2.1 Markets against what community?

What proponents of In-Tension take to be the core feature of community is that individuals care, for its own sake, about the lives of others going well.Footnote ⁴ This aligns them with the standard way community is understood as social relations where individuals share ends, identify with the interests and ends of others, and take the achievement of those ends as valuable in itself (Rawls Reference Rawls1971: 521–522; Hussain Reference Hussain and Zalta2018b: sec. 3). Now, in many instances of community the shared ends are internal to comprehensive conceptions of the good. But, when it comes to the compatibility of markets with community the concern is really about the relations that obtain between society’s members as a whole. And so, because there exists reasonable disagreement between society’s members about comprehensive doctrines, this means the focus of the community at stake for proponents of In-Tension cannot be internal to comprehensive ends. The community at issue must instead be based around an overarching shared end within which the more particular and divergent ends of individuals are situated (allowing a Catholic to be in community with a Protestant, a surfer to be in community with a poet, and so on).

How could the desire that the lives of others go well form part of a shared ‘political’ end? I suggest it could if the desire is cashed out as a concern that others are able to effectively carry out their own plan of life. If we were in a community oriented around this end, then what matters to me is whether you are able to carry out the plan of life that you take to be valuable according to your own lights, and what matters to you is whether I can carry out the plan of life that I take to be valuable according to mine. And because the attainment of each person’s ends depends upon and relies on the contributive activities carried out by others (no person is completely self-reliant), then a core part of individuals living in community is going to be that they are predisposed to act prosocially – i.e. in ways that contribute to others successfully carrying out their plan of life. This account is able to capture the way Cohen (Reference Cohen2009: 39–40) articulates relations of community, where “I serve you not because of what I can get in return by doing so but because you want or need my service, and you, for the same reason, serve me.” Such an account of community does not take a stand on the relative merits of the controversial conceptions we each endorse, but simply takes them as they are.

While Cohen’s account of community on the camping trip is sometimes read as failing to appreciate deep diversity insofar as its oriented around goal-monism and shared ways of living (Ronzoni Reference Ronzoni2012: 179–181; Van Schoelandt Reference Van Schoelandt2014: 148–151), we need not read Cohen’s account of community (nor those of other proponents of the In-Tension view) as internal to a particular comprehensive conception of the good. As Cohen describes it, on the camping trip we each desire that everyone else has a good time where each does the things that they like best. And crucially, he (Reference Cohen2009: 3) makes note of the fact that “some of these things we do together; others we do separately”. I think a plausible interpretation here is that Cohen is recognizing that what each person likes to do best will not be the same. I might not give a hoot about fishing (I might even think it silly and misguided), but the knowledge that you derive much satisfaction from it might change my behaviour – I’ll leave room in the car for your fishing rods, I won’t swim at the prime fishing hour, I’ll bring ingredients that pair well with fish. The community that is possible in modern society is not one where everyone is on the same page in all respects, but one where individuals want to help others achieve their often very different plans of life. This of course is a demanding requirement, and implies more than just the absence of certain nefarious attitudes like greed and fear but also the presence of attitudes like care and concern, but community is a demanding ideal.

Two upshots from characterizing community in political terms in this way. The first is that one might worry that this is only going to dilute the concept of community, thereby weakening any subsequent response to the In-Tension view. For instance, relying on a similar kind of point about deep diversity, Harrison Frye (Reference Frye2023: 262ff.) has recently argued that while there is a kind of community that can be maintained through market interactions, such a community cannot rely on homogeneity of comprehensive conceptions or “harmony of perspective on what is worth pursuing”. Resultantly, the community compatible with markets that is possible for Frye (Reference Frye2023: 256–260) is both narrower in scope and shallower in depth than the sorts of thick communities that can exist between like-minded individuals in private life. And so while for Frye the tension between markets and community is less extreme than commonly made out, he concedes that the attitudes markets realize still “fall short of what full community requires on its own terms” (Reference Frye2023: 250), and only “satisf[y] the value of community … in a limited, thin sense” (Reference Frye2023: 248). But why must we think individuals are unable to regard shared ‘political’ ends as equally important as whatever ends they endorse from within their own comprehensive conception? As counterexamples we can think of political communities that are collectively proud of their democratic institutions, or accounts of civic friendship based on mutual concern through economic interdependencies (Schwarzenbach Reference Schwarzenbach1996; Brudney Reference Brudney2013). If anything, given community implies shared ends and interests between its members, then a community that obtains across difference might be especially strong given it is tapping into commonalities that generally obtain between persons at a deeper level.

The second upshot is that because the idea of a political community describes a set of relations between all members of society, then the focus in this paper is on community between individuals across the entire market and not just whether pockets of different competing communities can be achieved within it. For instance, perhaps it is the case that even if the competition between firms prevents community between them (and so between the individuals that make up those firms), this competition need not prevent, and might even encourage, community being developed within firms (e.g. Gheaus and Herzog Reference Gheaus and Herzog2016: 76–78). Even if this was true (although see discussion about the relationship between cooperation and competition at the beginning of section 3), this doesn’t suffice to show that the sort of community relevant to In-Tension will be realized because it is very unlikely that there would exist inside firms the diversity that obtains across individuals in society at large, and so the shared ends around which any community obtains would not be sufficiently general in the political sense (the shared ends in some firms might even be internal to comprehensive conceptions of the good).

2.2 The profit motive makes meeting needs only instrumentally valuable

Turning now to the three ways market competition is taken to conflict with community. The first is based on the profit motive inherent to market competition. The claim here is that because a core principle of market logic is responding to price signals in order to maximize profit, then individuals acting in this way cannot actually be producing goods or services because they want to help others meet their needs for its own sake. Instead, the needs of others are just something market participants are exploiting to further their own position. This claim is present in Cohen’s (Reference Cohen2009: 39) point that market relations are intrinsically motivated by greed and fear, where persons see their opposite numbers only as sources of enrichment. He goes on to say that “the market motivates productive contribution not on the basis of commitment to one’s fellow human beings and a desire to serve them while being served by them, but on the basis of cash reward” (Cohen Reference Cohen2009: 39–40, see also Anderson Reference Anderson1990: 182–183; Bowles Reference Bowles1991: 12–13). This aspect of the In-Tension view might be buttressed by the empirical evidence suggesting extrinsic rewards can crowd-out intrinsic motivations to undertake activities (Deci et al. Reference Deci, Koestner and Ryan1999). A classic example being how markets in blood actually reduce levels of donation as they can erode the association between giving blood and civic duty (Titmuss Reference Titmuss1971).Footnote ⁵

2.3 Market competition puts people in direct opposition

Markets are also taken as inconsistent with community because market competition puts (some) individuals in direct opposition. This aspect of market competition is why Cohen (Reference Cohen2009: 40) thinks market actors will inevitably see each other as “threats to one’s success”. Or take how Waheed Hussain (Reference Hussain2020: 81) characterizes the competition in a job market:

Such competition is inimical to the development of community because as we have seen community is based on a mutual concern that others are successful in carrying out their plans of life, where individuals win and lose together. Yet here we have a situation where an individual acting out on their own desire to do well cannot be separated from an act that ensures others lose out.

Now it is of course true that in many ways markets and their interactions are positive sum – each party in a transaction is left better off than they were before the trade, the competition between sellers leaves buyers better off, and so on. Stepping out, the enormous rise in GDP over the last century or so and the way markets have converted the luxuries of previous generations into ordinary consumption for later generations also demonstrates how market economies so often are positive sum, and I don’t want to deny this (indeed my argument about the socially beneficial outcomes from market competition relies on it). But what the In-Tension view gets right is that despite whatever results come about from market competition as a whole, there are classes of competition internal to market economies which unavoidably put individuals’ interests at odds. This is especially true for the competition between sellers and the competition between buyers respectively. For instance, while society and its members might benefit overall from the existence of a competitive labour market for socially useful jobs (this helps the most qualified get the job after all), the situation is very different for individuals qua job seekers.

2.4 The disconnecting effects of commodification

The third way some proponents of In-Tension take market competition to occlude the realization of community relates to how the widespread commodification of products and services in market economies ends up disconnecting or alienating individuals from the wider effects of their productive activity. The classic articulation of this kind of view is the one by Marx (Reference Marx and McLellan2000: 477–479), where markets are taken to cloak the work process under a “mystical veil”, where the real social relations imbued in and through work end up hidden from workers. The idea is that because markets turn the products of labour into commodities, people end up regarding work activities only in terms of monetary relations between products and services, and not in terms of interpersonal relations based on generalized reciprocity. This then undermines community because instead of individuals affirming and identifying as interdependent persons who are responding to one another’s needs, the market forces them to come together to trade only as disinterested parties (or encourages them to believe that others are only trading as disinterested parties). As one example, Nicholas Vrousalis (Reference Vrousalis2015: 130–131) argues that if money was introduced to mediate the activities on Cohen’s camping trip, then this would obfuscate the awareness that each individual is producing for others non-instrumentally and for its own sake (see also Maguire and Brown Reference Maguire and Brown2019: 3–4, 7–8). Under this view, planning production in direct response to need can express mutual concern and fellowship in a way commodified market relations never can.

3.1 Profit motivation as other-regarding

The first claim of the In-Tension view was that the profit motive built into market competition makes any concern with meeting needs for its own sake impossible – market actors are motivated by the cash reward only. Perhaps this accurately describes much of market motivation under contemporary capitalism. But even today there are exceptions, and one doesn’t have to look too far to find market participants with other-regarding attitudes (e.g. the business owner motivated to help the local community through economic development, the executive of the charity organization, and so on) (Steiner Reference Steiner2014: 143–146; Van Schoelandt Reference Van Schoelandt2014: 150–151; Maguire and Brown Reference Maguire and Brown2019: 6; Frye Reference Frye2023: 242–243). After all, contra to the crowding out literature mentioned earlier, there is also evidence that in certain circumstances market mechanisms can crowd-in other-regarding behaviour where prices are seen by agents as means which, by sending information, allow them to undertake the contributive activity they regard as important (Deci et al. Reference Deci, Koestner and Ryan1999: 628; Khanna and Sandler Reference Khanna and Sandler2000; Bolle and Otto Reference Bolle and Otto2010; Bönke et al. Reference Bönke, Massarrat-Mashhadi and Seilaff2013). This reflects the more general finding that what markets and monetary incentives mean to those who use them is sensitive to how they are framed and the institutional context in which they occur (Zelizer Reference Zelizer1994; Frey Reference Frey, Ben-Ner and Putterman1998: 444; Folbre and Nelson Reference Folbre and Nelson2000: 130–134; Feldman and Teichman Reference Feldman and Teichman2008; Brennan and Jaworski Reference Brennan and Jaworski2015: 1062–1066).

This suggests we ought to be cautious in making claims about any attitudes and values being intrinsic to market economies: what markets mean can vary. Of course, it would not be a terribly convincing argument to just conclude from this that markets can be based on the pro-social attitudes demanded by community because markets can be based on whatever attitudes we want them to be. The more reasonable takeaway is just the point that the meaning of markets is going to be sensitive to how society understands the purpose of a market economy and the manner in which it is utilized. And as we have seen the market’s price mechanism gives markets an inherent connection to the meeting of needs, so couldn’t this then be how a society decides to institutionalize and interpret their meaning and be what motivates individuals to engage in them? I might want to act as a competitive marketeer not because I want to get ahead, but because I recognize that doing so forms part of an effective system to coordinate productive activity and presents a unique opportunity for me to help others carry out their ends. This could be the case so long as I knew the market economy in which I’m operating was appropriately constrained to result in socially beneficial outcomes in the ways outlined earlier.

In thinking through the plausibility of a market system where individuals’ motivation to act competitively is the social benefits this behaviour brings about, a helpful starting point is the account presented by Joseph Carens (see also Kolm Reference Kolm1983: 22–28; Brennan and Pettit Reference Brennan and Pettit1993: 192–205). Carens (Reference Carens1981) outlines that even if some economic system had a 100% tax rate (so take-home earnings are completely disconnected from market activity), it would still be rational for individuals who have a desire to contribute to be motivated to maximize their pre-tax income. This is because “[t]he market [can be] simply a mechanism which makes it possible for the community to indicate to people what productive activities they can engage in if they wish to help the community achieve its goals” (Carens Reference Carens1981: 195). In a similar vein, Robert Sugden (Reference Sugden2018: 232–255) argues that market participants can deploy a form of ‘team reasoning’, where competitive behaviour is motivated out of an intention to play one’s part in practice that is beneficial for all. Other writers make similar points, arguing that prices can work less as incentives and more as offers to make a contribution that others can take up (Miller Reference Miller1996: 286–287; Reference Miller2014: 133–134; Frye Reference Frye2017: 375). Indeed, the use of prices as signals for opportunities for contribution can be especially effective given the difficulties in knowing how we can best cash out a desire to meet the needs of others (Roemer Reference Roemer2012: 286ff.; Zwolinski Reference Zwolinski and Melenovsky2022: 209). Ought we just follow our instinct and hope for the best? What if I am wrong? (People might not actually like the portraits I draw of them in the park, or the singing I do in the street …) An easier decision is to pick some activity in which we expect to be successful in meeting market demand, as answers as to what might fit that criterion ought to be clearer (I know I could never make it as an artist or a singer). While Carens’s account is helpful because it isolates the right variables, it is important to note that community is not only possible in a system like Carens’s where individuals are altruistic saints, as Cohen (Reference Cohen2009: 43) himself recognizes, but also when individuals come into the market with more of a motivational mixed bag (Frye Reference Frye2023: 252–255), so long as the other-regarding motivation provides an independent ground not contingent on any self-serving one.

A concern here might be that using prosocial motivations as the basis for market activity will only be self-defeating as it will undermine the very social benefits that are hoped to be brought about. After all, it is probably fair to construe my account as arguing that we can make the invisible hand visible. Sure, you might say, but won’t that just take the life out of it (Smith Reference Smith1968: Bk. IV, Ch. 2; Miller Reference Miller1977: 486–487; Cohen Reference Cohen2009: 76–79; Maguire and Brown Reference Maguire and Brown2019: 10–13)? Is it realistic for competitive market behaviour to really be the means through which individuals carry out their genuine concern to meet others’ needs? This is of course a valid concern. We might think of scenarios likes bosses who don’t fire redundant employees out of an understandable concern for their well-being, only to cause the whole company to go under, or individuals who start selling their products below the market-clearing rate because they admirably want to make it easier for people to access them, with this only meaning fewer products can be produced and so fewer people benefit.

Here it is important to remember my account is not arguing that community can be realized through markets in the abstract, but only through a market economy that is contained within the framework of the state. Part of this, as I have already mentioned, is because political and legal institutions are required to ensure the market is appropriately regulated and limited. But as the point about the sensitivity of the meaning of markets to their institutionalization implies, and the literature on economic sociology also emphasizes (Granovetter Reference Granovetter1985; Fligstein Reference Fligstein1996), the state also has a role in influencing the behaviour of market actors as part of a larger mutually reinforcing relationship between political institutions, social norms and market behaviour. What the institutions of the state can also do then is contribute to the point of markets being widely and publicly known. For the account laid out here, this would involve communicating not only why society has decided to implement markets (the effective and non-wasteful meeting of needs) but also how individuals need to behave to bring this about (act like competitive marketeers). After all, the negative outcomes in the scenarios mentioned above are not caused by prosocial motivations per se, but by individuals acting in ways contrary to competitive behaviour in response to price signals. The issue then isn’t that individuals want to help others (in the ways relevant to an ideal of political community), but that they misunderstand the behaviour required to do so. Having a larger political and social environment that reinforced both how the market can realize certain values and what norms are required in participants to bring this about, would help ensure individuals who are prosocially motivated recognize they have a shared reason to endorse and participate in competitive market behaviour, thereby preventing them acting in ways that undermine the proper functioning of markets.

The feasibility of this might be strengthened by noting that within business ethics there are already accounts of similar ethical norms, where competitive market behaviour is deemed moral in virtue of the social benefits such behaviour brings about (McMahon Reference McMahon1981; Heath Reference Heath2014). Once markets are endorsed in virtue of their function of enabling the effective meeting of needs, it seems hard to escape the conclusion that individuals qua market participants are obliged to act in certain ways (even if this is contrary to how one needs to behave in other social realms). How political institutions could best serve any communicative role will be sensitive to a range of contextual questions (including not only what political institutions make up society but also what the political justification is for the value of community). But the basic point is that through aspects of the political environment – such as the legislative order in which markets operate (e.g. the rules of exchange, property rights regime, tax policy) and the larger practices in which discussion about markets and enterprise takes place (e.g. public debates, civic education, citizen assemblies) – then it could be communicated and reinforced to individuals that if they want to act out on their desire to help others meet their needs, then behaving competitively in the market economy is one especially effective way to do so. Indeed, by having markets operate within such a system this would not just allow individuals with pre-existing prosocial motivations to contribute in a way compatible with community but would likely also encourage and cultivate such prosocial attitudes in individuals more widely, by highlighting the community-relevant values that are inevitably at stake through participation in market activity. Of course the concern with community extends beyond how citizens behave in economic life, and such a norm would need to be integrated as part of whatever wider system of norms and values is required to bring about a meaningful form of political community in society. But the suggestion is that when such a wider environment obtains, individuals who are prosocially motivated will be unlikely to act uncompetitively because they understand that this will only be frustrating their intentions. Rather, they will understand that if they want to contribute to meeting others’ needs, then when they are acting as a market participant the best way to do this is to take this competition seriously and try their hardest to win, where winning is understood not as how they personally fare but as how well they respond to price signals.

Even with something like the above in place, it is probable that some individuals will try to meet others’ needs by acting uncompetitively in the market. But so long as the number of such individuals stays comparatively small, this is no problem because one thing the history of economic development shows us is that there is some slack in the system – not everyone today acts maximally competitively in response to price signals either.

3.2 Making competitions friendly

The second claim was that markets and community are at odds because certain classes of market competition put individuals in direct opposition and rule out their ability to win and lose together. My reply here does not deny market competition is sometimes like this, but argues even when it is such competitions are only a threat to community when the stakes are so high that competitors regard others as threats, and that the stakes of competition in a market economy need not be this high.Footnote ⁷ Community and friendship survive low stakes competitions all the time (the board game nights, the basketball runs at the local park, and so on).Footnote ⁸ But, as the consequences of losing a competition worsen, the more a person’s opposite number becomes a threat, an adversary, an opponent who needs to be defeated for good. As Hussain (Reference Hussain2018a: 571) puts it: “a friendly competition is one thing; a life or death struggle is another”.

What then affects the stakes of market competition? What is important is whether market activity is the only means through which individuals can secure their fundamental interests, such as meeting their basic needs, and securing their dignity and self-respect. When winning in the market is the only way to foot the grocery bill or hold your head high, and because certain classes of competition prevent everyone winning, then of course we won’t be able to use it as a means through which we act out a genuine concern that the lives of others go well. Instead, we will be forced to wish that others are the ones that lose out.

But market competition need not be the only way persons secure their fundamental interests, as this only occurs when a market economy is situated within a political and social system that fails to protect individuals from its worst distributive effects. If, instead, state structures ensured that these interests could be secured outside of the market, then the stakes of market competition are drastically dropped. I won’t lay out here a full account of what this requires, but will mention two institutional provisions that seem important. The first of these is a redistributive scheme that ensures individuals, regardless of whether they enjoy market success, meet a threshold where their fundamental interests can be met (this would involve mechanisms of monetary transfer but also institutional protections like bankruptcy law and so on). This then drastically lowers the market’s stakes, as the success of one competitor will no longer spell doom for another.Footnote ⁹ The second is providing individuals opportunities for meaningful work or employment outside the market, through a job guarantee (Jacobs Reference Jacobs2003: 161–168). This is important because in the scenario considered here individuals care about helping others through their work, and so it seems likely that their ability to do so would be linked to their status or self-respect as participating members who do their part. (To get a sense of the attitude: if you want to help out on the camping trip but feel you can’t, you’re going to feel rotten.) But because economies tend to have a natural rate of unemployment, then unless nonmarket forms of decent work are made available opportunities for social contribution will be a positional good. This would result in individuals being pitted against each other in order to have the opportunity to act out their shared desire to help others meet their needs, and that does not sound particularly community-inducing.

An objection might be that ‘winning’ in the market is still going to be a matter of high stakes for individuals who are motivated to participate in market activity in order to contribute to others in a particular way. Let’s say I am passionate about cooking, and derive much satisfaction and sense of worth from contributing to others through my restaurant business. Won’t it matter deeply to me that I actually succeed in doing so? If this goes belly up because I can’t compete with the neighbouring restaurants, this will be a great loss to me. And this, the thought goes, would continue to be the case even if some job programme ensured nonmarket opportunities to contribute were still available. For the fact of the matter is that I wanted to contribute in this way.

Two things to say in response. First, it is not unreasonable to expect individuals to adjust their expectations as to how they can contribute in response to what is being communicated through the market. I might have believed that it was through my cooking that I was going to best contribute to meeting others’ needs. But so long as the market is operating as it should, my lack of success is suggesting otherwise. If my concern to help others is a genuine one, then I’ll listen to what I’ve been told through others’ market behaviour – my cooking is not what they want. And second, for prosocially motivated individuals ‘winning’ in the market isn’t even necessarily required for them to feel as if they are contributing to others and helping them meet their needs. What truly matters is participating in the mechanism that leads to socially beneficial outcomes (acting competitively in response to prices). And so even if individuals ‘lose’ in this competition, the fact their successful competitors were trying to beat them, and this in part is what led to a better outcome for others, means individuals could still see themselves in taking part in the process that brings about the effective meeting of others’ needs. While my restaurant might have failed, it is because of the effort I was putting into my cooking that the food at my competitor’s restaurant was as good as it was.

Of course, for the individuals in question reconciling themselves in these ways will not be easy, and I don’t want to deny that friendly market competition could still lead to some inequalities in esteem or regard in those classes of competition that inevitably have both ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. But for competition to be compatible with community it doesn’t have to have no stakes, and I don’t see why some inequalities in esteem from competitions like these would be a problem. After all, don’t evaluative comparisons that lead to some inequalities in esteem still exist even when community occurs in environments that are non-competitive? For instance, Cohen’s campers might regard positively the skills of others and wish they could contribute in those ways too (being able to erect impressive tarpaulin shelters or catch live fish is far cooler than collecting firewood after all). But does that really suffice for community to be undermined?

A final concern: we might worry that reducing market competition’s stakes will reduce its positive effects by modifying how individuals respond to price signals. More concretely, if the stakes are lower perhaps all this will do is reduce the motivation in individuals to work by taking away what was a major incentive. While the earlier concern about making the invisible hand visible was questioning whether it would be feasible for a widespread norm of competitive market behaviour to feature amongst a group of individuals who cared for its own sake about the value of social contribution, the concern here is more about whether it is realistic to expect individuals across society to endorse the value of prosociality in the first place. For perhaps, the critic might say, altruism is a scarce resource such that it won’t be able to replace material incentives as a general motivation for individuals to undertake socially beneficial activity (Arrow Reference Arrow1972: 354–355).

This is not just an objection to my reply to In-Tension but an objection to the entire terrain on which this debate is carried out, as it applies to any account giving significant space for altruism in the major domains of social and political life (of which the accounts of community affiliated with In-Tension are an example). And while I have said some things about what community requires given the fact of deep diversity (see section 2), for the most part I have for argument’s sake just granted there are possible worlds where communal attitudes can be widespread.

But I will say two things here, one relating to altruism in persons and one relating to the place of altruism in my account. Regarding the former, there are several reasons to be sceptical that altruism is such a scarce resource that any social arrangement relying on it is doomed to fail (especially one backed up by institutional and cultural sanctioning of the sort I outlined earlier). These include evolutionary accounts of humans as a cooperative species (Axelrod and Hamilton Reference Axelrod and Hamilton1981; Bowles and Gintis Reference Bowles and Gintis2011), experimental evidence showing individuals are strongly motivated by concerns of altruism and reciprocity (Fehr et al. Reference Fehr, Fischbacher and Gächter2002; Fehr and Fischbacher Reference Fehr and Fischbacher2003), but also, and I think most importantly, the fact altruism seems less like a finite resource that gets ‘used up’ when it is deployed and more like a resource that gets replicated and reinforced in the using of it – altruistic acts foster more altruism in oneself and others (Singer Reference Singer1973: 319; Fowler and Christakis Reference Fowler and Christakis2010; Jordan et al. Reference Jordan, Rand, Arbesman, Fowler and Christakis2013). This suggests it would be a mistake to take the propensity for self-interest today as fixed and to resultantly claim a concern for others could not replace high stakes material incentives as a strong motivator to engage in competitive market behaviour.

I am not saying my account is feasible because persons are not in any way selfish by nature (that would only swing the pendulum too far back in the other direction). But this is no problem because as outlined earlier community through the market does not require a concern for others to be the only reason why individuals act as competitive marketeers, and there is nothing wrong with self-regarding incentives playing some role in determining the behaviour of market participants. In my account of friendly competition there will still be incentives based on monetary reward and esteem (see also Cunningham Reference Cunningham2005: 138–139). And so long as prosociality is still a significant reason and is independent of any motivation based on self-regard, then individuals using such incentives in their market behaviour is compatible with relations of community coming about. What my account does remove is the incentive to compete based on the threat of individuals’ fundamental interests riding on their success, but there are enough examples of countries with strong welfare states alongside productive market economies demonstrating such a threat is not needed to reap the benefits of market competition. All this demonstrates that in friendly market competition price signals can still operate as a behavioural control that makes some options more attractive than others, such that when it comes to what the behaviour of individuals looks like from the outside it won’t be easy to tell the difference between a friendly (but still serious) market competition and a high stakes one.

3.3 The distancing effects of pluralism

The third claim was that commodification brings about a disconnect between persons and their social contribution by turning relations of mutual interdependence into mere monetary relations. But if we understand social contribution in the way I have argued is required for an account of political community, such that satisfying others’ needs is just contributing to their ability to carry out the plan of life that they take to be valuable, then claims about commodification’s inherent distancing effects lose much of their force. Doesn’t demand through prices in an appropriately regulated market economy suffice to show that one’s products or services are useful to others? If they weren’t, why would they pay for them?

It is true that commodification involves some distance between the worker and their social contribution. But this distance seems less a result of the monetary relation and more just an inevitable feature of individuals, with different conceptions of the good, helping others achieve plans of life that are different from their own. Such distance will still exist in nonmarket societies – even under communism “paintings might be used as ironing boards” (Miller Reference Miller1977: 484). Take the fact a musician might not understand in intricate detail the exact ways their songs enable others to carry out their plans of life, and might even find certain appreciations of their music confusing or misplaced. But the mere fact they can sell it in the market communicates to them that it is indeed useful, in the same way that smiles, without communicating all the details, don’t disconnect individuals from the fact that others enjoy their company. Perhaps then the emphasis should not be on prices and commodification bringing about a distance between producers and their beneficiaries, but instead on how prices and commodification actually enable social contribution to occur between persons who have some aims and ends that diverge (Coleman Reference Coleman1987: 87; Brown Reference Brown and Melenovsky2022: 232–233).

Such a feature might be a source of grievance for a Marx-inspired perfectionist account that values mutual completion around ‘human essence’. But what accounts like that get wrong is they forget that community between society’s members will always be defined by disagreement and diversity over comprehensive conceptions of the good. It is a mistake then to think community between society’s members could only occur between individuals with ongoing and open-ended relationships, and thereby cannot be achieved through the necessarily closed and substitutable interactions that make up market exchange (cf. Maguire and Brown Reference Maguire and Brown2019: 10–12; Frye Reference Frye2023: 262–264). When you buy flowers from my store I do not need to know details about or approve of your use of them in order to feel confident that such an exchange has genuinely satisfied and expressed my desire that your life goes well.

A problem of communication might remain however from the recipient’s perspective. You, as the producer, may well be motivated in the ways required by an account of community, but so long as your productive decisions in a market economy are determined by maximizing logics in response to the price signal, how can I be certain of that (Maguire and Brown Reference Maguire and Brown2019: 7–8)? As I have been arguing, the behaviour of self-interested marketeers and other-regarding marketeers can look exactly the same from the outside, so for all I know maybe you are just the former. This would be a problem because community doesn’t just require individuals care for its own sake about serving others and meeting their needs but requires that those individuals being served know that others care about them for its own sake. But we can respond to this concern by returning to the earlier argument about the wider system in which markets are located and the mutual relationship between market behaviour, political institutions and social norms. Insofar as these values and norms in question are deemed legitimate and accepted by others more widely, then this would give individuals confidence that those they meet and interact with in the market are acting out of the same concern. This wider political context ensures individuals recognize why they, as a society, have decided to utilize markets in the first place, deploy them in the way they do, and act within them in a certain kind of way. It is this wider context of acceptance and endorsement that, when it exists, would give each person good reason to believe that their fellow market participants’ maximizing behaviour is not conditional on the monetary reward, but is instead the manifestation of a noninstrumental concern that the lives of others go well.