Commerce Unbound: A Modern Promethean Story

Abstract

We experiment with integrating economics and ethics in a form that could be described as literary-critical economic nonfiction. After offering an interpretation of Percy Shelley's “Prometheus Unbound,” we map the modern world of commerce into our interpretation of the lyrical drama to revivify bourgeois life as Shelley revivifies the Promethean story with his own take on the myth. In doing so we make Shelley’s purpose our own, “to familiarize” our readers “with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence” in their everyday lives of commerce. Shelley’s point and ours is that any socio-economic revolution, whether from the left or the right, will ultimately fail if it is fomented by despair, anger, and hate.