Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics

by Jens Beckert

In a capitalist system, consumers, investors, and corporations orient their activities toward a future that contains opportunities and risks. How actors assess uncertainty is a problem that economists have tried to solve through general equilibrium and rational expectations theory. Powerful as these analytical tools are, they underestimate the future’s unknowability by assuming that markets, in the aggregate, correctly forecast what is to come.Jens Beckert adds a new chapter to the theory of capitalism by demonstrating how fictional expectations drive modern economies—or throw them into crisis when the imagined futures fail to materialize. Collectively held images of how the future will unfold are critical because they free economic actors from paralyzing doubt, enabling them to commit resources and coordinate decisions even if those expectations prove inaccurate. Beckert distinguishes fictional expectations from performativity theory, which holds that predictions tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Economic forecasts are important not because they produce the futures they envision but because they create the expectations that generate economic activity in the first place. Actors pursue money, investments, innovations, and consumption only if they believe the objects obtained through market exchanges will retain value. We accept money because we believe in its future purchasing power. We accept the risk of capital investments and innovation because we expect profit. And we purchase consumer goods based on dreams of satisfaction.As Imagined Futures shows, those who ignore the role of real uncertainty and fictional expectations in market dynamics misunderstand the nature of capitalism.

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction, Sociology, Business

380 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 7, 2016

Reviews

[Nils · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beckert’s basic view is inarguably: a great deal of irrational market behavior is basically a result of people coming to believe fictitious stories about the future. Having worked in marketing for some time, I can tell you that it is an empirical fact that people try to make up compelling fictions about the future to get people to buy whatever it is they are selling, and that good sales people know how to spin a variety of fictions. And understanding why some people come to find certain stories compelling is undoubtedly a real problem worth spending time on.

All of this is true, but it’s also old hat. Dewey talked about beliefs, Weber about meaning, Marx about ideology, Castoriadis about imaginaries, Benjamin about fantasies, Berger and Luckmann about social construction, Foucault about discourse, and so on. The most important area that has affected modern economics is Vaihinger’s century old theory of “as if”. So, this is hardly uncharted territory, though alas Beckert doesnt spend much time discussing the merits of any of these earlier maps and instead rushes right onto suggest that we apply literary-critical tools to analyze these vision statements, to understand what the mechanics are for making effective marketing statements. I’m not convinced even that this is very original (Hayden White broke the ground here), but maybe there is some value there.

Alas, it’s not clear that these tools provide any help for answering the fundamentally important question, which is: how do we distinguish effectively between the fictions which are false — like, for example, “cutting taxes on the corporations will boost economic growth and pay for themselves!” — and ones that at least have a chance of becoming true. Pets.com painted a “fiction of the future” that was false, but Steve Jobs painted one that (at least in some cases) came true — but the crucial question is: how can we tell the difference in advance and not merely in retrospect? Do lit-crit tools help at all with this?

Clearly. If you can paint a compelling picture of the future, you can’t create that future. But painting such a picture is not enough — some fictions are more achievable than others, and this appears to be at least partly separable from believability. So what is the basis for the gap between believability (or suspension of disbelievability) and achievability? This is the space in which bubbles and other retrospectively obvious mass delusions unfold — but it doesn’t seem to me that Beckert with his literary critical tools provides any purchase on that.

[Helen Wu · Rating 4 out of 5]

an interesting amalgamation of many different schools of thought all repackaged into a single theoretical framework - IMAGINATION!

well, not in the "daydream" sense of the word (or maybe actually a little) but moreso, "imagination" that follows this quite simple line of thought:
the future is uncertain; we presuppose the future before it occurs; those presuppositions create reality; power structures have the ability to influence presuppositions; our modern capitalist system hinges upon a *specific* set of presuppositions

and the key takeaway, as Cher would say: "AS IF!"

we act "as if" our fictional expectations were true -- e.g., human rationality, economic growth, marginalism, reciprocity, etc.

the interesting thing this book did, i think, was create some cross-disciplinary bridges with english [literary techniques to "reimagine reality"], psychology, sociology, anthropology, and last but not least, economics. (my failed ambitions of being an english major were somewhat amused). that was pretty cool. i always like to see things superimposed onto a different context (like judith butler typa stuff being used for economics.)

so does this book reinvent the wheel? hell no.
what it does is take a photo of the wheel. frame that photo. look at that photo. say "this is not a wheel until we call it a wheel." and then sit back for applause.

and that's wheely cool!

like, maybe 7.5/10.

[Kit_Konig · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is written in such complex pretentious language that it sounds like a satire of itself. I had tears in my eyes after reading the 12th variation of the same sentence explaining to me how future organizational goals are the same as fictional literature. By the 25th I was positively homicidal. This could be personal preference but I prefer concepts, especially ones that are already pretty simple at their core, to be concise and explained in the simplest terms possible. The only use I'm getting out of this is using it as a template for my next crack fic.

[Juan · Rating 3 out of 5]

In short, reading this book was like reading a 300-page long literature review. It does contain some great ideas, but these are buried in pages and pages of dry and boring citations with a terrible narrative style. One may get most of the aforementioned ideas and spare many hours by just reading the conclusion of each chapter. Ironically, my expectations for this book were of a great book, but those resulted in being fictional.

[Ian Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cool points, but hard to see how this is very different from books like Narrative Economics by Shiller or even Financial Euphoria by Galbraith.

Could have been way shorter, too. Although I understand with this kind of book how much you need to back up every single point.

[Lucky · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book facilitated a great deal of philosophical/emotional (maybe even heuristic? i feel like i never use that word quite correctly) deprogramming