In The Communist Postscript Borys Groys presents a provocative thesis. Derrida’s philosophy explains without knowing the phantasy of the free market economists.
The notions of subjective ignorance, autonomy of the market, i.e. its infinite play, and the non-existence of a transcendental instance are central to Hayek. For him the market constitutes the absolute instance, an anonymous space in which all social interactions take place without any command or subjective knowledge. The market is also understood as a formal system of information. Prices carry local information into the big field of the market. Now, prices are neither right nor wrong. They are signifiers determined by other prices. This constitutes an infinite play of offer and demand. The State is seen as an illusion, an institution that intervenes the market from the outside based on claims of knowledge. But neither the State nor individuals can know anything. Because this game is not biased and cannot be mastered, winners and losers are only temporary, accidents of the movement of the market. The market is “open” because peaks and valleys cancel each other. Wins and loses are always temporal.
Now, Derrida claims that the ultimate philosophical field is not subjective. It is “writing”, a system of signs that determine reciprocally. The phenomenological subject is actually tied to the game of signs. The term sign is retained as is points towards a system of differences, but it does not require a meaning or a meaning. There is nothing to know behind signs. We don’t play with them but are played by them. There is no transcendental signifier that can stop or control the play of signs from some outside. This movement can be called “différance”. In later texts Derrida claims that différance and play are other names for justice, because there are no subjective powers to control it, and what it gives will also be taken away. The play of signs produces and destroys meaning at the same time.