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I think that one important historical root of just price doctrine is to be found in
Aristotle's *Politics,* Bk I, chapters 8-10, lines 1256a1-1258b8. Aristotle does not focus
on just prices, but on what is natural; unnatural economic activity, however, ties into
unjust prices.
 
Aristotle is discussing the art of household management and comparing it to the art of
business -- the former involved in using goods, the latter in procuring them.  For
Aristotle, many different modes of procuring are "natural" (a protean and complex term in
Aristotle's thought, and here connected to Aristotle's senses that:  what we use directly
(i.e., not money, which we use indirectly, as Midas learned) is natural; & what has a
limit is natural (so that, e.g., our pursuit of health as a goal involves limited use of
doctors, food, medicine, etc., whereas the pursuit of wealth is unlimited and can turn out
to be all-consuming).  Also, every object -- e.g., a shoe -- has a double value:  as use
and as exchange; and for Aristotle its use value seems rather more natural -- its "proper
use".
 
So Aristotle sees that there are a number of natural ways to procure goods for use: barter
and exchanges like (Marx's) C M C, where we begin with a useful good and exchange it for
money that we use to buy another useful good (i.e., where we are concerned primarily with
the use value of the good).
 
When however this "necessary exchange" becomes "commerce" involving expertise in business
(1257a39-b3) and businessmen start to make commercial transactions in order to make money,
then the economic system has moved from exchange of useful goods to commerce where the
goal is to make a profit, and this commerce easily moves into the pursuit of profit for
its own sake (wealth) and the use of money to make more money (loaning money at interest,
i.e., usury).  For Aristotle, these types of commerce are unnatural.
 
Moreover, while the statesman must know about them (chapter 11), they threaten the well-
being of the city and the individual, because the pursuit of wealth, being an unlimited
and potentially never-ending pursuit (as Hobbes explains vividly in *Leviathan,* chs 11 &
13), displaces the quest for living well, or the pursuit of the good life.  I.e.  the
pursuit of external goods displaces the pursuit of goods of the body and goods of the
mind.
 
The above, I think, is fairly straightforward interpretation.  How it may link to theories
of the just price requires more speculation, but I think it is tied to a sense that (i)
the pursuit of wealth through commerce and usury involves potentially unnatural (therefore
unjust (?)) prices on goods -- the businessman or banker will set whatever price he
wishes, with no attention to the well-being of the individual or the city; and (ii) (what
is close to the same) a focus on prices -- as opposed to what you need for subsistence and
sustenance -- means a focus away from well-being.  Also, I suspect that there is some
element that all humans as a species share needs and so have similar or common items they
need to use -- wine and grain, for instance.  When a winemaker and a farmer exchange
useful items, the price at which the exchange takes place should be such that each sells
and receives enough of the items to be useful for his sustenance.
 
(The above may have some of Marx's language, but it is Aristotle's language also.  In the
last paragraph, I may be eliding Aristotle and Hegel, for Hegel tries to set equivalence
of value in exchange by relying on human use values.)
 
Peter G. Stillman 
 
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