WHAT I HAVE DONE

There is almost certainly no way around the central conundrum running through this book. Economic theorists will certainly continue to build models based on their market concept, as this can plausibly be understood as their very raison d’être. Neither should we expect any sudden respite from hearing politicians talk about the future in ways that invoke this thing called “the market” that imposes its will on the whole economic environment. We might recently have witnessed the rise of a populist nationalism that is attempting to harness a backlash against globalization, but what is this in economic terms if not the flipside of market ideology? It is not the wholesale dethingification of “the market” that I have advocated, so much as an objection to the outcomes that its thingified presence has caused us to have to accommodate ourselves to. There is thus unlikely to be much change in the continued coexistence of the market concept and market ideology. But this will continue to present the problem of the single word “market” being used in two very different contexts and in two very different ways. Will we be able to trust ourselves in the future to always be able to distinguish the two uses from one another when all we hear is the one word? Given how difficult it ever is to call out a conflation of the two uses before the moment has passed, could we even trust ourselves to be able to do this just some of the time?

Hopefully the preceding chapters have helped in the task to separate the market concept from market ideology and to keep the historical development of three very different market concepts distinct from the ultimately confusing idea of “the market” as a discrete thing.