Market Exchange and Alienation

Abstract

Efficient markets are alienating if they inhibit us from caring about one another inour productive activities. I argue that efficient market behaviour is bothexclusionary and fetishistic. As exclusionary, the efficient marketeer cannotmanifest care alongside their market behaviour. As fetishistic, the efficientmarketeer cannot manifest care in their market behaviour. The conjunction entailsthat efficient market behavior inhibits care. It doesn’t follow that efficient marketbehavior is vicious: individuals might justifiably commit to efficiency becausedoing so serves the common good. But efficient market systems nevertheless havesignificant opportunity costs. This serves as a corrective to the prevailingassumption amongst welfare state capitalists, liberal egalitarians and marketsocialists that resolving distributive objections to markets will resolve thisrelational objection.