The Intermingle Of Economic Justice And Political Justice

James McGill Buchanan Jr. is the founder and the most influential representative of the school of Public Choice Theory, and is credited as the Father of Public Choice Theory. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1986 for "for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making". The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences stated, "Traditional economic theory explains in great detail how consumers and entrepreneurs make decisions regarding purchase of goods, choice of work, production, investments, etc. In a series of studies, Buchanan has developed a corresponding theory of decision-making in the public sector, which goes under the name,'The New Political Economy'or'Public Choice'. Buchanan's contribution is that he has transferred the concept of gain derived from mutual exchange between individuals to the realm of political decision-making. The political process thus becomes a means of cooperation aimed at achieving reciprocal advantages. But the result of this process depends on'rules of the game', i.e., the constitution in a broad sense. This in turn emphasizes the vital importance of the formulation of constitutional rules and the possibility of constitutional reforms."Buchanan's Public Choice Theory is not only a new type of economic theory but a new type of economic ethics. He transplanted economic concepts such as Methodological Individualism, Homo Economicus Rational principle, nature of egoism, and exchange, into the field of political decision-making to analyze political structure, government organization, and acts of government officials, and their effect on social lives. All these bridge Buchanan's economic justice and political justice. Buchanan took the defense of individual freedom by property right advocated in economics as a logical start point to lead to political justice and proceeded to advocated the intermingle of economic justice and political justice. This is Buchanan's logic to verify political moral foundation by political philosophy.Buchanan understands the meaning of economy form the perspective of transaction or market instead of defining it in terms of resource allocation in the sense of mainstream economics. He thinks that economic activities are driven by people's self-interest, and that everybody attempts to maximize his own benefit by utilizing the capital at his disposal. To ensure and promote the economic benefit of every individual, we need a fair and rational institutional arrangement to maintain the social exchange relationship to achieve a certain order in the market exchange. In this way, the order or rule of the market is the contract reached unanimously by rational "Homo Economicus" in their exchange of interest. In Buchanan's view, the individuals enjoying sufficient freedom are the only source of spontaneous economic order and social order (i.e. various institutions). This kind of order, owing to its intrinsic ethical value, becomes Buchanan's basic rule in economic justice, that is to say, spontaneous orders is the natural objective of economic justice, the equality and mutual benefit is the core concept of economic justice and the voluntary agreement regulates economic justice. Distribution justice, the substantial part of economic justice on this basis, takes procedural equality at the start point as the core.Then, Buchanan applied his methods in economic study in the field of political study, thus deepening the study of economics itself while expanding the research area of economics. Due to the selfishness and short-sightedness in the human nature, the natural rules of justice formed in exchanges are subjected to artificial violation, as indicated by "the Tragedy of the Commons". Therefore, a government should be established, whose coercive powers can be used to maintain the order and to make people abide by the rules so as to defend the fundamental and long-range interest. After the emergence of coercive political organizations like the state and government, the procedural justice rule originally generated by spontaneous orders is turned into a kind of political and institutional rule, that is, natural (economic) justice is switched to political justice. Buchanan held that the realization of political justice should be guaranteed by constitutionalism, which, in its real sense, is the combination of freedom, limited government, and rule of law. However, he held that constitutional democracy and institutional reconstruction alone could not prevent immoral acts. So, he suggested the combination of institutional reform and moral reconstruction. In Buchanan's idea, the inherent objective of the rational reconstruction of a country lies in making every individual free and equal.Now, China is in a time of deepening our policies of reform and opening-up.30 years'practice of reform and opening up to the outside world has brought about great social and economic development and has substantially improved the overall national strength of China. However, in this process, there appeared some disharmonious factors in Chinese political life. The lack of an overall balanced regulating mechanism resulted in that the fruit of economic development could not benefit the public mass and people could not share the benefits of reform and opening-up policy. Hence, the resulting social contradictions cannot be effectively resolved. The intermingle of political justice and economic justice advocated by Buchanan and his economic ethics are enlightening and inspiring for us to further promote the balanced development of economic system reform and political system reform so as to establish a fair and just social regulating mechanism and to build a socialist harmonious society.