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Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture (SVMC)
Economy and the Future: A Crisis of Faith
A monster stalks the earth—a sluggish, craven, dumb beast that takes fright at the slightest noise and starts at the sight of its own shadow. This monster is the market. The shadow it fears is cast by a light that comes from the future: the Keynesian crisis of expectations. It is this same light that causes the world’s leaders to tremble before the beast. They tremble, Jean-Pierre Dupuy says, because they have lost faith in the future. What Dupuy calls Economy has degenerated today into a mad spectacle of unrestrained consumption and speculation. But in its positive form—a truly political economy in which politics, not economics, is predominant—Economy creates not only a sense of trust and confidence but also a belief in the open-endedness of the future without which capitalism cannot function. In this devastating and counterintuitive indictment of the hegemonic pretensions of neoclassical economic theory, Dupuy argues that the immutable and eternal decision of God has been replaced with the unpredictable and capricious judgment of the crowd. The future of mankind will therefore depend on whether it can see through the blindness of orthodox economic thinking.
187 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 2014
13 people are currently reading
162 people want to read
About the author
Jean-Pierre Dupuy
69 books47 followersJean-Pierre Dupuy is Professor Emeritus of Social and Political Philosophy at the École Polytechnique, Paris. He is the Director of research at the C.N.R.S. (Philosophy) and the Director of C.R.E.A. (Centre de Recherche en Épistémologie Appliquée), the philosophical research group of the École Polytechnique, which he founded in 1982. At Stanford University, he is a researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information (C.S.L.I.) and Professor of Political Science. Dupuy also has served as chair of the Ethics Committee of the French High Authority on Nuclear Safety and Security, and was inducted as an Academician into the International Academy for Systems and Cybernetic Sciences.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 2, 2014
This is the worst book I have ever read that has come from the Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Cultural Series. It is basically the work of a socialist who praises the political over the economic and condemns neoclassical economic theory. However, not only does he not understand the very subject he is criticizing, he is writing from a perspective that is actually toxic from the perspective of mimetic theory itself. Moreover, he wrote the book presumably in the aftermath of the Euro crisis, but shows no appreciation whatsoever for the structural flaws of the Euro that led to the very crisis that he is decrying!
On the one hand, it is understandable that a specialist in mimetic theory not have an appreciation for how economics works. Rene Girard himself, the intellectual founder of the mimetic theory, has been critical of utilitarian and neoclassical economic thought (as shown in his book on Dostoevsky). However, there is no indication that he is familiar with the Austrian School of Economics, and specifically works of Menger, Hayek, Mises, and Rothbard. I am hopeful if he or other mimetic theorists were aware of their works, they would actually find similar criticisms of those schools of thought, and actually find possible intellectual allies in the understand of how human beings behave in the real world.
Having said all of this, it is clear that Dupuy is familiar, at least superficially, with Hayek, but his socialist perspective prevents him from understanding how markets truly work. To characterize economic competition as evil (page 19) is worse than not understanding the nature of markets; it demonizes the very mechanism that has lifted countless millions of people worldwide out of poverty and into prosperity since the industrial revolution.
One general confusion (among many) in Dupuy's analysis is his mixing up of politics with economics. While he refers Tocqueville's discussion of democracy in America, in which Americans are a society of equals, he misses the broader point of how America, and all societies, are organized. As Mises noted in Human Action, society is organized through the property people own and the division of labor across all economic agents to produce goods and services people need to live their lives. It is through this broad dispersion of talents and treasure that people live their lives; the few times citizens meet in the town hall are merely one aspect of it.
While Dupuy rightly observes that rivals are everywhere in societies founded on the principle of equality, it is through Politics, the very Ideal that he holds on a pedestal compared to that lowly Economy, that flattens society and increases rivalry.
This book is worse than bad. It is harmful to the potential of mimetic theorists and economists in the Austrian school collaborating with one another and creating fruitful insights. Both groups of social scientists see human behavior through the individual, not through the blob others social scientists call "society." While mimetic theorists have been developing interdividual psychology based on developing desires mimetically, it at least acknowledges that the individual develops these desires through the interaction with others. This is an idea that Hayek would have been extremely open to. While methodological individualism posits theories on the means a person may take to achieve whatever ends he or she may have, it should be open to theories on how those ends are developed, so long as it is with the individual in mind.
Unfortunately, Dupuy's vicious attacks on the work of a scholar who would have been open to mimetic theory runs the risk of poisoning possible collaborations between two schools of thought that can be viewed as complimentary with one another. Hopefully, scholars from both camps will overlook this unfortunate book, and figure out ways to work with one another and further our understanding of how people think and act.
On the one hand, it is understandable that a specialist in mimetic theory not have an appreciation for how economics works. Rene Girard himself, the intellectual founder of the mimetic theory, has been critical of utilitarian and neoclassical economic thought (as shown in his book on Dostoevsky). However, there is no indication that he is familiar with the Austrian School of Economics, and specifically works of Menger, Hayek, Mises, and Rothbard. I am hopeful if he or other mimetic theorists were aware of their works, they would actually find similar criticisms of those schools of thought, and actually find possible intellectual allies in the understand of how human beings behave in the real world.
Having said all of this, it is clear that Dupuy is familiar, at least superficially, with Hayek, but his socialist perspective prevents him from understanding how markets truly work. To characterize economic competition as evil (page 19) is worse than not understanding the nature of markets; it demonizes the very mechanism that has lifted countless millions of people worldwide out of poverty and into prosperity since the industrial revolution.
One general confusion (among many) in Dupuy's analysis is his mixing up of politics with economics. While he refers Tocqueville's discussion of democracy in America, in which Americans are a society of equals, he misses the broader point of how America, and all societies, are organized. As Mises noted in Human Action, society is organized through the property people own and the division of labor across all economic agents to produce goods and services people need to live their lives. It is through this broad dispersion of talents and treasure that people live their lives; the few times citizens meet in the town hall are merely one aspect of it.
While Dupuy rightly observes that rivals are everywhere in societies founded on the principle of equality, it is through Politics, the very Ideal that he holds on a pedestal compared to that lowly Economy, that flattens society and increases rivalry.
This book is worse than bad. It is harmful to the potential of mimetic theorists and economists in the Austrian school collaborating with one another and creating fruitful insights. Both groups of social scientists see human behavior through the individual, not through the blob others social scientists call "society." While mimetic theorists have been developing interdividual psychology based on developing desires mimetically, it at least acknowledges that the individual develops these desires through the interaction with others. This is an idea that Hayek would have been extremely open to. While methodological individualism posits theories on the means a person may take to achieve whatever ends he or she may have, it should be open to theories on how those ends are developed, so long as it is with the individual in mind.
Unfortunately, Dupuy's vicious attacks on the work of a scholar who would have been open to mimetic theory runs the risk of poisoning possible collaborations between two schools of thought that can be viewed as complimentary with one another. Hopefully, scholars from both camps will overlook this unfortunate book, and figure out ways to work with one another and further our understanding of how people think and act.
November 26, 2023
I really interesting book that confirmed many suspicions I had in regards to economics but more importantly rationalism. It's so hard to come across scientists who don't fall into the trap of economic reason/rationality and I genuinely believe this book could be one of the first to finally refute economic reason and take us out of the trap we have fallen into of thinking of humans as 'self interested' which stops us from fixing the massive problems of modern society. I hope people take mimetic theory more seriously as time goes on but I worry that it's solutions are to radical for academics who still want to think through old paradigms.
May 2, 2020
I think it was brilliant, but I'm unqualified to tell.
May 31, 2022
A fascinating essay - the elucidation of the links between Mandeville, Leibniz and Smith in the context of theodicy was worth it alone
January 3, 2015
A world-class analysis of globalization with perfect logics and a wealth of major references in the field of economics and beyond.
November 7, 2016
Optimists owe it to themselves to be catastrophists, precisely because they are optimists.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews