A Hayekian Theory of Social Justice

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to critically examine Friedrich Hayek's broadside against the conceptual intelligibility of the theory of social or distributive justice. Hayek's basic contention is that any such conception of justice must be "wholly devoid of meaning or content" within the context of a spontaneous market order in which the aggregate distribution of resources arises as the indirect consequence of economic transactions, the remote effects of which no one specifically intends or foresees.

My thesis is that even granting Hayek's empirical assumptions about the workings of the market process, one can still assess the distributive results of that process in terms of justice or fairness. From this perspective, the problem of economic justice is not really a question of whether social institutions should "intervene" in the market process. Instead, as Hayek himself concedes at various points, the institutional framework within which the market functions necessarily constrains its outcomes in more or less predicable ways. The relevant questions thus become not whether, but when and how such constraints ought to shape market outcomes consistent with our ideal of social justice, while at the same time preserving the competing values of individual liberty and economic efficiency. The mere fact that these questions cannot be answered with mathematical certainty, or pursued to the exclusion of other important political and moral values, does not mean that their pursuit as social goals is either incoherent or disastrous.

Keywords: Hayek, social justice, liberty