Economic Metaphors: Ideology, Rhetoric, and Theory

Conventional economics—after over a century of the Great Debate with Marxist socialism—has developed a number of bad habits of mythical and metaphorical thought, particularly when applied to the capitalist firm. Economic metaphor permeates political dialogue as well as economic commentary and thought. The political use of economic metaphors ranges from the obvious to the subtle and, often coincidentally, from ready, short-run political impact to long-run ideological influence. The political relevance of some nonanalytic metaphors may be debatable. Interpretations of the purpose and content of a given metaphor can change at widely varying rates and to widely varying degrees. The most widely used and generally recognized economic metaphors are generated in the rhetoric of politics. The central position of metaphor in economic science is reflected in Mirowski&s;s observation on "the almost neurotic concern of orthodox mathematical economics with the physical metaphor of equilibrium".