Some think I’m bananas, saying ‘the economy’ is a fiction. Pointing out that humans have traded for…

Some think I’m bananas, saying ‘the economy’ is a fiction. Pointing out that humans have traded for millennia. And there surely have been ‘economic’ transactions for as long as history. But that’s *not* ‘the economy’. It’s that ‘the’ that is crucial. And cunning wordplay. /1

The sleight of hand here is to take those trading transactions which humans have always done, and to postulate a new domain of reality that the trading happens inside, called ‘the economy’. Actually that domain is and always has been just society. Economic transactions…/2

…are just a type of social transaction, of which we have a huge variety. The ‘the’ gives it away, as if we live in a society, but sitting alongside or inside it somewhere is this thing called ‘the economy’. Neatly separated out from our other social transactions. /3

It’s a lie, and a deliberate lie. A political ruse. As I’ve Tweeted many times, it was designed as a *substitute for* society. How many politicians or journalists talk about ‘society’ any more? Hardly any. But they all, of all persuasions, talk about the economy. /4 https://t.co/7jkNqH15Uq

Nothing is allowed to happen now if ‘the economy’ disallows it. And the economy disallows pretty much everything, except (miracle of miracles) the continued enrichment of the people who invented the idea. What a coincidence. Barack Obama tried to counter this monster of spin,…/5

…when he started talking about how the economy was totally reliant upon a whole range of social processes, to function, like roads and other infrastructure. He didn’t get far, because the habituation after more than 5 decades of propaganda is almost complete. /6

Why I also say elections change nothing, because framing society as an economy ties the hands of anybody who is elected. That was the plan. It does all of the politics 24/7, 365 days of the year, without a politician even needing to be there. You can even show people that…/7

…this isn’t even a conceptual argument, that you can historically show, in entirely empirical ways, where ‘the economy’ first emerged as an idea, in the later middle 20th century. Just at the exact moment the neoliberals, libertarians (whatever…/8 https://t.co/TPpgjokolk

…you want to call them, really just representatives of the feudal society massive government intervention interrupted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, following a plague and two great wars) decided to take back control from that hated new invention - the public. /9

Again, what are the odds? The coincidence! 🙄 Just at the moment they were wrestling control back from the plebs, suddenly an alternative to society appears, called ‘the economy’. A thing that replaces all historical fighting for power and position in society with a set of…/10

…magical supply and demand equilibrium equations, which (again, a miracle!) always defined the current status quo as the optimum or natural equilibrium state. Unless government intervention (that thing which invented ‘the public’) interferes, and pollutes the market. /11

I mean, how dumb are we? That we fell for this? At the same time, the old discipline of political economy magically transformed into ‘economics’, because while economics pre this miraculous turn always saw its work as political, that wouldn’t do when the intent was to hijack…/12

…society completely, and replace it with a biddable fantasy construct. Economics had to be made totally ‘objective’, those equilibrium equations are now how reality is, the ironclad law beyond any politics. It’s a total balls-out con, staggering in its gall and ambition. /13

Until we see this con for what it is, a Trojan Horse constructed by people whose view of the world hasn’t shifted in centuries, the feudal view, to hijack our democracies, we’ll make no progress on anything. Look at how Australia for example killed more than 20,000 people in…/14

…2022, with a pandemic virus, and did nothing. But inflation rising into the high single-digits, an economy thing, is the most solemn emergency. And how politicians talk about ‘balancing’ the economy against public health, I’m not making up this made-up separation. /15

They tell us every day this is what they’re doing. It’s not hidden. The economy is not part of society, society is what the economy can ‘afford’, when it’s done looking after the vested interests who set it up and run it. I’m not confident I’ll shift how people see this con,…/16

…but chipping away at it may make at least a handful of people raise an eyebrow every time this ridiculous trick is used to bypass basic democracy. The ongoing assault on ‘the public’, the 20th century’s greatest invention. /end