The Invisible Hand: Magical Thinking in Market Theory

John McMurtry

A standard critical view of the relationship between capitalism and religion is that religion is a false cover story for

capitalism. �The Church of England,� Marx once remarked, �will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 Articles than 1/39th of its income.� Capitalism, it is contended, structures the real world. Religion is the ideology which conceals and sanctifies it in justifying illusions. Marx most famously pressed this view with an enlightenment epigram derived from Voltaire: �Religion is the opiate of the people.� He sought to scientifically lay bare the �real relations of society� underneath.

This paper will explore a deeper possibility � that the classical and neo-classical market doctrine is itself a religion. Beneath the notice of the social sciences, I will argue, the doctrine�s theoretical edifice depends on a system of presuppositions and inferences of necessary and benevolent design which constitutes an unacknowledged religious meta�physic.

The doctrines of The Market are accepted as self-evident truths. They include the notions:

� Money is not man-made, but results from trading.

� All trading is good, even if it is of junk, or unsustainable products, which will be on the scrap heap in a few months. � Industrial and economic growth is vital, and the sky will fall in if it is not achieved.

The terminology of "The Market" has become a convenient screen behind which the money system - or more accurately, the money scam - operates.

Those who own, control and profit from the monopoly of credit are dependent upon continuing the belief in the minds of the peoples of the world that money is not man made, and the financial system cannot be controlled. They are dependent upon people thinking that The Market's existence and functions are as natural as the force of gravity and the air we breath, and there is nothing we can do about it.

They desperately require that everyone accept as reality, that The Market is the most obvious and natural force existing in the world, with a life of its own, and that there is nothing that properly directed legislation can do to tame it.

What this emphasis on "The Market" means is that we are not supposed to think that someone may actually be responsible for the consequences of bad policies.

There can be no personal responsibility when everything is merely dictated by "The Market".

The English writer, politician and reformer William Cobbett, in his History of the Protestant Reformation claimed that a thirteenth century Englishman was considerably better off than the wage slave of Cobbett's nineteenth century industrial England.

In the 13th century an average of sixteen weeks of work each year was ample to provide the material needs of a man and his family.

Leisure was highly regarded; so much so that the Church had declared up to 150 Holy Days - holidays - a year.

It is impossible to imagine a member of that culture paying tribute to The Market, or advocating continual economic growth, or suggesting they should have an export drive.

But that was before the debt money system had taken its toll.

� from Prosperity, March 2002