Economism: The Debate about the Universality Claims of Orthodox Economics

Abstract

Present-day economic theory is the product on the one hand of abstract thinking and on the other of a long interaction with economic reality. This is why we find the strange paradox that while economic theory is accused of being totally urealistic in its assumptions, in the outcomes it functions normatively in affirming the economic system as it is, as good. For the unrealistic assumptions have been formulated in such a way that their outcomes are in support of the economist society as we know it. Serge Latouche characterizes this society as follows:

The economy is the religion of our time. This is attested to by many analyses and recognized by certain economists themselves. Modem society — many have noted it — did not chase away the idols, myths and dogmas; it only succeeded in replacing them with others. There is even an abundance of candidates for the divinity: Reason, Progress, Science, Technology — to name only the most credible. In any case the devotion to Progress, the dogma of Development, the cult of Technology, the appreciation as if sacred of Material Well-Being, up to the sacrosanct Human Rights and the untouchable Democracy, are at bottom directly or indirectly linked to the economy via utilitarianism. The calculus of pleasures and pains, of duties and rights, of costs and benefits, inhabits our projective imagination and nibbles away at the major part of our practices. (Latouche (a), p. 10)