By Wanjiru Njoya

To many economists, questions of justice are not relevant to the study of free markets. In most situations where people try to invoke arguments about “justice,” they are concerned with distributive justice. Their aim is to address questions of wealth distribution and income inequality. They argue that “social justice” requires the state to redistribute wealth. 

In this context, Friedrich A. Hayek depicted “social justice” as a meaningless slogan—a mantra wielded by political activists to avoid having to give reasons or justifications for their policies. Hayek argued that markets are constituted, not by design, but by a form of “spontaneous order” in which any attempt to depict market forces as “just” or “unjust” reflects an inappropriate anthropomorphism of the market. In The Mirage of Social Justice he argued that “the term ‘social justice’ is wholly devoid of meaning or content… it is a semantic fraud, a phrase used to give moral approval to what is in fact a demand for the distribution of benefits according to some arbitrary criterion.”

Similarly, Ludwig von Mises argued that attempts to evaluate free market outcomes by reference to “justice” are misconceived. In Human Action, he argues that those who analyze free markets by reference to justice “hold up a set of metaphysical principles and condemn the market economy beforehand because it does not conform to them.” They are particularly concerned that free markets are “unjust” because they do not result in equal distribution of wealth. Mises points out that, although they may have started out with “sound intentions” by adopting a utilitarian approach to market analysis, they later turn around and denounce what they may see as “unjust” outcomes, such as wealth inequality. Paradoxically, the........

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