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My name is Thom Swanke and I'm an assistant professor of economics at 
Chadron State College in northwest Nebraska.  I have presented a couple 
of papers on economic justice (April 2000 at AFIT and this past January 
at AFEE). 
 
I agree with Moser that much of the treatment of the just price is in 
Aquinas, yet I think that caution is in order if we accept the idea that 
the market determines the just price.  The essence of commutative 
justice is that all parties to the transaction are equal in power.  In 
other words, like the Neoclassical vision of the market, either buyer or 
seller can walk away from the transaction.  If the market determined 
price comes from such a perfectly competitive market, then the market 
price is the just price.  If anyone can remove some other party's 
choice, then the result is unjust.  The question to be considered before 
accepting the market price as the just price is whether the market's 
structure allows all participants free choice.  I am not sure whether 
markets in Aquinas's time had equal power for all participants, but I 
think it is easy to believe that modern markets do not approximate 
perfect competition. 
 
Aquinas's treatment of justice also includes a catagory of justice for 
situations where there is an imbalance of power (according to my father, 
a retired Thomistic philosopher).  Aquinas called this variety, 
distributive justice and he applied it mostly to determining just 
relations between parents and offspring.  The essence of distributive 
justice is that the more powerful party can exercise their power, as 
long as that exercise did not deprive the weaker party of their basic 
human rights.  Aquinas defined basic human rights as the right to life, 
to property necessary to sustain that life and an education allowing 
someone to maintain their earning power over a lifetime (enough 
necessary to maintain their life sustaining property).  Although Aquinas 
used distributive justice for family relations, I think that it is also 
useful for determining just prices, particularly in modern markets which 
seem not to be perfectly competitive. 
 
So, if I approach a firm with market power in the labor market (when I'm 
seeking a job), they can justly deny me a job, or provide a job for me 
that requires me to work harder than other people (even if we both earn 
the same pay), as long as that denial, or provision of work doesn't 
threaten my  life, my life sustaining property (i.e., house, clothing, 
car, etc.) or my right to an education.  Obviously, if they provide me 
with a life threatening job, they require that I use my own tools, or 
materials to do the job, or expose me to something that, while not 
killing me, causes me to lose my ability to earn a living, these are all 
unjust acts. 
 
It is very difficult to tritely determine whether a modern market price 
is just, or unjust.  For example, if I do get a job that doesn't overtly 
threaten my life (using toxic chemicals, or dangerous fires, etc.), but 
if its pay is low, is it an unjust wage?  That all depends on whether 
the worker can sustain his or her life on that wage.  What if the wage 
earner is supporting a family?  Is it just to have a single person's 
wage be different than a family supporting wage earner?  Again, it 
depends on what lifestyle is the minimum necessary to maintain life. 
 
I think that the application of distributive justice to many areas 
confronting the modern economy (such as the distribution of health care, 
retirement insurance, energy, environmental pollution or cleanliness, 
public infrastructure, and many more) will help determine the moral 
action.  This would follow in Adam Smith's tradition of creating a 
society pursuing perfect liberty, as well as in Alfred Marshall's areas 
of concern. 
 
Lastly, I think that applying Aquinas's distributive justice idea would 
be fruitful in determining whether the rebuilding after the London Fire 
done was justly.  I suspect that there was no choice for those seeking 
to rebuild and that those who sold into this market may not have been 
concerned with the basic human rights of those rebuilders.  Hence, the 
market prices at that time (if what I suspect is true) were unjust by 
Aquinas's scheme of distributive justice. 
 
Thom Swanke 
 
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