Democratic Agency and the Market Machine

The alliance of pure market economies with democratic polities has traditionally been a problematic one. It is argued that orthodox theoretical conceptualizations of market behaviour and the application of such theory to our communal lives have entrenched an incoherent alliance. In particular, the r...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hodgson, Bernard 1946-2009 (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2012
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2012, Volume: 108, Issue: 1, Pages: 3-14
Further subjects:B Neoclassical economics
B Equilibrium theory
B Consumers
B Democracy
B Economic Rationality
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
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Summary:The alliance of pure market economies with democratic polities has traditionally been a problematic one. It is argued that orthodox theoretical conceptualizations of market behaviour and the application of such theory to our communal lives have entrenched an incoherent alliance. In particular, the reductive mechanism characteristic of both neo-classical economic theory and its deployment in our socio-economic order has severely undermined the telic agency required for the autonomy or self-rule definitive of an authentic democratic order. Such reduction is observed to function through the disabling of the cognitive capacity of consumers and by disempowering the agency of workers such that coercion is misconceived as freely agreed contract.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-011-1082-8