"focusing on simple things" is precisely what consumerism manages to lead us to; it invites immediate and effortless understanding, which is in accordance with its interests. A perfect illustration of this is the "selection of the reader's digest", a pre-chewed and harmless digest, which should suffice to satisfy (and therefore limit) the curiosity of the general public.
Lilian07, your reading grid is the exact opposite of mine!
The prevailing economism easily explains that the economy can appear to be a basic historical datum *; that the theoretical "beauty" of the system can be altered by the moral weakness of men: is it not the soup that the most critical fraction of those who speak willingly in the name of all (like the "appalled economists" serve us) ,
Mélanchon and many others)?
A closer study of realities that are difficult to grasp in their subtle complexities (things do not appear as they are) shows that the name "economy" covers very different and above all, historically anachronistic facts; the error lies in our propensity to project into the past mechanisms which are only recently at work with regard to history, but which seem to us to have existed from all eternity if we relate it to our personal experience, necessarily limited. This rather natural tendency is encouraged by the media, since it reinforces the validity of the system by naturalizing it: how could we rebel against what would be part of our essence?
In reality, this is a fable and the economy becomes what it is from the moment when it no longer serves only indirectly the needs of men, but the achievement of an absurd purpose which is the infinite increase of the accumulation of abstract value. From this simple point flows everything else and the so-called immorality of men is completely useless to explain the tragic consequences which follow from it (
Adam Smith ** was very clear on this last point (I quote from memory and on the substance): "the prosperity of men does not depend on individual virtue, but on the contrary on the selfishness of each one, who by pursuing his personal interest contributes to satisfy common needs at best "). Naturally, this fine optimism was invalidated in the course of events ...
Of course it is the men who are
ultimately responsible, but everything passes as if the "system" had an independent existence, in the sense that it presents itself as a fetish, as stated
Marxthe reason is that individually it is impossible to abstain from it, only the option remains to conform to it, thus each one is an agent of the system and not an actor; it is in this sense that we can speak of determinism.
The difference of point of view (and not opinion!) Between
Sen-no-sen and myself, is that it takes place within the framework of a more general global determinism and that I prefer to restrict my field of investigation to the capitalist period, which is only a particular phase of application and functioning of these determinisms.
* As in earlier times theological considerations were evidently imposed ...
** Moralist and pioneer economist of the free market ...