That model rests on two postulates (which their advocates regard as proven propositions): the economy is a separate domain governed by natural and universal laws with which governments must not interfere by inappropriate intervention the market is the optimum means for organizing production and trade efficiently and equitably in democratic societies. It is from this particular economy that neoclassical economic theory borrows its fundamental assumptions, which it formalizes and rationalizes, thereby establishing them as the foundations of a universal model.

“Neoliberal economics, the logic of which is tending today to win out throughout the world thanks to international bodies like the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund and the governments to whom they, directly or indirectly, dictate their principles of ‘governance’,10 owes a certain number of its allegedly universal characteristics to the fact that it is immersed or embedded in a particular society, that is to say, rooted in a system of beliefs and values, an ethos and a moral view of the world, in short, an economic common sense, linked, as such, to the social and cognitive structures of a particular social order. having said that, in the words of karl kraus, 'between two evils, I refuse to choose the lesser.' whole I have little indulgence for 'irresponsible' intellectuals, I have even less respect for the 'intellectuals' of the political-administrative establishment, polymorphous polygraphs who polish their annual essays between two meetings of boards of directors, three publishers' parties and miscellaneous television appearances.”Īcts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market Of course I would prefer it if intellectuals had all, and always, lived up to the immense historical responsibility they bear and if they had always invested in their actions not only their moral authority but also their intellectual competence- like, to cite just one example, pierre vidal-naquet, who has engaged all his mastery of historical method in a critique of the abuses of history. that is why I think that the work of demolishing the critical intellectual, living or dead - marx, nietzsche, sartre, foucault, and some others who are grouped together under the label pansee 68- is as dangerous as the demolition of the public interest and that it is part of the same process of restoration. the intellectual is one of those, of the first magnitude.

there is no genuine democracy without genuine opposing critical powers. “what I defend above all is the possibility and the necessity of the critical intellectual, who is firstly critical of the intellectual doxa secreted by the doxosophers.

Pierre bourdieu 1979