To the extent that an economy is a community, I have argued, it should be regulated by a principle of equal distribution (see Chapter 8). Whether this morally derived principle applies to real-world economies thus depends on their degree of community. The search for community can be limited to capital-based market systems, since they are the only kind of economy that can satisfy the dual conditions of economic justice: wealth and freedom.

To demonstrate a dimension of community in the economy, one has to show that the participants share certain attributes, actions, and ends. For this to be true, different categories of economic agents – consumers, producers, laborers, capital owners, and managers – would all have to have some fundamental attributes in common, and they would all have to be engaged in common action toward a common end. One would also have to account for the formation of these characteristics; otherwise, community would be indeterminate.

COMMUNITY AND THE CIRCULATION OF CAPITAL

Analysis of systemwide community in the economy may begin with the relation between producers and consumers, leaving labor and capital for a later chapter.

Neoclassical economic theory does not characterize the relationship between consumers and producers as communal in any degree. It divides the economy into consumption and production sectors and portrays agents within them in terms of opposing and conflicting interests: “[E]ach sector operates from quite different sets of goals or motivations just as each serves a different function in the economy.”