Philip Pilkington: Economic Fetishism – Three Objects of Perverse Intellectual Pleasure
By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer based in Dublin, Ireland
Watch out, I have a large, very large fur, with which I could cover you up entirely, and I have a mind to catch you in it as in a net.
– Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
Many aspects of contemporary economic theory certainly seem to have their origins in the mythic and the moral rather than in the realm of the rational. But while this seems to be an accurate description of the system as a whole, it does not seem quite able to account for certain aspects of this system which appear to be rather obsessive in the minds of its adherents.
These obsessions, or ‘fetishes’, can be explained in like terms, that is: compared to certain primitive rituals and superstitions. To do so we will first have to form a better understanding of the fetish itself; an Enlightenment concept that has a long and interesting history.
The specific fetishes we will explore will be the most important today: the government, inflation and gold. All these phenomena are interconnected in neoclassical economic theory (yes, even gold, or at least the ghost thereof), however, they tend to lead their own individual existence outside of the Grand Neoclassical System itself. In and of themselves they are, for economists and economic commentators, fetishes that can be worshipped in dark rooms away from the great hall. They are like fragments of the main theory that adherents smuggle out of the temple and obsess over in their own private shrines.
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