It is the God meme in capitalism and its writings, Smith’s among them, that is to capitalism what the Torah is to Judaism, the Gospels to Christianity, and the Koran to Islam: holy texts whose authenticity and reality must not be challenged or questioned unless as an adolescent moment of doubt, eventually subsumed by the re-embrace of total belief.
Get invisible hand magic free#
It is the “invisible hand” idea from Adam Smith - the conviction that there really is a hidden force that given free rein sets everything aright. Indeed, at the heart of the standard capitalist narrative is magic, as if the will to realize the abstract ideal of a cornucopia for all will itself - through fervent wishing and belief that can only be called religious - bring about the imagined state.
![get invisible hand magic get invisible hand magic](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/57/46/9857460572a1ba21e5494935e748f119.jpg)
It is not really the general individual that the system has in mind, though, so much as the entrepreneur who, given complete lack of restraint, is assumed to be able to produce goods and services beneficial to society, and can do so only with the freedom to ignore non-market values and the possibility that this kind of individualism - which can be called hyper-individualism - will magically yield freedom and justice for all. It privileges personal responsibility over larger social forces, reinforces the gap between the rich and poor by redistributing wealth to the most powerful and wealthy individuals and groups, and it fosters a mode of public pedagogy that privileges the entrepreneurial subject while encouraging a value system that promotes self-interest, if not an unchecked selfishness.Ĭapitalism has for its several centuries-long history promoted the so-called “interests” of the individual as supreme. Giroux’s book on the relationship of neoliberalism to higher education opens with a succinct summary of the accomplishments of neoliberalism.įour decades of neoliberal policies have resulted in an economic Darwinism that promotes privatization, commodification, free trade, and deregulation. He views the goal of neoliberalism, by contrast, as cultivating education that prepares the student to be a reflexive supporter of the status quo, take orders uncritically, and accept consumerism as a major desire and goal in public and private life. HENRY GIROUX correctly sees that universities, at their best, prepare students for a citizen’s role that is informed, critical, and visionary.