Economic ConsciousnessFour Historical Considerations

In this article, I propose four considerations that might frame a history of economic consciousness from the pre-modern oikonomia to the modern economy. (1) Before the economy dominated attention in the public sphere, economic consciousness was pre-discursive. Only once economic concerns were being dealt with, discursive practices were possible. Thus economic practices, for most parts of human history, have been considered a condition rather than a locus of culture. (2) As soon as economic affairs enter the discursive sphere, they cause problems of trust and nourish a culture of suspicion. This is manifest specifically in the pre-eminence of ad-hominem arguments. (3) Modern economic knowledge results from a set of strategies that avoid, rather than deal with, this mistrust. This is apparent from the tendency of economic knowledge to be formal. The notion of the economy as an anonymous social structure emerges from this intellectual avoidance. (4) The problem of the ideology of economic knowledge is less that of hidden interests but that economists cannot assume social responsibility without losing their face as scientists and indeed reinforce the culture of mistrust inherent in modern economic discourse.