The Deep Meaning of “Market”: Understaning Neoliberal-Market Reasoning

Neoliberal theories share the idea of “the market” i.e. a “higher” instance or an autonomous process which commands people. But this concept includes a deep meaning, namely the picture of a world divided into two parts: a market and its contrary, like “the” state. This picture is similar to the way demagogues think – who hold true a form of thought in which the social world is stereotypically divided into two strictly separate parts: a homogenous in-group, “Us”, which is the target group of political propaganda, and a homogenous out-group. “The market” contra “the state”-view uses a binary code similarly, has a dynamic-actionistic momentum and is empirically unprovable. This can be shown in the writings of Mises and Hayek as in the neoclassical general equilibrium theory. My thesis is that this is the common element of the different theorists gathered in the Mont Pélerin society. The binary code of “the market” has an advantage in debates: it cannot be critized in principle, even in deep crises. Due to its quasi-demagogic deep structure, every mistake must be attributed to the “the” state, and the remedy for every crisis has to be a call for more “market”, as Tea Party representatives argue or the European austerity packages imply.