The utopia of the market - as a number one enemy Charles Champetier
In today's economical science, dominate the so-called "classical" theories, ie, theories that are based on the principles of economic liberalism. The fundamental principles of such an economy, first formulated by Adam Smith (1723-1790) are the following: the main actor of the economic game is the individuum, each individual is inherently rational, selfish and prudent in his choice, he seeks only to what is most profitable for him. The economic area represents a field, completely isolated from socio-historical reality.
The economy is created around the market, which seeks to self-regulate when the following conditions are satisfied: atomicity (a large number of buyers and sellers), flow (free flow), transparency (publicly available information regarding the supply and demand), uniformity (the needs of all actors in the economic game are identical, or at least, can be reduced to a utilitarian-speculative formula), mobility (free circulation of goods).
These formulas are from the 18th century have been continuously improved. However, their essence has remained the same.
To the full range of liberal principles, it is possible to put forward the following claims:
The above-mentioned economic situations have nothing to do with compliance to "neutrality in the assessments," which is a necessary prerequisite for any genuine scientific research. On the contrary, these principles exactly correspond with what Louis Dumont called "economic ideology." This "economic ideology" is based on a set of beliefs, evidence and objectivity of which seemed absolutely unshakable 200 years ago, today is presented as scientifically dubious and unfounded abstractions, a series of "mechanistic utopias", as modern science today views the society and its structure in a much more complex and multidimensional way, rather than then primitive conceptions of the Enlightenment mechanists and their immediate successors.
These principles, deriving from the illusion of autonomy of the economic sphere, are in fact severe distortions and have no relation to reality. Ideal conditions for the existence of the market, in fact, not only do not come with the development of capitalist society, but on the contrary, more and more are removed with the development of an increasing number of monopolies and monopolistic chains, due to selective aggravation of access to commercial information, as well as due to the lack of existence of a "pure economic individual.".
These formulas are by K.Polani, absolutely alienated from the social context. By making the economic sphere wholly independent from all other areas of human and individual activity, these principles lead to the transfer on the whole congregation of criterias that apply only in respect to the market (the principle of "invisible hand", reportedly bringing morality to economics, developed by the modern liberal theorists). We must counter the classical and neo-classical liberal economic theories with the following principles and the following paths aimed this social crisis that is economic liberalism:
It is necessary to expose and expose the ideological assumptions laying in the basis of the liberal economic paradigms, and to trace critically their formula (basing on the writings of such authors as Louis Dumont, Max Weber, etc.) between macro-economy (the global situation, national complexes and systems, and the enterprise giants ) and micro-economy (individual as the protagonist of the economic game) isolate and study the meso-economy, which should include all intermediate structures and forces (groups, communities, ethnic and traditional features, the historical specificity of groups, etc.).
By following the school of French anti-utilitarians we need to learn and re-create all the non-market methods of commodity exchange (by exploring and deepening the works of M. Moss, J. Bataille, J. Heyzingi, C. Polanyi, etc.)
Draw attention to heterodoxial (unorthodox) ways of economic development (as opposed to economic growth), primarily to the ideas of Schumpeter and his school. The underlying principle consists in the method of implementation of the economic area in the historical context.
An alternative to liberal economy is not only possible, it is necessary, because as a result of the application of its principles to the peoples and societies, irreparable national, cultural, spiritual, environmental and geopolitical disasters occur, which, if we not start dealing with them, in the very near future they will put humanity and its history under a threat of extinction, or turn people into "economic mutants" deprived of the past, deprived of consciousness, devoid of soul, or simply destroy them physically because of the social, military or ecological disaster.