Neutrality as an Ethical Principle of Social Justice and Human Coexistence

Abstract

This essay reinterprets neutrality as an ethical principle of social justice and human coexistence rather than as mere political abstention or moral indifference. Starting from the continuity of life across generations and from the fragility that marks human existence, it argues that peace cannot be reduced to the temporary absence of war but must be understood as a durable condition grounded in justice, responsibility, and the protection of human dignity. In this framework, neutrality emerges as an active principle of balance, restraint, and civic orientation, capable of resisting the logics of domination, exclusion, and violence. The article develops a close connection between war, poverty, marginalization, and distorted economic organization. It maintains that conflict is fostered not only by political ambition, propaganda, or competition for resources, but also by the withdrawal of substantial quantities of wealth from the productive circuit. When money remains inert, access to essential goods is restricted, productive activity and employment are compressed, and conditions of exclusion intensify. The essay therefore treats the economic sphere as a decisive site in which ethical responsibility, distributive justice, and the material preconditions of peaceful coexistence are concretely formed or undermined. Taken as a whole, the essay advances both a normative and an economic thesis. Normatively, it argues that lasting peace requires a social order capable of countering exclusion, unproductive accumulation, and distributive imbalance. Economically, it proposes that the quantity of inert money be estimated and that the money supply be rebalanced accordingly, so as to restore conditions more favorable to production, employment, and social stability. In this light, the essay also reconsiders Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” [i]  not as a guarantee of automatic harmony, but as a metaphor for an order that can emerge only when circulation, institutional responsibility, and access to essential goods are adequately secured.