Moral Categories in the Financial Crisis

Karl Marx observed long ago that all economic struggles invite moral struggles, or masqueradeas such. The reverse may be true as well: deep moral-political conflicts maybe waged through the manipulation of economic resources. Using the recent financialand Eurozone crises as empirical backgrounds, the four papers gathered here proposefour different perspectives on the play of moral judgments in the economy, and callfor broader and more systematic scholarly engagement with this issue. Focusing onexecutive compensation, bank bailouts, and the sovereign debt crisis, the symposiumbuilds on a roundtable discussion held at the opening of the Max Planck Sciences PoCenter on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo) in Paris on November29, 2012