Philip Mirowski

Murketing, Values of the Self, and Everyday Neoliberalism

19 pages · 4.48 EUR
(June 2013)

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From the introduction:

The lowest common denominator of everyday Neoliberalism is the act of being sold on something. It is one index of the blatant irrelevance of neoclassical economic theory that, in general, no one in the model is portrayed as being "sold on something", because the consumer supposedly already knows what they desire, and anyway, they are presumed to be 'sovereign' in the marketplace. They just go out and buy what they always already want, presuming someone conveniently has it on offer. 'Taste changes', should they exist, sport the divine aspect of being uncaused first causes. Hence, the vast effort dedicated to everything from persuasion to advertizing to marketing to con artistry is left out of the account as irrelevant. The fact that appreciable sums of money are spent in the pursuit of these activities was left to the purview of the denizens of marketing departments in business schools, exiled beyond the realm of economics proper. Leaving neoclassical economics aside (because it could never condone pervasive massive disconnect between purchases and ends) it is of some interest to explore why the average person in pursuit of everyday ends could not be brought to entertain the idea that much of the economy was devoted to the manipulation of their beliefs and actions, in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence. The answer has something to do with another neoliberal technology, this one bound up with the innovation of 'murketing'.