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Jose Luis Coraggio: Another Economy is Happening |
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Page 7 of 27
The construction of the building around steel girders is also a pretty good image for another motive that leads people to speak of structures: holism. All of the parts of the building hold together. There cannot be a window without a wall. There cannot be a third story without a second story. The structure is sometimes said to be the relationship of the parts to the whole, and it is emphasized not just that there cannot be a whole without parts, but also that there cannot be parts without wholes. It is not too great a stretch to say that in the constructed social reality that is a market economy there are no parts without wholes in a somewhat similar way. A price exists only in a market. The price at which something is sold is what a buyer will pay and a seller will take, both of which usually depend on what other offers buyer or seller could get elsewhere. A sale price reflects a set of comparable sales that influenced the sale price, and it also reflects hypothetical sales that did not even happen, but whose possibility has influenced choices. If the neoliberal theoreticians have their way, the market structure that will determine sale prices will be huge, because all of humanity will be locked into a single global market (without what they call “trade distortions”) where the price of any given item is a world market price. If Coraggio has his way, markets will be segmented, local, and regulated (“distorted” according to the neoliberals), so that the social whole that a given price reflects will be considerably smaller. Talking about buildings, or about prices in markets, or talking about anything where parts do not make sense without wholes, is likely to lead to talking about structures. (19)
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