Justice and the Foundations of Economic Thought

A bstract . Justice in the economy is a subject of renewed interest among contemporary economists. In the growing literature, Joseph A. Spengler's Origins of Economic Thought and Justice may become a standard reference work. Its great merit is the way it handles values and value judgments. Economics as an objective science cannot tell us anything about ends, Spengler holds, but it illuminates Valuation and facilitates isolation of costs and some benefits of realizing ends. Still, economists "need to base their policy-oriented arguments on distributive justice and not on efficiency. "