"Harvey COX in a famous article published in 1999, demonstrated how Milton Friedman created a religious model on the Summae of Thomas Aquinas".
The former Harvard Theology professor had a feeling of "déjà vu" while leafing through the business newspaper. The themes of the financial pages are all modeled on the themes of the theological texts .They revolve around the meaning of human history, the “fall” and reconciliation. Let’s replace “God” with “market” and everything becomes clearer:
- The market is omnipotent. Cox defines the term as "the ability to define reality", "the power to make something out of nothing and nothing out of something" The reality created by themarket leaves no other space since everything can be reduced to figures and traded on the stock exchange, whether sacred lands, parts of the human body, food traditions, Tibetan prayers. Its omnipotence is such that proof to the contrary (i.e. monetary losses in billions of dollars) are interpreted as corrections and additional proof of its existence.
- The market is omniscient. Like God, he knows man and his most secret needs (the proof being the sale of a corresponding product or service). Only the market can estimate the value of goods and services based on the Dow Jones, Nikkei or Hang Seng. Financial experts have become the priests and prophets whose advice must be listened to under penalty of excommunication and damnation. Any political initiative must pass through their judgment.
- The market is omnipresence. The market has invaded everything, including private life which until now escaped calculation (family, couple relationships, friendships, etc.).
- Let's add one last point: The voices of the market are impenetrable. Mystery explains power, Umberto Eco has already told us, not without humor. And there is undoubtedly no power more mysterious than that of the new world of computing which, via a mathematical language, transforms all exchange operations into equations incomprehensible to ordinary mortals. The less he understands, the more he believes in the truth presented to him.
We must end with the element that gives spice to ideological cuisine: a good spoonful of magic. There is no religion or power without prayers and miracles for the use of the people. It is not only a matter of convincing him that he needs neither the State nor the social group to prosper, but of creating miracles that make him dream" (translated from Nicole Morgan: Haine Froide)