Cynicism is closely related to the idea of the invisible hand, a metaphor for God, attributed to Adam Smith. This idea of capitalism stands for the self-realization of all people and is convinced that if people take care of their own business, then everything together will result in a harmonious order. Thus, no one needs to set just prices, as the church did for a long time. The less domination, the better everything will develop.
We extend the concept of the invisible hand to other areas of life. For example, because of the invisible hand, we do not consider tightly organized resistance against state biopolitics to be necessary. It is enough to tell and live one’s own truth.
Real capitalism, however, is determined more by the values of the Enlightenment than by cynicism: that is, a mightful anarchy. Real capitalism is a state capitalism, it doesn’t trust in the invisible hand at all.
The morality of the Enlightenment is the fixation on reason and on effectiveness. On numbers, on calculable things, on “reason”. The model of state capitalism was homo economicus; man becomes a screw. And soon he is to become it literally, a combination of flesh and machine..
Against this capitalism we again put our resistance, we do not let ourselves be trained to the screws.
Nietzsche, like us, has only contempt for this capitalism of the Enlightenment.
Fie! to have a price, for which one becomes no more person, but a screw! Are you the co-conspirators in the present folly of the nations, which above all want to produce as much as possible and to be as rich as possible? Fie! to believe that through higher payment the essence of their misery, I mean, their impersonal bondage, can be lifted.!
Nietzsche, Morgenröthe
Cynicism, more than any other school, is the philosophy of capitalism.
A cynic cannot be a state socialist, a democrat and certainly not a homo oeconomicus. We are the ambassadors of a free market economy, as it is still prevented so far by the fetters of the Enlightenment.
But when we talk about freedom, including the free market, it is important to know our concept of freedom: Freedom is belonging, not independence.