Date: February 20, 1999
To: IFFS/CAIA listserve
CSARE Ag Ethics Task Force
New Economics of Sustainability Group
Ecological Economics listserve
SANET - MG
(Please pardon duplicate mailings, those of you on more than one list).
From: J. Patrick Madden
Subject: The Market as God
The latest issue of Atlantic Monthly contains a very insightful article by
Harvey Cox, entitled "The Market as God." (March 1999, vol. 283 No. 3,
starting on page 18) Professor Cox does a superb job of unpacking and
documenting this concept.
After studying the Wall Street Journal and the business pages of weekly
news magazines, he discovered a post-modern theology has emerged, complete
with "myths of origin, legends of the fall, and doctrines of sin and
redemption .. chronicles about the creation of wealth, the seductive
temptations of statism, captivity to faceless economic cycles, and
ultimately, salvation through the advent of free markets, with a small dose
of ascetic best tightening along the way, especially for the East Asian
economies. � The East Asian troubles, votaries argue, derive from their
heretical deviation from free-market orthodoxy - they were practitioners of
'crony captialism,' of 'ethnocapitalism,' or 'statist captialism,' not of
the one true faith. �..
"Soon I began to marvel at just how comprehensive the business theology is.
There were even sacraments to convey salvic power to the lost, a calendar
of entrepreneurial saints, and what theologians call and 'eschatology' - a
teaching about the 'end of history.' � At the apex of any theological
system, of course, is its doctrine of God. In the new theology this
celestial; pinnacle is occupied by The Market, which I capitalize to
signify both the mystery that enshrouds it and the reverence it inspires in
business folk."
He goes on to describe how advocates for this new religion call on doubters
to repent and to place full and unquestioning faith in the unseen and often
incomprehensible Market God.
>From personal experience, I can testify that heretics may be dealt with
severely.
The article calls to mind my comment during the closing wrap-up session of
the IFFS conference in Massachusetts last summer: "The deity most widely
worshiped in the world today is the Invisible Hand of the Market." Harvey
Cox makes my point exactly, elloquently.
So what? What are the implications? First, let us be not deceived about
the virtually unlimited power of the market to transform communities, the
lives of people, and ecosystems in devastating ways that generate profits
for entrepreneurs, especially transnational corporations. Mark Ritchie
spelled out the problem during his superb presentation on the last day
(should have been the keynote on the first day) of the IFFS conference.
Our challenge, the challenge to humanity, is to put a human and ethical
face on the market. The challenge is to deliberately reform market
institutions and political institutions in directions compatible with
quality of life and opportunities for present and future generations, and
conducive to continuation of life and emergence of an honorable peace on
Planet Earth.
If the Harvey Cox thesis is correct, if the Market has become the
post-modern deity, and worship of the so-called free market has become the
predominant religion of our time, then the United States has surely fallen
into a severe and chronic violation of the Constitutional principle of
separation of church and state. One of our challenges should be to call a
halt to blind and officially sanctioned faith in the Market God.
J. Patrick Madden
1153 Melrose Ave. #1
Glendale, CA 91202 USA
phone: 818-240-2966
fax: 818-545-0665
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
website: ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/patrickmadden
