LAST IDEOLOGY STANDING

I argue that neoclassical market economics is the last ideology standing after the fall of Communism. This excludes explicit theologies such as Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism as well as implicit ones like Buddhism. Ideology is an explanation of how the work works without a god; theology with a God. In this regard the word 'theory' literally means a god's eye view. Ideology is the beating heart of secularism. Below are works that make this point, directly and/or indirectly.

1. Ideological Evolution: The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Base Economy, H.H. Chartrand, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Saskatchewan, July 2006.

1.0 Introduction

1. In his April 25, 2005 ‘State of the Union’ address to the Duma, Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, called the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century (BBC April 25, 2005). Whether true or not, this event, accompanied by the nearly synchronistic conversion of Communist China to market economics marked the end of the Market/Marx Wars which had raged and divided the world for almost a century and a half beginning with publication of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848.

2. The Communist Revolution failed. The previous Republican Revolution survives. A world divided and threatened with nuclear winter for almost half a century now rallies around the last ideology standing – market economics with its political and legal corollaries: popular democracy and private property. This is not, however, the end of ideology (Bell 1960) nor of history (Fukuyama 1992). Now that the fog of war has dissipated, it is time to reconsider both victor and vanquished. Glorification of ‘us’ and demonization of ‘them’ are byproducts of war - hot, cold and ideological; reflection and reconciliation are byproducts of peace.

3. The word ‘ideology’ has many meanings today (Gerring 1997) but was coined simply enough by Condillac, a contemporary of Adam Smith (1776), to mean ‘the science of ideas’ (OED, ideology, 1a). Separation of Church and State was critical to both American and French Republican Revolutions. Creation of a secular ‘science of ideas’ to counter the awe and mystery of religious and metaphysical thought and ritual was part of a revolutionary agenda designed to overthrow an Ancient Regime of subordination by birth.

2. "What We Learn When We Learn Economics - Is a little economics a dangerous thing?"

Christopher Hayes, In These Times, November 27, 2006.

3. “Can Economists Save Economics?”

Richard Parker, The American Prospect, 4 (13), March 21, 1993.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money (1935), Ch. 24, Concluding Notes