The disconnect between economics and morality

Other than Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes, there are remarkably few well known economists who actually manifest any particular interest in human social morality, at all   There is an almost total disconnect between the social science of economics, and social morality, as we normally understand it.  Why is this, exactly?  The other social sciences -- sociology, history, psychology, political science -- all focus to a large extent on the differences between right and wrong in human social behaviors, although they all tend to have a profoundly ethnocentric bias in the way they do it.  Social scientists from different nations and cultures tend to see morality their own way, and have their own heroes and villains, who may not correspond particularly well with those from other cultures.   But, they are very interested in moral issues, issues of right and wrong.  Not so, the vast majority of economists, at all.  True, Adam Smith coined his ridiculous smiley face morality of the "invisible hand" to clothe capitalism in virtue, but, that metaphor has been grossly overextended so much as to amount to a reducto ad absurdam.  There is no invisible hand guaranteeing capitalist goodness, I'm afraid. Part of the problem here is Karl Marx -- the ultimate outsider -- effectively trashing all of human existence so thoroughly and not really offering much as an alternative -- only a purely speculative utopian socialist vision that he almost certainly did not even believe in, himself. So, the rest of the economics world has effectively turned tail and run from any attempt at human morality ever since Marx, with the exception of course of the Chinese communist marxist economists, who have no choice whatsoever other than to be Marxists, by law, and so are simply ignored by Western economists.   Well, maybe we should go back to good old Plato, and The Republic, then.  Plato had no fear whatsoever of Karl Marx.  Really!  So, Plato's Republic puts strict limits on the maximum wealth of all private citizens, and forces the actual guardians of the Republic to live like homeless people in a shelter, with no wealth whatsoever, and only their basic needs modestly met by the state.   And, these are the people who are supposed to be running the country, the people with the real power! Aristotle believed that the pursuit of wealth for its own sake was purely evil, and would lead to the destruction of the state, as it had in ancient Athens. In the European middle ages, Saint Thomas Aquinas and the his Catholic theologian friends made money lending for interest illegal, along with merchants charging any more for goods than was necessary to cover production costs and to ensure the tradesmen involved made a decent living wage. Traditional Islamic societies required Zakat, redistribution of wealth in the form of a wealth tax.  In the US currently, similar policies are being considered as we speak, in terms of a special tax on billionaires. So, historically, morality has indeed been integrated into economics theory quite regularly.  However, almost inevitably it seems, all morality in economics, looks socialist, or communistic.  Isn't that interesting?  So, the only way to divorce the economics of a state from socialism, and communism, is to divorce it completely from any moral basis whatsoever, and, hence, any chance whatsoever of survival.  Do tell! #ecomomics #economists #economictheory #ccp #china #capitalism #communism #philosophyofscience #history #philosophyofhistory  #philosophy #academia #adamsmith #morality #moralphilosophy #politicalscience #marx #karlmarx #historyofphilosophy #ethics