Crime Against Humanity: Pensée Unique in Economics, 12
Speaking of absolutes, if there’s an absolute here, and if there’s a basic subject for this ‘Overall Picture’, it is that of how crucial is the relationship between those tiny assumptions buried in hiding places so remote and unknown to most of us like economic theories or conceptions of humanity, and their immense destructive fallout, branched out in almost infinite forms, which usually put us against each other, in the real world of the flesh and lives of us all. And of how crucial as well are the intention behind them covered in the ‘Core’, and the force behind them covered in the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’, without which none of this would exist in the first place. Just as an example here, aimed at stimulating us to detect such ramifications of fallouts, that first assumption of neoclassical economics alone can turn people against one another on these two independent false suppressive pretexts at the very least: “economic need”, and “education”.
Back to the “invisible hand” now, I call your attention to the key crucial point in that first basic assumption: the word “if”. That first tenet contains a condition, a requisite: it states that it will be all right for all… if, provided that, on the condition that. If, provided that, on the condition that the “invisible hand”, that neoclassical individual materialistic self interest we’ve just reviewed, can operate freely. Freely…
What do they mean by “freely”? They mean the rest of the neoclassical tenets. And here the deductive, abstract, theoretical approach of neoclassical economy comes into play, to perform its function at the service of greater interests.
In fact, we reviewed the basic neoclassical tenet and we found it false, in that it presents the worst particular case as though it is universal. We’re going to review the ancillary neoclassical tenets and it will be even worse. Because the way the deductive approach serves greater interests is by staging something that does not even exist at all, thus providing the false conditions upon which to proceed as if the false theory was true and real.
In other words, and in practice, the neoclassical dogma is: all is needed to meet the condition it contains is freeing the “hidden hand”, the “structural reforms recommended to deregulate, liberalise, privatise and open up as many industries and aspects of the economy as possible”, and it will be all right for all, for the very good reason that all the remaining conditions described in these ancillary neoclassical tenets are automatically, intrinsically met, in place, real. A bit like telling to the trapeze artist, “You don’t have to check the net is there before you blindfold yourself and jump: it’s there by my definition; it’s there because I say so.” Sounds familiar? It starts with obeisance to “authority” and it ends up with the little dust cloud of Wil Coyote on the canyon floor. Boom.
