Overview
- Argues that market freedom holds back the potential for the achievement of radical existential freedom
- Reveals the continued philosophical relevance of existentialism for analyzing and concretely challenging the current neoliberal status quo as well as capitalism generally
- Constructs a new critical 'method' for creating the structural, cultural and psychological conditions of possibility for realizing this radical existential freedom
- Innovatively draws upon the traditions of existentialism, Marxism, post-structuralism and psychoanalysis by, respectively, combining the insights of Sartre, Marx, Foucault and Lacan
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
Keywords
- Free Market Economy
- Foucault
- Marxism
- Sartre
- Lacan
- Post-structuralism
- Economic liberalism
- Psychoanalysis
- Radical existential freedom
- Neoliberal economics
- Mainstream economics
- Heterodox economics
- scientific Marxism
- Capitalism
- Economic philosophy
- Capitalist philosophy
- History of capitalism
- History of economic thought
- Being and Nothingness
About this book
Innovatively combining existentialist philosophy with cutting edge post-structuralist and psychoanalytic perspectives, this book boldly reconsiders market freedom. Bloom argues that present day capitalism has robbed us of our individual and collective ability to imagine and implement alternative and more progressive economic and social systems; it has deprived us of our radical freedom to choose how we live and what we can become.
Since the Great Recession, capitalism has been increasingly blamed for rising inequality and feelings of mass social and political alienation. In place of a deeper liberty, the free market offers subjects the opportunity to continually reinvest their personal and shared hopes within its dogmatic ideology and policies. This embrace helps to temporarily alleviate growing feelings of anxiety and insecurity at the expense of our fundamental human agency. What has become abundantly clear is that the free market is anything but free.
Here, Bloom exposes our present day bad faith in the free market and how we can break free from it.Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Peter Bloom is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of People and Organisations at the Open University, UK. His primary research interests include ideology, subjectivity and power, specifically as they relate to broader discourses and everyday practices of capitalism and democracy.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Bad Faith in the Free Market
Book Subtitle: The Radical Promise of Existential Freedom
Authors: Peter Bloom
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76502-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Economics and Finance, Economics and Finance (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-76501-3Published: 19 April 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-09505-5Published: 12 January 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-76502-0Published: 10 April 2018
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 191
Topics: Heterodox Economics, Philosophy of Science, History of Economic Thought/Methodology, Macroeconomics/Monetary Economics//Financial Economics