The following presentation was prepared for a talk delivered on 16 October 2026 at the invitation of Labris Platform. The presentation treats economics as part of life and places at its centre the social relations that shape it. Drawing on examples from philosophy, literature, music, painting, cartoons and cinema, it examines how the market order has shaped the conditions of life and the scope of democracy, from the Enlightenment and industrialisation to neoliberal globalisat

Never has economics possessed more powerful analytical tools. Yet it has rarely faced a world changing so rapidly. Artificial intelligence is reshaping technological competition while concentrating economic power in a handful of firms. Climate change has moved from an environmental concern to a defining economic constraint. Geopolitical rivalry increasingly shapes trade, investment, industrial policy, and technological development. Global supply chains, once celebrated as sym

Introduction Modern economics defined itself, particularly after the marginal revolution, as a value-neutral, positive science modeled on physics. Equilibrium, optimization, and productivity became its organizing principles. This methodological choice delivered analytical clarity and mathematical tractability, but it did so by abstracting from historical irreversibility, institutional change, and ecological limits. As a result, economics became increasingly incapable of addre

Beyond Capitalism’s Contradictions After interrogating the structural contradictions of capitalism, its entanglement with ecological...

“Economists should be like dentists,” John Maynard Keynes once said , technical, precise, and practical. Yet, for all their technical...

In prevailing economic discourse, capitalism is typically understood as a market system, a neutral mechanism through which supply meets...