ABSTRACT
Critics of the capitalist system have accused it of many faults. Some of these perceived problems have been the subject of debate among economists. Economists have argued over the economic merits of a system without conscious direction under an overall plan. The justice of a capitalist system, too, has often been the subject of criticism and debate. But the problem of economic justice under capitalism has, in the main, in recent years been debated by philosophers rather than by economists. This is perhaps because this debate has, in principle, assumed the economics of capitalism to be well understood and agreed upon, so that judgements concerning the justice or absence of justice in the system could be made purely on philosophical and ethical grounds. In this chapter 1 I shall argue that the common understanding of the economics of capitalism which has served as the basis for the philosophical debate has in fact suffered from certain serious weaknesses. When these weaknesses are corrected, I shall maintain, hitherto overlooked key features of capitalism come into view which can be seen to have important philosophical and ethical implications — implications totally overlooked in the standard philosophical debates. In particular, I shall argue, an adequate understanding of the economics of the capitalist system reveals the crucial role played in this system by discovery. Once the economic role of discovery is properly understood, I shall maintain, most of the features of capitalism which have provoked the charges of injustice become visible — even without any new ethical argumentation — in a totally different light. In other words the discovery theory of justice in capitalist society offers a defence of capitalist justice not by articulating novel philosophical or ethical positions but by offering a fresh economic understanding of how the capitalist economic system actually works.
