Re: the Market as God

[Timework Web <timework@xxxxxxxxx>]

According to McMurtry:

   10. Any and all societies, parties or governments which seek to live
   by any alternative order of social life organization than ordained by
   the Supreme Ruler are the declared Enemy of the Ruler and of the
   freedom of humanity, and are to be warred against until expelled from
   the community of nations and destroyed as the forces of evil.

To which I would add:

Although it appears as a "consequence" of the fundamentalist Market-as-God
theology, the principle of animosity logically precedes the apotheosis of
this demonic deity. In other words, the theology appears as an ex post
facto justification for a pre-existing holy war against
"enemies". Furthermore, those enemies might best be understood as
projections of the contradictions inherent in capitalism.

A thoroughgoing allegorical reading of the theology would immediately
recognize the characteristic "change of sign" by which the Market-as-God
comes to represent the complete dissolution of "free" exchange relations
in an absolutist, totalitarian, interventionist state that intervenes _in
the name of_ free enterprise.

In this "new (or no) economy", a billion dollars is worth more than what a
billion dollars could buy. Possessing wealth becomes a charter for
receiving favours and franchises that exempt one from the indignity of
having to actually exchange money for commodities -- the corporate welfare
state. The fundamentalist theology of the Market-as-God can only mean one
thing: the market is dead.


Tom Walker
Sandwichman and Deconsultant
215-2273