Abstract

This chapter presents the basic question of this textbook: what might be meant by asking about the “ethics” of capitalism? And what makes this question so important that it gets its own book? The chapter then proceeds by first clarifying the intellectual discipline of political economy, emphasizing its philosophical and moralized content. This helps draw attention to the problem of economic justice. The chapter then distinguishes capitalism from alternative institutional systems before articulating the key questions about capitalism and justice that will be discussed in the larger body of the book, as well as the methods used to consider various answers to such questions.