"Whoever claims that economic competition represents 'survival of the fittest' in the sense of the law of the jungle, provides the clearest possible evidence of his lack of knowledge of economics"
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Reisman isn’t just correcting a sloppy metaphor; he’s trying to strip a whole political worldview of its scientific costume. The phrase “survival of the fittest” has long been recruited to make capitalism sound like biology: inevitable, ruthless, and therefore morally unassailable. Reisman’s jab flips that move. If you describe markets as “the law of the jungle,” he suggests, you’re not revealing hard-headed realism - you’re advertising that you don’t understand what economics is actually modeling.
The intent is disciplinary and strategic. Disciplinary, because Reisman draws a boundary around the field: serious economics is about voluntary exchange, prices, incentives, coordination, and capital formation - not a cartoon of predators tearing into prey. Strategic, because the jungle metaphor is often deployed by critics to smuggle in a moral indictment (“capitalism is cruel by nature”) or by defenders to smuggle in a moral absolution (“cruelty is natural”). Reisman refuses both. He implies that competitive markets are not a melee but a system where “fitness” is measured by serving consumers better, lowering costs, innovating, and cooperating through contract. Competition, in that frame, is less tooth-and-claw than feedback-and-adaptation.
Subtext: he’s policing language because language polices conclusions. Call it a jungle and you’ve already decided the ending. Call it an economic order and you have to reckon with institutions, rights, entrepreneurship, and the nonzero-sum reality of trade. The line reads like a rebuke to Social Darwinist rhetoric and to anti-capitalist caricature alike: if you need animals to explain markets, you’re doing politics, not economics.
The intent is disciplinary and strategic. Disciplinary, because Reisman draws a boundary around the field: serious economics is about voluntary exchange, prices, incentives, coordination, and capital formation - not a cartoon of predators tearing into prey. Strategic, because the jungle metaphor is often deployed by critics to smuggle in a moral indictment (“capitalism is cruel by nature”) or by defenders to smuggle in a moral absolution (“cruelty is natural”). Reisman refuses both. He implies that competitive markets are not a melee but a system where “fitness” is measured by serving consumers better, lowering costs, innovating, and cooperating through contract. Competition, in that frame, is less tooth-and-claw than feedback-and-adaptation.
Subtext: he’s policing language because language polices conclusions. Call it a jungle and you’ve already decided the ending. Call it an economic order and you have to reckon with institutions, rights, entrepreneurship, and the nonzero-sum reality of trade. The line reads like a rebuke to Social Darwinist rhetoric and to anti-capitalist caricature alike: if you need animals to explain markets, you’re doing politics, not economics.
Quote Details
| Topic | Business |
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