ABSTRACT
When this book was first published in 1996 its argument seemed, even to the author, a trifle Quixotic. My claim was, and is, that the market economy produces a systematically false consciousness: an ideology. Global exchange for profit, and more especially the exchange of money – which is itself the medium of exchange – for profit, is the root cause and prime example of today’s ideological errors. While market exchange is obviously present in and necessary to any civilized society, our postmodern society is historically unique in elevating the mercantile principle to a position of complete dominance over the economy and, I argue, over every area of public and private experience. When it attains
this degree of power, the market ceases to fulfil its necessary but subordinate function as a means towards the end of civilized life. It becomes, rather, an end in itself, and in consequence it takes on the aspect of a tyrannous, destructive force, whose impact is felt within each of our minds as well as in our material lives. The market becomes an ideology.
