The End of the Economic Age

Ladies and gentlemen, we have hope that finally we might be nearing the end of the 'economic age', that era in which the masses and the intellectuals had hope that by describing all things in economic terms, world peace and prosperity would at last be in reach. To accomplish this, we gave up our citizenship and embraced our roles as mere 'consumers.'

Nearly all the conversation effecting the citizenry is expressed in this way. We think not of 'what is good for citizens', but what is good for the economy, what is good for the consumer, the two being (supposedly) connected at the hip.

It was Coolidge who first said, "The business of the United States is business," and Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush Jr. in recent years have said the same. Teddy Roosevelt would not approve. But not only the politicians but the people have jumped on that band wagon, nearly to the destruction of us all, as our dollar declines, our ecology is faltering, and a possible 'double dip' recession threatening just on the other side of the horizon. Let us hope it comes soon, before the damage it will do becomes worse, just as the larger floods remind us not to build on the floodplains.

Marx pointed to the strangeness of commodity fetishism in capitalism, capital itself which has become the fetish, the economic forecasters who have become the priests, the schools of economy the doctrine. Dogmatists abound; when we started to worry about the costs of war in Iraq, what did President G. W. Bush tell us to do? Spend more money; keep the economy going. Instead of addressing problems directly, we try to do everything the same way. Spend more! Buy more! Consume! The way out of this hole is to keep digging! The economists decided we could have our cake and eat it too, provided we ate it fast enough, deciding that modern economic principles could also overturn the axiom "You reap what you sow."