in Thomas Aquinas: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Brian Davies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

27.  Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1a, 2ae, q. 6, a. 5.

28.  Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 128.

29.  Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a, 2ae, q. 58, a. 3.

30.  Diana Wood, Medieval Economic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 133-34.

31.  Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a, 2ae, q. 61. a. 1.

32.  He writes that, “Even as part and whole are somewhat the same, so too that which pertains to the whole, pertains somewhat to the part also: so that when the goods of the community are distributed among a number of individuals each one receives that which, in a way, is his own.” See Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a, 2ae, q. 61. a. 1.

33.  Ibid.

34.  Ibid., 2a, 2ae, q. 183, a. 3.

35.  Ibid.

36.  John B Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times (London: Hutchinson, 1958), 75, emphasis added. Further to this point, Alexander D’Entreves writes that “although St. Thomas's apparent justification of tyrannicide is accompanied by important qualifications which practically amount to a flat disavowal of it, there can be no doubt of his acknowledgment not only of the right, but of the duty of resistance to an unjust power.” Alexander D’Entreves, The Medieval Contribution to Political Thought: Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, Richard Hooker, (New York: The Humanities Press, 1959), 35.

37.  Customary law is viewed in a similar fashion by Tönnies: “old and new meet, especially in the great sphere of public and private law. I can only intimate here how powerfully efficacious custom, as well as religion, is in this respect. The words ‘customary law’ and ‘customs of law’ point to this fact. What is reverentially called the ‘unwritten law,’ in antiquity, constitutes law as it exists and is established by custom” Ferdinand Tönnies, Custom: An Essay on Social Codes (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961), 65.

38.  Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times, 76.

39.  Walsh and Lynch, “The Very Idea of Justice in Pricing,” 11.

40.  Bruno Frey, Economics as a Science of Human Behaviour: Towards a New Social Science Paradigm (Boston: Kluwer, 1999), 172.

41.  Ibid., 71-72.

42.  Frey's notion of excess demand is also confined to commodity items in a community where alternative choices can be derived without a real or perceived threat to the overall welfare condition of the consumer, or community. It might be suggested that the term “excess demand” might not be appropriate to conditions of supply shortage, or disruption, amidst the threats of famine, such as contained in moral economic accounts of food riots.

43.  As Alice Kessler-Harris argues, market outcomes are “tempered by customary notions of justice and fairness.” In the medieval period “the customary wage, the wage demanded by the craftsperson or labourer, reflected a social sense of how a worker should live, as well as of the amount of labor that entered into a product for sale.” It is important to note, as Kessler-Harris does, that “we have not yet abandoned these notions” and that customary notions continue to influence the way markets are regulated. Alice Kessler-Harris, “The Just Price, the Free Market, and the Value of Women,” Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 239-40. This approach is further supported by Edward Thorndike. After conducting a survey of popular ideas of just pricing in New York, Thorndike concluded the following: “on the whole, public opinion about fair prices is by way of acceptance or amendment of customary prices … it was not otherwise in medieval times.” Edward L. Thorndike, “Opinions Concerning Fair Prices,” The American Journal of Psychology 62 (1949): 99--105.

44.  The author is keen to impress the following distinctions between “custome” and law (or prescription), noting four points of differentiation. (1) “Custome can have noe beginning since man's memory, butt prescription.” (2) “Custome toucheth many men in common, butt prescription this or that person.” (3) “Usage is the life of both, for both loose theire being if usage faile.” (4) “Limitation is where a right may bee attained by reason of a nonclaime for a certaine number of yeares, differing in account of tyme from custome and prescription.” See Richard Gough, The History of Myddle (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), 64.

45.  On this point E. A. J. Johnson writes, “that which ‘common estimate’ had shown necessary should be preserved, and public authority should therefore be vigilant lest the presumably ‘good’ occupational stratification be jeopardized by self-seeking business practices.” E. A. J. Johnson, “Just Price in an Unjust World,” International Journal of Ethics 48 (1938): 170.

46.  As David Herlihy points out, “If the market price was usually accepted as being the just price, in regards to the necessities of life, especially in regards to grain, the city governments for the most part recognized that here justice demanded that the price be kept ever within the reach even of the poorest citizens.” David Herlihy, “The Concept of the Just Price: Theory and Economic Policy: Discussion,” The Journal of Economic History 18 (1958): 437.

47.  It might, in some instances, be argued that the common good is akin, in rule utilitarian terms, to the idea that all agents share a common moral goal. However, it ought to be stated that to label Aquinas as rule utilitarian essentially undermines the sovereignty of the will by advancing a formal and agent-neutral conception of the good.

48.  Michael B. Foster, Masters of Political Thought. Volume 1: Plato to Machiavelli (London: George Harrap & Co., 1969), 203-5.

49.  Robert Hielbroner, The Making of Economic Society (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1972), 48, and Syliva Thrupp, The Merchant Class in Medieval London (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1942), 177.

50.  Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2a, 2ae, q. 77, a. 2.