Economics bootstrapped itself into being by performing its own presuppositions

Evidence

From the start, “economy” was the object-cause of a bourgeois “science”, which hyperstitionally bootstrapped itself into existence, and then bent and melted the matter of this and every other world to fit its presuppositions — the greatest theocratic achievement in a history that was never human, an immense conjuring trick which works all the better because it came shrouded in that damp grey English and Scottish empiricism which claimed to have seen off all gods. When Thatcher said “there is no such thing as society”, she was only echoing the assumptions of Hume and Smith: “society” is an unsupportable abstraction, a spook that proper scientific thinking will exorcise soon enough… Only impressions are verifiable, everything else is superstitious junk to be jettisoned. Everything, that is, except capital… (Those bloody savages attribute power to their wooden gods, whereas we…) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1986

Categorization

• DEFINE: Fisher glosses ‘hyperstition’ here — the idea that a theory brings into being the reality its own presuppositions require.
• XREF: The involution of Hume/Smith into Thatcherism connects to Fisher’s ongoing argument that capitalist realism was pre-inscribed in empiricism’s founding gestures. — connects to: Economic theory embodied in devices performs and creates its own posited phenomena. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 1196; The market advocacy developed into a closed self-referential tradition in economics — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 154; Economics actively shapes the economy rather than merely describing it — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1987 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Economic theory embodied in devices performs and creates its own posited phenomena. #expands (0.85) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 1196
• Economics actively shapes the economy rather than merely describing it #expands (0.84) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1987
• Finance theory altered its own empirical object of study #exemplifies (0.83) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 388
• The market advocacy developed into a closed self-referential tradition in economics #expands (0.82) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 154