Are Markets Moral? invites comparison to other recent books that explore the moral implications of markets (for example, Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, 2013; and Debra Satz, Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets, 2010). Somewhat surprisingly, however, the essays here (save for John Tomasi’s “Economic Liberties and Human Rights” and Steven Lukes’ “‘Getting and Spending, We Lay Waste Our Powers’: On the Expanding Reach of the Market” ) do not directly engage Sandel’s or Satz’s worries about commodification, the creep of market logic, and the persistent challenges of inequality and corruption that threaten market relations. The title Are Markets Moral? is thus misleading. Instead, Arthur Melzer and Steven Kautz’s volume takes up a much broader set of questions: Is capitalism, and its institutions and relations, good for us? Which features of capitalism are the most supportive of human freedom and development, and which are the most challenging to them? Is capitalism morally attractive compared to the alternatives? If so, what kind of capitalism do we want to endorse, and how should it be situated among other goods that we value? These questions certainly invite careful attention to markets as a key feature of capitalist political economies. But they are capacious enough to draw our attention to other facets of them: contracts, private property, entrepreneurship, labor relations, production, money, investment, and savings. At the expense of a more focused conversation about the morality of markets, marketization, and commodification, Are Markets Moral? instead asks us to think more widely about whether capitalism—of which markets are just one aspect—is compatible with human flourishing. Most of the book’s essays come down in favor of capitalism, either on its own terms or in comparison to other forms of political economy, but as Arthur Melzer helpfully details in his introductory essay, the sense that it is “morally disruptive” persists and serves as an important framework for all of these pieces (p. 9).

This book’s major appeal is that it generates lively conversation among its contributors about whether and how capitalism disrupts moral life. Some of these exchanges are explicit and direct, such as Lukes’ engagement with John Tomasi’s Free Market Fairness (2012), an argument for free-market democracy that Tomasi extends in his essay for Are Markets Moral? Lukes and Tomasi have a vigorous disagreement about whether the “private economic liberties of market society”—articulated as the personal rights of individuals to decide how to work, own, spend, invest, and save—should be prioritized in democratic society. Tomasi argues for the intrinsic personal moral value of these rights and the inherent value of the “familiar work-a-day virtues associated with economic liberties” by ordinary people (p. 25). Tomasi’s point is that economic decision making is simultaneously unremarkable and urgent: everyone makes decisions about how to work, spend, and save, but “such decisions constitute among the most distinctive forms of taking responsibility for one’s own life, and doing so in light of one’s own dreams, values, and character” (p. 26). For their role in individual self-authorship, economic liberties have inherent value and must be safeguarded. Lukes, in contrast, questions whether the behaviors Tomasi highlights are “manifestations of freedom or of a growing subjection” to the totalizing processes of marketization and commodification (p. 71). While taking Tomasi’s arguments for economic liberty seriously, Lukes questions what he takes to be their grounding assumptions: (1) that individuals can be “independent “self-author[s]” untouched by “background…institutions, laws, and norms,” as well as “luck”; and (2) that “market freedom renders market actors free from coercion and domination,” even as many of them experience forms of poverty, economic loss, and under- or unemployment (pp. 80–81). Per the first point, Lukes also suggests that markets mold economic actors’ desires and capabilities, which might also unsettle the picture of them as wholly self-directed beings (p. 81). In briefly interrogating these assumptions, Lukes challenges Tomasi’s argument for economic—or market—freedom as a human right. The stakes of the debate between Tomasi and Lukes are high: their exchange presses readers to consider the scope and value of economic freedom in comparison to other kinds of freedom and other, possibly incompatible political values like equality and solidarity.

Also fruitful is the dynamic interplay among the contributions from Andrew Bibby, Gurcharan Das, and Fonna Forman. All three underscore the idea that, as Bibby writes in “Markets and Morality in the Enlightenment,” advocating for liberal capitalism will ultimately depend on a “self-critical examination of the moral causes that allow us to enjoy [the free market’s moral and material benefits]” (p. 266). Bibby conducts his examination by returning to the eighteenth-century commercial thought of Montesquieu, noting that Montesquieu’s insistence that commerce is a culturally embedded practice holds lessons for us today. To wit, there are many types of commerce and capitalism, if we notice that “social and moral orders, religion in particular, affect economics, by fostering, inhibiting, or giving ‘local flavor’ to everyday market behaviors” (p. 224). Bibby, with some help from Montesquieu, reverses the common causal story that markets transform societies and cultures, looking instead at how existing norms and practices shape markets and market behavior for better or worse. In line with Bibby’s account, Das offers an example of how this influence might go in “Dharma, Markets, and Indian Capitalism,” where he explores how “ordinary, self-interested human beings, who seek to advance their interests peacefully in the market” rely on moral habits and social norms to understand the right way to conduct themselves in business dealings. He turns to India to explain how dharma, with its “connotations of balance, harmony, and moral well-being,” helps economic actors facilitate particular relations of trust and accountability that help markets run smoothly. In “Adam Smith and a New Public Imagination,” Forman also focuses on how market societies will necessarily have a “local flavor,” but she documents how marshaling the power of local resources, cultural norms, and practices is vital for guaranteeing well-being outside of market relations or in spite of them. She argues that local practices of civic participation and public imagination in urban centers in Colombia offer a model for resisting “the encroachment into public space and the usurpation of public goods that have accompanied the triumph of privatization and free market thinking” (p. 172). She also draws on an early modern source, Adam Smith, to argue that public imagination is critical to surviving and flourishing under capitalist regimes that risk generating the kinds of suffering that Lukes identifies in his essay.

It is impossible in a short review to attend to all of the arguments in Are Markets Moral? but these examples should demonstrate its multifaceted approach to working through the moral challenges posed by market capitalism. Melzer and Kautz’s anthology includes a range of ideological perspectives, disciplinary approaches, geographical and temporal foci, and rhetorical styles. Its arguments address free-market advocates and critics, readers concerned with capitalism’s manifestations in the Global North and the Global South, and scholars interested in the historical roots of commercial and capitalist thought. Whether we choose to defend or resist capitalism depends on how we conceptualize its moral foundations and how carefully we attend to its particular manifestations on the ground. This volume seeks to advance our knowledge of both.