An Obituary for Homo Economicus

Over the years a rather sharp distaste for economy has matured in my mind, and even, be it visceral or psycho-somatic, in my body. Enunciated in theological slogans, and dressed in the authoritative garb of hard science authoritativeness, economic imperialism has been as much a hallmark of the end of the twentieth century as the the end of soviet communism. the rational choice making individual epitomises the type of desocialised automaton in the clutches of the worst type of commodity fetichism that we can imagine, and we learn to hate the business section of the newspapers (this also explains why leftists tend to be ignorant about economic facts and have to rely on others, but that is another story).

Yet any attempt at constructing counter-institutions, or even organizing temporary carnival or disruption is confronted immediately by questions of resources, and how they are to be used. Whether acquired by theft, barter or purchase, the type of use to which they will be put, and where, simply does not go away. If sconomics is indeed the "study of how societies use scarce resources to produce valuable commodities and distribute them among different people", then we're involved because it's unavoidable.

The first thing to do is to subvert the code. Not because of some penchant for post-modernist gobbledegook, but because we can produce some political weapons, consider the following: - utopian claims about perfect markets are premised on the availability of perfect information to all participants. presently information goods are in the front line of enclosure and exclusivity. Rival logics of prerequisites to market functioning and the wealth-maximizing properties of private property rules collide here, head-on. We can mobilize one against the other, and nurture a space of relative protection from commodification in which to build creative and disruptive public space.

- rational choice models of human behaviour have been demonstrated to be operatively incorrect in many cases. Experimental economists now examine many other factors in fashioning human activity, mostly related to concepts of fairness, equity, reciprocity and positive sociality that posit no fundamental obstacle to reconciliation to extra-capitalist values. Likewise human co-operation maximising mutual benefit has been theoretically documents, in stark rebuttal of the claims of an inevitable regression to competitive reciprocal ruin. If economics continues to be an intrusive force imposing an exogenous set of imperatives, it is because (a) different interpretive models have not been publicized and set into conflict with the neo-classical dogmas and (b) rational choice models are used and repeated for ideological reasons produced by power.

To the extent that modern economic discourse really does bear a comparison with pre-enlightenment religious domination we should remember this; the enlightenment was founded on a confrontation and progressive defeat of dogmas, it could not practice subtraction or evasion and win; these may be necessary short-term tactics while a velocity equal to the task is achieved, but ultimately the Bastille must be demolished.