IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/97741.html

Bankers as Immoral? The Parallels between Aquinas’s Views on Usury and Marxian Views of Banking and Credit

Author

Listed:
  • Lambert, Thomas

Abstract

Throughout history, the performance, practices and ethics of bankers and banking in general have received mixed reviews in both popular and scholarly writings. Early writings by philosophers, clerics, and scribes played a crucial role in the perceptions of banking and banking occupations. Thomas Aquinas’s thoughts and writings were greatly influenced by the Romans’ and Aristotle’s opinions on usury and the charging of interest, and Aquinas was in a position to have his opinions implemented in policy and practice. Marx noted how banking and credit were used to expand the production and sales of a capitalistic economy beyond certain limits, although his focus was mostly on credit extended to businesses. At the same time, he wrote about how the credit system could lead to economic crises as well as to the concentration and centralization of capital. While lending is motivated by profit, and while households are not coerced into borrowing money, the justice of a system which exploits workers and at the same time encourages them to borrow money in order to maintain a certain standard of living can be viewed as unfair and immoral. The value of goods, according to Aquinas and Marx, should mostly reflect the value of labor embodied in them, and for that reason, labor should be compensated fully for its work. For these reasons, Aquinas and Marxian economists offer somewhat similar views on both the labor theory of value as well as on the morality of certain banking practices. If credit and the banking system also bring about crisis and the greater concentration and centralization of capital, then the morality of these outcomes also needs to be examined.

Suggested Citation

  • Lambert, Thomas, 2019. "Bankers as Immoral? The Parallels between Aquinas’s Views on Usury and Marxian Views of Banking and Credit," MPRA Paper 97741, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:97741
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/97741/1/MPRA_paper_97741.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fabio Monsalve, 2014. "Scholastic just price versus current market price: is it merely a matter of labelling?," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 4-20, February.
    2. O. F. Hamouda & B. B. Price, 1997. "The justice of the just price," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(2), pages 191-216.
    3. Matías Vernengo, 2018. "Classical Political Economy and the Evolution of Central Banks: Endogenous Money and the Fiscal-Military State," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 50(4), pages 660-667, December.
    4. Arnon,Arie, 2011. "Monetary Theory and Policy from Hume and Smith to Wicksell," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521191135, January.
    5. Costas Lapavitsas, 2000. "On Marx's Analysis of Money Hoarding in the Turnover of Capital," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(2), pages 219-235.
    6. Barry Gordon, 1975. "Economic Analysis before Adam Smith," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-349-02116-1, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pierre Januard, 2022. "Risky exchanges: price and justice in Thomas Aquinas’s De emptione et venditione ad tempus," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(4), pages 729-769, July.
    2. Pierre Januard, 2021. "Analysis risk and commercial risk: the first treatment of usury in Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on the Sentences," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(4), pages 599-634, July.
    3. Pierre Januard, 2022. "Risks on Trade: The Activity of the Merchant in Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences," Post-Print halshs-03515973, HAL.
    4. Ghislain Deleplace, 2023. "Tooke Versus Ricardo On The Resumption Of Convertibility In 1819-1821," Post-Print hal-04429520, HAL.
    5. repec:osf:socarx:n7j9t_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Timothy Johnson, 2015. "Reciprocity as a Foundation of Financial Economics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(1), pages 43-67, September.
    7. Ghislain Deleplace, 2022. "“Storm in a Teacup? The Impact of War on the English Monetary System and Thought (1797-1821)”," Post-Print hal-04429477, HAL.
    8. Nicola Acocella-super-, 2017. "The Rise And Decline Of Economic Policy As An Autonomous Discipline: A Critical Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(3), pages 661-677, July.
    9. Sissoko, Carolyn & Ishizu, Mina, 2021. "How the West India trade fostered last resort lending by the Bank of England," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 108565, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Elias Tempelis, 1997. "Book Reviews," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(2), pages 331-332.
    11. Charles A. E. Goodhart & Meinhard A. Jensen, 2015. "A Commentary on Patrizio Lainà's 'Proposals for Full-Reserve Banking: A Historical Survey from David Ricardo to Martin Wolf'," Economic Thought, World Economics Association, vol. 4(2), pages 1-20, September.
    12. Neuberger, Doris, 2018. "Kann Karl Marx die Finanzkrise 2007/08 erklären? Eine Einordnung seiner Geld- und Kredittheorie," Thuenen-Series of Applied Economic Theory 155, University of Rostock, Institute of Economics, revised 2018.
    13. Salvary, Stanley C. W., 2007. "Accounting: A General Commentary on an Empirical Science," MPRA Paper 5005, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 10 Sep 2007.
    14. Madarász, Aladár, 2012. "Adósság, pénz és szabadság [Taxation, money and freedom]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(5), pages 457-507.
    15. Januard, Pierre, 2024. "Probability, Prudence, Danger: Thomas Aquinas On The Building Of The Lexicon Of Risk," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(3), pages 421-442, September.
    16. Ghislain Deleplace, 2020. "An Unorthodox Genealogy on the Relation between the Markets for Currency Exchange and Credit in Steuart, Thornton, Tooke, and Keynes (1923)," Post-Print hal-04253401, HAL.
    17. Jonathan P. Thomas & Timothy Worrall, 2002. "Gift-giving, Quasi-credit and Reciprocity," Rationality and Society, , vol. 14(3), pages 308-352, August.
    18. José Luis Cendejas Bueno, 2021. "Justice and just price in Francisco de Vitoria's Commentary on Summa Theologica II-II q77," The Journal of Philosophical Economics, Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, The Journal of Philosophical Economics, vol. 14(1-2), pages 1-32, November.
    19. Michele Bee & Luiz Felipe Bruzzi Curi, 2024. "Agreement is money: Beyond the chartalist reading of Adam Smith," Textos para Discussão Cedeplar-UFMG 666, Cedeplar, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
    20. Fabio Monsalve, 2014. "Scholastic just price versus current market price: is it merely a matter of labelling?," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 4-20, February.
    21. Robert W. Dimand, 2013. "David Hume and Irving Fisher on the quantity theory of money in the long run and the short run," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(2), pages 284-304, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • B11 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought through 1925 - - - Preclassical (Ancient, Medieval, Mercantilist, Physiocratic)
    • B51 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Socialist; Marxian; Sraffian
    • N20 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - General, International, or Comparative

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:97741. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.