Unlearning Market Idolatry
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Democracy at Work
4.8 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff explores the last 150 years of largely uncritical celebrations of "the market" as if it were a perfect institution that must be protected from the intrusion of other institutions such as the government, labor unions, and popular organizations. We compare a historical example and the present to criticize today's peculiar mix of market idolatry and its rejection in the U.S.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome, friends to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the |
| 0:25.9 | economic dimensions of our lives and those of our children. |
| 0:30.3 | I'm your host, Richard Wolfe. |
| 0:33.8 | Again as usual, remember Charlie Fabian is available to take your ideas, suggestions, |
| 0:39.7 | and criticisms. |
| 0:41.3 | You can reach them at Charlie.info438 at gmail.com. |
| 0:48.3 | And likewise, our book, Understanding Capitalism, that I wrote over the last two or three years precisely to be |
| 0:57.1 | a kind of companion to this program, to develop the ideas here in greater length and detail |
| 1:05.6 | and to explain many of the concepts that we use so that you can get even more out of these programs than |
| 1:13.1 | you otherwise might, and you can find out more about it at our website, Democracy |
| 1:18.6 | at Work.info slash books. |
| 1:22.6 | Today I'm going to talk about a single topic, one that comes up from time to time. |
| 1:30.2 | I've spoken about it before. |
| 1:32.9 | I want to entitle the show, Unlearning Market Idolatry. |
| 1:39.6 | By idolatry, I mean what that word means in religion when you are quote unquote praying to false |
| 1:47.7 | gods. The uncritical, strange celebration of the market as if it were some spectacular institution beyond all others, the ultimate fruit of American |
| 2:07.1 | or global or human ingenuity, depending on how narrow or broad your vision is. |
| 2:15.3 | This really is a problem. It is getting in the way of a rational discussion |
| 2:22.1 | and a debate about how we face the real problems we have and come up with solutions |
| 2:29.8 | worth trying to solve these problems rather than excuse them away. |
| 2:37.0 | I want to make the case that celebrating the market is a terrible mistake and it's costly. |
| 2:47.0 | Here we go. For most of the last 150 years, orthodoxy in economic systems, in economic thinking about |
... |
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