The market, as a social and economic institution, is fundamentally a process designed to facilitate human life by bringing consumers and producers together. It ensures economic activities serve the social purpose of satisfying the diverse needs of human beings. This relationship was not merely based on exchange relationships but also built on trust—trust in the product, the price, and the producer. Historically, market relationships were free from tyranny and grounded in the free choice of producers to sell and consumers to buy, guided by their necessities and abilities. In such a market, there was no invisible power dictating the terms and conditions of the relationship between producers and consumers. Instead, both producers and consumers depended on each other, creating a symbiotic and mutually beneficial bond. This organic and unbreakable relationship, however, was dismantled with the advent of the so-called “free market.”
The “free market” is neither free for producers nor for consumers. The notion of “free choice” has been reduced to the purchasing power of consumers—their ability to access goods and services provided by a market that is, in reality, free from the influence and control of both producers and consumers and their everyday needs. Today, those who control the market are often neither producers nor consumers of the majority of goods sold in the so-called supermarkets, which have replaced traditional markets. In traditional markets, a direct and meaningful relationship existed between producers and consumers—an essential connection that has now been lost.
The number-crunching pseudo-science of mainstream or neo-classical economics, propagated by its adherent priests known as the economists have constructed an asocial, amoral and ahistorical concept known as the “free market.” This so-called scientific model-driven construct undermines producers, distorts the conditions of production and pricing, and manipulates consumer needs through advertising, all while ignoring the social foundations and material realities of the market as both an institution and a process. The so-called free market is designed to maximise profit at the expense of both producers and consumers. It is a distorted system that subjugates people under the guise of offering “free choice.”
Consumers and producers are reduced to mere variables in the model sheets of neo-classical economists, who champion the free market under the guise of free choice and efficiency. The everyday conditions of their lives, their social necessities, and their material realities are disregarded, falling outside the scope of concern for these economists. Empirical evidence of the harms caused by the free market is routinely ignored, dismissed, or undermined as an ideologically driven critique that allegedly threatens the efficiency, choice, and freedom of consumers and producers. Such a dogma of neo-classical economists, steeped in near-religious fervour, deflects attention from the marginalisation of the material realities faced by consumers and producers, framing such issues as political failures unrelated to the workings of the “free market.”
The so-called free market perpetuates a deceptive culture devoid of morality, historical context, or genuine human concern. It fosters a culture of pathological lies and “snake oil” solutions, presenting these as the only viable alternatives to sustain the interests of a privileged few—at the expense of the basic needs of the vast majority. This callous system continues to dominate and shape the lives, labour, leisure, and pleasures of the working masses, entrenching exploitation under the guise of economic freedom under free market.
The so-called “free market” and its economic system neither create meaningful employment nor promote the prosperity of consumers and producers. In reality, the largest corporations generate only minimal jobs, prioritising efficiency and profit over widespread economic well-being. These corporations do not promote genuine human prosperity, as such prosperity would undermine the free market’s core function—an efficient system designed to exploit both consumers and producers. So, it subjugates individuals by promoting fictitious desires for commodities and services, presenting these as pathways to self-actualisation without genuine self-realisation. This emphasis on mere commodity consumption, detached from an understanding of the conditions of production, cultivates a mindset of “commodity consciousness.” It reduces all forms of relationships to commodities, where success is equated with the fleeting pleasure derived from consumption. This subtle yet profound transformation of society and culture, centered on commodity-driven pleasure, has eroded the solidarity that once existed between producers and consumers.
The religion of the free market seeks salvation through the relentless consumption of living labour, stifling its creativity while funnelling a significant share of meagre wages into its profit-driven empire. Small savings are siphoned into various market products, such as mortgages, insurance schemes and other everyday living, further entrenching individuals in the system. Working for mere wages diminishes labour’s rightful share in the value it creates, while consumers bear an exorbitant cost simply to survive. This repetitive cycle of work-wage-based survival reduces human life to a purely economic existence, focused solely on the struggle for daily subsistence.
The unequal transactional relationship between work and workers in a free-market economy not only undermines labour but also promotes working conditions that erode the very foundations of efficiency and productivity it professes to enhance. Consumer preference overrides worker and working conditions in such a system. There is no evidence that free market works but reactionary media celebrate this contradictory system as the only viable option, perpetuating the narrative that seeking alternative models is futile. This is not an accidental oversight but a deliberate strategy to position the “free market” as the superior economic system, asserting that no viable alternatives exist.
In this way, contradictions, debauchery, double standards, and the inherent failures of the free market come to define its economic system called capitalism. Mere market reforms can never bring peace or prosperity to the working masses. The state, government, other institutions and culture of capitalism forces people to accept free market. In the name of rationalisation, free market disciplines people and their everyday habits that are concomitant with the requirements of capitalism as a dominant system . It is time for a moral, social, economic and historical scrutiny of the free-market economy and its advocates. Market-based freedom is no freedom at all—it is a form of tyranny that permeates every aspect of social, political, economic, and cultural life, sustaining a dominant economic system that thrives on the exploitation of human life, labour, and natural resources.
Freedom from the so-called free market of capitalism is the only way to ensure true freedom for consumers and producers, enabling the establishment of a genuinely free market. Such a market would be based on the transparent flow of information about producers, conditions of production, prices, and free consumer choices. Only through collective action and collective consciousness, people can overcome the so-called free market, which is controlled by a select few. It is time to establish a free market that works for the welfare of the masses as producers and consumers.
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Bhabani Shankar Nayak is a political commentator.
