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You make good points, but my assertion isn’t necessarily to oppose god and capitalism, nor to say that returning to religion would solve all our problems, I’m just implying we’ve traded “god” for the “market” and that both have affinities insofar as they are both based on founding texts (bible, wealth of nations) that prescribe a belief system more based on faith (saving grace, invisible hand) than reason.


Yes. An excellent book on Market Logic is JP Dupuy Economy and the Future: A Question of Faith. It is philosophy but it is, vs Zizek or Lacan, an easy read. It is a very precise, logical argument that to debate here will end polemics.


There are almost no present day capitalists who have read The Wealth Of Nations. Indeed, the field known as Classical Political Economy is basically moribund and has been replaced by Economics. But the modern factory owner doesn't follow even economics on the basis of faith - indeed, they generally follow much abstract economics at all. I'm not all "pro-market" but it seems clear markets don't need faith - buy stuff, sell stuff, make money, lose money. The only thing akin to faith you have is confidence that X you buy today will be worth more tomorrow. But that's no equivalent to the unquestioned faith asked for by religion.


But there is an element of faith in the market. If the capitalist read the Wealth of Nations or not, s/he believes in the invisible hand and that free markets are the right way to manage our lives. It is the ideological package that guides people who embrace capitalism as their way of life.


A capitalist has no need of believing capitalism is a good way to manage "our lives". The capitalist simply acts in their own self-interest. I think Karl Marx and Ludwig Von Mises would agree on this. Marx would consider the system evil, Mises would consider it good. But neither would consider it "faith based".


The piece you’re missing here is that the capitalist theory is that things will work out well on a macro level when everyone is acting in self-interest that is the key to capitalism as an economics (more specifically as an acceptable mode of the economic term in “political economy”) and it is the only reason it is seen as acceptable. The whole reason capitalism is seen as “rational” is because of this argument, if the only thing that were claimed is that “everyone should act in self interest and who knows what will happen” no one would accept it as a reasonable economic system. Capitalism took root because of this notion that rational agents acting for themselves would necessarily (with no evidence to back it) lead to the best scenario (the idea of the market dictating whats best for mankind through what it desires, supply and demand). It is also its article of faith, which mounting evidence (see climate crisis) argues against.

Marx’s whole point was to argue why this proposition was false (why “everyone acting according to self interest” actually led, in spite of the good it produced in the short term, to longer term evils, like proletariatization, exploitation of workers, concentration of wealth, etc. though Marx did not forsee (and couldn’t of course) the catastrophic effects self interest would have on the climate)). The whole point is that the progression of capitalism up to this point has proven we need more than just “self regulating markets or self interested “rational” agents” since we’ve come to see the absence of other shared values leads to species level existential threats (again, climate).




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