The Truth of the Market and the Rejection of Popular Claims

Public opinion surveys in developed economies consistently show that most people would prefer to live in more equal societies. People often remain, however, unconvinced as to whether their egalitarian desires are achievable. Focus Groups convened in New Zealand found that participants’ clear preference for a more equal distribution of earnings were easily relinquished in the face of claims that they were not possible given the “realities of the market”. Despite comprising a numerical minority within each group, this “market-as-truth” position was discursively dominant: market realities were accepted by other participants as rendering their stated egalitarian desires naïve and unrealistic. While post-truth politics is most often experienced as people discounting and ignoring claims that they do not wish to believe, here we see a construction of truth leading people to accept the inevitability of what they (say they) don’t want: the persistence of high levels of inequality. This paper, then, explores how “the market” was enacted as an ultimately determining truth able to withstand popular political claims. What is it about the trope of the market that allows people to accept it despite its (apparently) unacceptable outcomes? This basic question (how is it that people are complicit in their own domination?) is hardly new. Much has been written on the capacity of hegemonic discourses to lead people to willingly endorse – clearly interested - constructions of social reality that work against their own interests (see, for recent examples, Brown 2013, 2015; Dardot & Laval, 2014). This paper focuses on the psychological work performed by the elevation of the market to the status of an objective-scientific-natural law. What psychological drivers lead people to accept the market-as-truth, even when these people are explicitly critical of the market’s outcomes? To address these questions, the paper draws critically on system justification theory (SJT): the finding from social psychology that people are driven to believe in the fundamental justness of the existing social, economic and political order (Jost and Major, 2001). The paper contends that positioning the market as immutable truth can help people resolve the tension between their discomfort with market outcomes (income inequalities) and their acceptance of market processes (wage signals based on supply and demand in the labour market). As Stone (1989) notes, a difficult situation only becomes a problem when it is brought within the ambit of human agency. Until that time, it simply remains (within the realm of nature, accident, fate) as a difficult situation. Imagining the market as truth positions if outside the scope of human responsibility, relieving us of the moral imperative respond. It may be inherently depressing to accept that “the realities of the market” render us powerless to achieve the outcomes we desire (Fisher, 2009). But this ‘anticipatory surrender’ (Connolly, 1974) might yet be more comforting than the challenge of imagining an alternative vision. The paper suggests that SJT might rest not so much on an impulse to justify the system, as to elevate it to a status where it no longer stands in need of justification.