Mainstream economists and right-wing politicians are want to believe (or pretend) that we live in a market economy. This is manifestly untrue: whichever way you cut it, the economy is dominated not by markets, but rather by firms (Simon, 1991) - and more specifically large firms, which are centrally planned in a way that bears an uncanny (and, for some, uncomfortable) resemblance to the Soviet Gosplan (Galbraith, 1967). This is the one of the defining features of neoliberalism, whose ideology is predicated on the freedoms and efficiencies of the market even while its praxis is characterised by monolithic bureaucracies.
Although we do not live in a market economy, we do, perhaps, live in a market society (Polanyi, 1944). Increasingly, social relations are restructured in terms of transactional exchange; fellow people become mere means to materialistic ends (Habermas, 1981). Neoliberals - and the neoclassical economists who provide their intellectual fodder - are incapable of appreciating this reality, since they hold to the belief that "there is no such thing as society" (to use Margaret Thatcher's famous dictum). Ironically, the apparent non-existence of society is actually symptomatic of the consolidation of market society, which elevates an individualistic worldview and thus atomises the individual from her fellow woman.
So we live in a market society, but a corporate economy - that, I would posit, is an essential facet of neoliberalism. Notice how counterintuitive this combination is: normally we think of 'society' as an inherently collective sphere, consisting of phenomena like solidarity and reciprocity as well as authority and hierarchy, with the 'economy' remaining a more 'neutral' realm of costs and benefits. In fact, neoliberalism tends to exhibit the opposite - the economy is socialised while society is marketised.
What are the implications of this paradox? Alienation and inequality spring to mind, but we can also diagnose the maladies of our anaemic economy in terms of a disintegration of the social relations in which the economy remains embedded - a tendency which is arguably accelerated, if not generated, by the modern manifestation of the bureaucratic firm (Thompson and Valentinov, 2017).
Although we do not live in a market economy, we do, perhaps, live in a market society (Polanyi, 1944). Increasingly, social relations are restructured in terms of transactional exchange; fellow people become mere means to materialistic ends (Habermas, 1981). Neoliberals - and the neoclassical economists who provide their intellectual fodder - are incapable of appreciating this reality, since they hold to the belief that "there is no such thing as society" (to use Margaret Thatcher's famous dictum). Ironically, the apparent non-existence of society is actually symptomatic of the consolidation of market society, which elevates an individualistic worldview and thus atomises the individual from her fellow woman.
So we live in a market society, but a corporate economy - that, I would posit, is an essential facet of neoliberalism. Notice how counterintuitive this combination is: normally we think of 'society' as an inherently collective sphere, consisting of phenomena like solidarity and reciprocity as well as authority and hierarchy, with the 'economy' remaining a more 'neutral' realm of costs and benefits. In fact, neoliberalism tends to exhibit the opposite - the economy is socialised while society is marketised.
What are the implications of this paradox? Alienation and inequality spring to mind, but we can also diagnose the maladies of our anaemic economy in terms of a disintegration of the social relations in which the economy remains embedded - a tendency which is arguably accelerated, if not generated, by the modern manifestation of the bureaucratic firm (Thompson and Valentinov, 2017).
