Free Trade; Fair Trade; Economic Ethics.
Resumo
In this article, we will discuss how the discourses and economic practices of commerce have been shaped around the ethical principles of liberty and justice. We will argue that from classical Aristotelian thought to the Renaissance, with particular importance given to what occurred in the Middle Ages, there was a strong interest in ethically regulating the rules of commerce according to social and religious norms. From the Renaissance onward, and especially with the advent of Modernity, freedoms, and more specifically the value of economic freedom, begin to be of fundamental importance in moving toward a less regulated economy, relying on the action of the ‘invisible hand’ (market system). Analyzing the context of the development of the history of ideas, we aim secondly to address the question of whether trade should then be fair or free. While some current schools of economic thought insist on the virtues of market self-regulation, other movements, rightly concerned with the consequences of a free-market international order, have raised the banners for fair trade. Within this debate, the author proposes that, for sustainable societies, trade should be as free as possible but always guided by criteria of social and environmental justice. In other words, to insist on the virtuous Polanyian idea of an economy embedded in society.