The Religion of the Marketplace
NONJUDGMENTALISM, COMPETITION & THE PRIMACY OF DESIRE
The “marketplace” is the central image of a new religion, rising out of the ruins of a century marked by devastating war and by a remarkable run of insane rulers and intrusive bureaucracies that have destroyed the faith in politics as capable of producing a just and happy human order. The time is ripe for the emergence of a nonpolitical, an anti-political, salvation creed and, lo! — it has emerged. It is the Religion of the Marketplace — universal in its appeal, easily intelligible, and militant, sending out its missionaries, in the guise of agents of the International Monetary Fund, to keep the fainthearted from straying from the new Tao.
The Faith has three basic dogmas: the primacy of desire; the creative and saving energy of competition; and the tolerant inclusiveness of “nonjudgmentalism.”
You May Also Enjoy
Review of The Search for Historical Meaning... The Capitalist Revolution... Conservatism... Alexis de Tocqueville... and Irving Babbitt in Our Time.
Amazingly, with this issue, the NEW OXFORD REVIEW marks its 10th Anniversary. I say “amazingly”…
Lasch combined a leftist critique of extant economic structures with an appreciation for the value of cultural tradition.