It seems impossible to even conceive of a non-capitalist society. As the social philosopher Jameson (2003: 76) famously declares, āit is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.ā Yet the complete assumption of freedom as exclusively linked to capitalism is being increasingly challenged. The 2008 financial crisis once again brought into sharp relief the limits of market freedom . The dream of meritocracy mixed with personal liberty had turned into a present-day nightmare of rising inequality, economic insecurity, debt bondage, and mass downward mobility. It also raised renewed questions of whether the free market specifically and capitalism generally can provide for a fulfilling personal and social existence .
Emerging from these challenges were fundamental existential concerns. Notably, if the promise of the free market was hollow, then was freedom even possible? Was this truly the āend of historyā āa once optimistic claim about capitalism and liberal democracy that had turned into a resigned lament? To this end, the social liberty and personal aspirational impulses previously central to the legitimization of neoliberalism has transformed into an acceptance over its supposed inevitability and deeper almost divine truths about human nature and its possible future. Hence, in place of freedom, free marketers have offered the solace of religion .
There was, of course, always an element of the objective and natural about capitalism. It represented human nature at its most pure and essential. It was based on objective economic laws that defied any and all attempts at human control. Yet as the actual rationale for modern capitalism began to falter, its reasonableness weakening in light of actual evidence, the current free market ideology of neoliberalism became increasingly supernatural. It now demanded dogmatic belief from its human followers. Required was an inviolable religious faith in the free market orthodoxy.
A crucial question of our time then is whether we can give up our bad faith in the free market. The degree to which individually and collectively we can dramatically reimagine the meaning and practice of freedom. If we no longer accept that capitalism represents the limit of social possibility , can we wake up from our dogmatic capitalist slumber to embrace and explore new potentialities for our personal and shared existence ?
Aim of the Book
This book boldly reconsiders the free market. Innovatively combining existentialist philosophy with cutting-edge post-structuralist and psychoanalytic perspectives, it argues that present-day capitalism has robbed us of our individual and collective ability to imagine and implement alternative and more progressive economic and social systems. To this effect, it has deprived us of our radical freedom to choose how we live and what we can become. In place of this deeper liberty, the free market offers subjects the opportunity to continually reinvest their personal and shared hopes in its dogmatic ideology and policies. This embrace helps to temporary alleviate rising feelings of anxiety and insecurity at the expense of our fundamental human agency. This work exposes our present-day bad faith in the free market and how we can break free from it.
Challenging Freedom
This work attempts to move beyond the existing social limits of market freedom . The goal, in this respect, is to show the concrete limitations and ideological narrowness of currently dominant understandings of liberty and agency associated with the so-called free market. Doing so, though, requires a more complete understanding of what actually is market freedom. What type of liberty does it idealize, how does it seek to practically emancipate us, and what more radical forms of freedom does it perhaps unintentionally gesture towards?
Traditionally, capitalism has defined freedom asā¦ the ability of individuals to, if we are to use the most technical terms, sell their goods and labour freely in an open and competitive market. Using more everyday says language, it is the right to choose oneās profession and lifestyle and be fairly rewarded for their labour and enterprise. Quoting the early-nineteenth-century French liberal economist Frederick Bastiat
Echoing these sentiments in the contemporary era, prominent American libertarian politician Ron Paul proclaims:Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common forceāfor the same reasonācannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.
It must be remembered that a vast majority of mankindās history has been spent living under the rule of tyrants and authoritarians. The ideas of Liberty are very new when you consider the big picture. By contrast, various forms of socialism and fascism have been adopted over and over again. Be wary of those who try to present these old and tired ideas as something new and exciting. Liberty and free markets are the way forward if we truly desire peace and prosperity.
Significantly, this freedom extends only to opportunity not outcome. It is the right to freely aspire to be successful, according to oneās own desires, in a market system. You may try and fail, of course. Yet this failure does not diminish your freedom as it was based on your own lacking qualities not due to any flaw in the market itself. According to influential twentieth-century economist Murray Rothbard, āFree-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at.ā Further, no one coerced you into these actions; all that you do or do not achieve is based on your own free will. The contemporary free market economist Jeffery Tucker:
Even the richest person, provided the riches comes from mutually beneficial exchange, does not need to give anything ābackā to the community, because this person took nothing out of the community. Indeed, the reverse is true: Enterprises give to the community. Their owners take huge risks, and front the money for investment, precisely with the goal of serving others. Their riches are signs that they have achieved their aims.
There are, obviously, clear and rather obvious critiques to this narrow version of market-based freedom. Perhaps most notably is that, in practice, this freedom often leads to greater inequality and mass deprivation, conditions that ultimately lessen rather than enhance autonomy. There is also a stronger critique to be raised on purely freedom grounds. It is that wage labour is inherently unfree as it is based on a relationship of economic dependency. This was certainly the view, for instance, of a number of the āfounding fathersā of the American Revolution (Foner 1999) . This point in and of itself is damaging but not fatal to market freedom as the solution to this dependency problem is economic ownership and entrepreneurism.
A perhaps more damning critique, in this respect, is that this freedom is historical rather than inherent. To this end, it evolved over time to reinforce specific power relations and imbalances. The US political scientist Eric MacGilvray (2011: 1) explores this precise dynamic in his recent book The Invention of Market Freedom:
It also highlights a crucial tension for advocates of market freedom , one with definite existential overturesāeven if market freedom is the ultimate freedom, can people be free if they are merely conforming to an inscriptive historical discourse ? Put differently, can one be socially overdetermined as a free subject and still be considered free as such?So complete is this shift in usage that the phrase the āfree marketā sounds almost redundant to our ears, and the ālibertarianā the partisan of liberty is generally understood to be a person who favours the extension of market norms and practices into nearly all areas of life ā¦ These dramatic changes in usage are of more than merely historical interest, because freedom over the same period of time become one of the most potent words in our political vocabulary, and the effort to expand the use of the market as a means of realizing social outcomes has greatly intensified, especially in recent decades.
There are also quite serious philosophical challenges to market freedom. In particular, it is unclear whether it is primarily a means or an end? Arguably, its most famous proponent Milton Friedman has argued that it is most definitely the latter. For Friedman and other free-marketers, the government is a necessary evil that must be limited along with efforts to limitāeven if well-intentionedāour āeconomic freedomā. He notes āWhether blameworthy or not the use of the cloak of social responsibility, and the nonsense spoken in its name by influential and prestigious businessmen, does clearly harm the foundations of a free societyā (Friedman 1970: 1). The creation of a competitive market with minimal regulations or personal limitations, therefore, is the end goal.
In the literature, this view is epitomized by Ayn Rand where she famously, or infamously depending on your perspective, writes of businessman heroes railing against the nefarious attempts of tyrannical governments to restrict the entrepreneurial spirit of free individuals. On the other side of the philosophical divide Sen proposes a capabilities theory in which the market and market mechanisms are just one set of economic freedoms that can serve a populationās overall welfare and development. He describes agency in quite empowering and productive terms as āwhat a person is free to do and achieve in pursuit of whatever goals or values he or she regards as importantā (Sen 1985: 2003). For this reason, his approach has been referred to as āpeople-centredā,
ā¦which puts human agency (rather than organizations such as markets or governments) at the centre of the stage. The crucial role of social opportunities is to expand the realm of human agency and freedom, both as an end in itself and as a means of further expansion of freedom. The word āsocialā in the expression āsocial opportunityā ā¦ is a useful reminder not to view individuals and their opportunities in isolated terms. The options that a person has depend greatly on relations with others and on what the state and other institutions do. We shall be particularly concerned with those opportunities that are strongly influenced by social circumstances and public policyā¦ (DrĆØze and Sen 2002 page 6)
These competing views do point to a deeper philosophical tension plaguing market freedom . It is one that has been widely noted and for good reason. Does one have the right to freely consent or even actively choose to be unfree? Fundamentally, capitalism revolves around selling your labour and indeed your freedom temporarily to the highest bidder. There is thus an ironic dynamic at the heart of the free marketāfreedom extends only so far as having the right to freely select your servitude. Or more accurately to apply to the servitude that is most attractive to you.
Of course, there is an important additional dimension to this rather ironic form of market freedom. The exchange for temporary unfreedom is not merely the guarantee of material survival. It is also the liberty and resources to pursue happiness outside of work. To this effect, capitalism revolves around what can be referred to as a freedom transactionāthe selling of freedom for the concrete possibilities of greater future freedom. Tellingly, this market transaction has recently increasingly spread to employment itselfāa job and a career now critical to the achievement of personal fulfilment, not just professional satisfaction.
There is perhaps an immediate temptation to simply dismiss market freedom as a crumbling faƧade. To throw it unceremoniously onto the ash heap of history given its quite fatal philosophical and empirical failings. Yet, to do so ignores its gesturing towards a deeper existential freedomāthe liberty to continua...