Market Agonism. Part one.

2025-12-17 8099 words 39 minutes

Contents

Market Agonism: An Economic Thesis of Perpetual Contest. The Beginnings and Part One. Uncorrected version

By Brîndușă Ștefan Cristian

I. Introduction

I present this demo thesis as a new economic theory: Market Agonism. I assert that in Market Agonism the purpose of economic life is competition itself, in contrast to systems oriented toward profit maximization or capital redistribution. It is a system in which competition is not a means to an end, but the end in itself.

Drawing from agonistic philosophy, game theory, and institutional design, Market Agonism is structured to maximize contestation, dismantle stability of stagnation, and prevent the consolidation of structurally dominant positions. I have derived this theory of economic agonism from authors like post‑modernist thinkers Chantal Mouffe and William E. Connolly, and from traditions of conflict‑based exchange. This theory holds that economic health depends on the unending disruption of entrenched advantage, the enforced impermanence of systemic dominance, and the sacralization of contest.¹

I.I. Term and Definitions

No position in the agon (“ἀγών”) may ever become a condition of another’s survival.

The term “agon” (ἀγών) originates from ancient Greek, denoting both contest and assembly the public space where rivals meet under shared rules to test their capabilities. In classical usage, agon referred to structured, rule-bound competition: athletic games, dramatic festivals, rhetorical debates, and political assemblies. The agon was where excellence became visible through direct confrontation, where claims were tested against resistance, and where participants earned recognition through demonstrated merits. It was fundamentally a public institution that transformed private ambition into collective spectacle, making skill legible and achievement contestable.²

In Market Agonism, I appropriate this concept to describe the fundamental structure of economic life. The economic agon is the arena of perpetual competitive confrontation where firms, individuals, cooperatives, and organizations continuously test their claims to value, efficiency, and capability. Unlike the Greek agon, which was episodic and ceremonial, the economic agon operates continuously across all economic sectors. Yet it retains the essential characteristics: contestation occurs under transparent rules, victory is temporary, dominant position must be repeatedly earned. The agon, in this framework, is economic reality. Competition is not what happens in markets, competition is what markets are all about.

II. Foundational Metaphors and Philosophy

And so, Market Agonism begins from the premise that competition is the very purpose of the market. Competition being previously defined as a simple market operation, I challenge this assumption by defining that rivalry between actors, whether firms, individuals, or cooperatives, or even community-controlled firms, is the most authentic expression of economic agency. The market should be reconceived as an open battlefield of will and perpetual, endless contest. In this context, no market position should ever be insulated from challenge. All economic advantage is understood to be temporary and contingent, and the system must be built to ensure that every economic dominant position is subject to contest. Competition, in this frame, is a continuous condition that defines and sustains the economy itself as a purpose, in defiance to the classical economic theory of profit and hoarding maximization or redistribution.

Profit, within this schema, ends up reconstructing the contest itself as a contingent byproduct of the endless struggle; and by the same token neither efficiency nor equality is elevated to the status of a governing moral value; what matters is that economic actors remain in perpetual economic motion, that no arrangement is allowed to stabilize (or stagnate) into permanence, and that every position, and relation can be recalled into play and reconfigured through renewed endless struggle. Stagnation is treated as a systemic disease; accordingly, Market Agonism calls for designs of economic renewal that preempt consolidation and institutional (systemic) rot, they’re commonly or preferably unanimously consented rules, community or private reviews, reentries, and ritualized resets that restart the field and treat long-term stagnation as a warning that the contest has stalled.

I consider that Market Agonism treats contest as a basic feature of reality, and it’s not in any way necessarily an accidental property of markets. Echoing the ancient intuition that conflict discloses being, rivalry reveals agents as they are: situated and limited, yet capable of self-reflection and evolution. The agon (from the ancient Greek agōn, meaning “contest” or “assembly”) is the crucible in which intentions develop into actions and claims meet perpetual resistance. Without resistance there is no agency. Without resistence, there’s only endless drift. Thus, the agonistic market proposes creation of the arena to perpetual contest.³

Freedom, as we say economic freedom from the point of view of contestability, here is the right (and burden) to expose one’s projects to contest. We can thus, agree that to be free is to be always perpetually challengeable. Protection that “sterilizes” the field may feel humane in some views but, by insulating positions, it decays freedom into dependence - practically, rules that or policies that remove or dull the competition to keep the economic field “safe” usually shield current holders (through privileges for example) from being challenged. Economical actors stop relying on their own actual performance and start relying on the “protective shield”, implicitly possibilities of entry into the market shrink to whateveer the protector allows.⁴

Put simply, market agonists prefer to turn the lights on and keep the doors open: rules that make the game legible to everyone (clear criteria and transparent scoring, also open interfaces) and keep any lead challengeable (portability and interoperability for easy switching, time‑limited privileges, periodic re‑tendering, so forth), against those “protective” arrangements that claim safety by locking today’s winners in place forever - such as how the market was designed (or controlled) up until 19th century Europe. In Market Agonism, equality is reconceived as universal equality of entry, not equality of outcomes. Equipotentiality means that any agent from any provenance, may enter the arena and meaningfully affect its order without any restriction of any kind. The system cares not that results distribute unevenly. It cares if the “ladder” is climbable, if the floor is not sticky. Therefore, barriers that turn temporary wins into permanent walls are not accepted due to their tendency to create a “protected” class of winners. Economic justice in an agonistic frame is a pattern of perpetual rematch, so rules make institutional advantages fade, privileges end; and incumbents must regularly re-earn their place, the system stays fair by making the powerful face new challengers in open competition. Let us understand that re-earning does not equate depossession. Henceforth, we are defining it as system of informed fairness over facing competitors head on.

We learn what’s real in markets the way engineers test bridges, meaning by putting weight on claims and seeing what holds. Proposals about value or fitness, or merit win because they survive organized pushback. Getting things wrong is just a natural part of the effort; the only true failure is the arrogance of being so sure you are right that you never even bother to step into the arena to find out. The aim is to maintain the mechanism that keeps all contests alive. To provide this aim, we read the health of the whole market by how dense and how good the live contests are across the field, how strong are economical conflicts.

The virtues of Market Agonism are courage, clarity, and generosity in endless rivalry. Courage is the steady will to stand in the open, to put your name and your place on the line for everyone to see, and to keep going even when the rules shift and your old skills are no longer enough to save you. Clarity is speaking plainly: stating clearly what you offer, accepting the risks and the fair laws, accepting that the score will be kept for all to see, and letting your work be judged even if you fail; this rejects the smoke and mirrors that powerful players use to hide from a fair fight. Generosity is the deep understanding that your rivals, big or small, are the ones who give real weight to your struggle; it is the practice of raising the standard of the contest even if it helps your opponent, because being the best means nothing if you have no one worthy to test yourself against. By contrast, the real vices here are not losing or being wrong - which are normal and often useful. The real vice is hiding from the test: hoarding old advantages, adding frictions that keep others out, and using opacity to avoid being judged. In this regard, cowardice is choosing procedure over performance. And arrogance is getting drunk on wins no one has reviewed. Cynicism is hoping the game ends before the rematch. In Market Agonism, dignity isn’t about the win. It’s about how you show up, how you fight, how you lose, how you come back and how your conduct makes more room for others to do the same. And even if failures is well assured, there’s always honor in the struggle, in the fight, in the rivalry itself. The virtue of never ending contest.

Community is what makes conflict fair. In economic life, community levels the playing field and restores the players. When contestants fail, burn out, or are pushed off the field, the community’s task is to reopen the gate and sponsor a clean restart on honest terms. That means shared and legible rules, open platforms and common and coordinated infrastructure, repair and retraining, and time‑boxed resets that clear stale advantages while preserving earned skill. The aim to enhance rivalry, and to make it renewable and civil. A worthy opponent is both a public and a private good, and communities cultivate them breathlessly.

Agonistic Sovereignty is the authority to constitute and re‑constitute the arena so rivalry stays open, fair and renewable. It sets the cadence of play (sunsets, re‑tenders, promotion and relegation), designs categories and weight classes to keep scale from hardening into dominance, and mandates open interfaces, portability, and transparent scoring so every lead remains challengeable. It adjudicates disputes quickly, penalizes opacity and friction‑making, and can call time‑boxed resets that clear stale advantage while preserving hard‑won skill. In short, constitutional design becomes tournament design. Agonistic Sovereignty is custodial; and rather procedural, it does not do outcome‑picking so implicitly it does not hold a managerial position. It is bound by public rulebooks, reasons, rotation, and audit at players coordination. Its dominant offices and established privileges decay and must be re-earned in direct confrontation with competitors (not to be understood as depossesion), and its mandates are themselves contestable. Rotation and requalification should not be understood or designed as punitive displacement in this case. They should, instead, be structured opportunities to demonstrate continued merit; they distinguish between actors who maintain position through ongoing performance and those who hold it through structural insulation from challenge. It is not and should not act as a central planner choosing winners, and of course not an owner of assets. The directive is to make the league of perpetual checks in order to sponsor conflict safely. This does not require a permanent authority; a consented referee may exist only when needed and remains contestable. Games and contests can arise naturally, even without a referee; yet when one player takes the field alone, the arena must reopen a path for a new contender. If dominance stands unopposed, Agonistic Sovereignty triggers a fair restart, and rearms the contesters.

Struggle has form. Style, elegance, and audacity become part of value, because they shape how contests invite imitation and provoke reply. A culture that celebrates beautiful competition teaches entrants to elevate the game, enrich it. Spectacle is basically a sort of pedagogy - showing what skill looks like at the absurd limit.

Pluralism is the structural condition that allows agonism to endure. In economic terms, pluralism means the preservation of multiple competing approaches, strategies, ideologies, and organizational forms within the same market space. No single method, no unified doctrine, no dominant paradigm should be allowed to monopolize the field. Pluralism becomes strategic necessity. When monocultures of thought or practice take hold, the agon weakens, because similarity reduces the intensity and range of challenge. A healthy agonistic market requires ecological variety: heterodox entrants, minority plays, divergent logics, and rival schools of practice. These alternatives reserve capacity of the system. When established economic actors fail or stagnate, it is the pluralistic reserve that steps forward to renew competition. Pluralism, therefore, is both the condition and the consequence of perpetual contest: it sustains the agon, and the agon, in turn, defends pluralism from consolidation.

The multiplicity of fields is essential to agonistic vitality. There is not one single, uniform field of economic rivalry, surely we would see this. It is an endless distinct arenas of contestation, each with its own rules, scales, rhythms, and forms of excellence. Agricultural production operates under different competitive logics than software development; local craft markets differ structurally from global financial exchanges; consumer services face different pressures than industrial manufacturing. These fields are fundamentally distinct domains of struggle, each requiring its own forms of skill, capital, organization, labour and judgement.

The agon thrives precisely because of this heterogeneity, both sectoral and geographic. When fields remain differentiated across industries and borders, failure in one arena does not preclude success in another; actors who cannot prevail in large-scale platform competition may excel in specialized niches, regional markets, or alternative jurisdictions. The existence of multiple fields prevents the concentration of competitive advantage into a single universal metric or capability. Dominance in one field does not automatically translate into dominance in others. This structural separation ensures that the total system remains contestable even when individual fields experience temporary consolidation.

Crucially, the preservation of field multiplicity requires active resistance to mechanisms that collapse distinct arenas into uniform competition. Cross-field conglomeration, vertical integration that extends market power across domains, and the imposition of standardized metrics that erase local particularities all threaten the agonistic condition by reducing the number of genuinely independent competitive spaces. The system must therefore protect the boundaries between fields while keeping each field internally open to challenge. Fields must remain distinct yet accessible different enough to sustain pluralism, open enough to permit cross-field entry by those who would contest established positions.

Finally, I consider that diversity of strategies is inherently a systemic good. Monocultures of method and model, or ideology lower the number of live contests and render the system fragile - if everyone uses the same approach, competition becomes weak. By preserving niches for heterodox approaches and minority plays, the market sustains a plethora of alternatives ready to flourish when established actors fail. Competition, yet again to be enduring, must be ecologically plural and diverse.

III. Institutional Principles

In systems shaped by traditional economic thought, particularly those modeled after neoclassical assumptions of equilibrium, institutions tend to solidify around the belief that predictability, permanence, and accumulation are marks of economic maturity. In some liberal trajectories often associated with thinkers such as Hayek or Friedman, institutions emphasize the protection of property, the enforcement of contracts, and the reduction of uncertainty in the marketplace. Over time, such features can generate a complementary phenomenon: the insulation of incumbents, who, once successful, gain structural immunity from challenge. And as these positions consolidate, the original dynamics of creative competition that may have produced them give way to administrative stasis and risk aversion. That which once thrived on tension now settles into protection.⁵

In contrast, the institutional imagination of Market Agonism follows a very different logic. Here, institutions are animated to ensure that disruption itself remains a living possibility in all corners of the economy. Structures are built to prevent permanent dominance. Every institutional design element begins from the assumption that unless a field is kept open to new entrants and to new claims, it will gradually decay into a closed system whose internal logic is no longer animated by struggle, by contest.

Within this framework, institutions are understood as theoretical and practical balance-maintainers of the agon, which may exist with or without a formal state: they can take the shape of state bodies, non-state authorities, decentralized arrangements, or minimal coordinating frameworks that keep contest open and legible. Where such institutions are absent, weak, or no longer consented to, the responsibility to preserve competition and perpetual contestability falls directly on market competitors themselves; through their decisions to keep the field open and to organise recurring re-entry, they can gradually construct new, explicitly consent-based institutions whose sole mandate is to sustain the system of competition and perpetual contest.

The role of capital also bends under this principle. Capital once settled into long-term investments that prioritized security and scale, yet in Market Agonism it is expected to wander, to seek out edge cases, to fund disruption and contest in contrast with protection of the status quo. The investor becomes less a banker, it becomes more of a “bard” of conflict. Investor, henceforth, releasing resources where the possibility of challenge appears most vital, where the stakes are highest, or where an economic void has been left that needs to be filled. For instance, where established firms have withdrawn from a sector or region, leaving a gap in service or production that invites new competitors. Over time, capital becomes the bloodstream of agonism, flowing toward vitality of contest, and away from economic entropy.

Employment in Market Agonism grants the worker the ultimate freedom, far surpassing the constraints found elsewhere, by turning every job into an open platform for personal growth and expression. Rather than being trapped in a repetitive role, the individual is free to constantly test their abilities in an arena that rewards adaptation and skill over mere obedience. This approach provides a superior path to dignity, where the cycle of challenge and response ensures that work remains a meaningful pursuit. In this system, security comes from the empowering liberty to continuously reinvent oneself, thrive and become part of the ongoing perpetual economical contest.

Pricing becomes the ultimate expression of freedom. Because any form of coercive control or state intervention is fundamentally invalid and incompatible with the spirit of agonism, prices must remain absolutely free to reflect the true heat of the contest. High prices signal areas where the contest has not yet fully ignited, revealing opportunities where competition is scarce and challengers are needed. Conversely, low prices demonstrate the intensity of a fierce struggle, where rivals are actively clashing and driving value through their conflict. In this open arena, prices are alive, shaped only by human ambition (including possibly greed) and the reality of the struggle, from the contest.

In all these examples, the system instead builds the solid ground where the contest takes place, up to the top. It sets the stage, it manages the time, it ensures the match is fair, and it makes sure the rules are clear to all. Evidently, it does not try to stop anyone from losing and does not hide the difficulty of the fight. Instead, it gives a real purpose to the struggle, ensuring the economy stays a place for new growth and constant contest, or struggle.

There is no perfect economical balance here only continual correction driven by the pulse of contest. The worth of a system is found in the fresh struggles it makes possible, in the quality of the rivals it calls forth, and in the quiet way it leaves the stage when its work is finished. When this truth becomes both written rule and shared conviction, what we build transcends mere survival and achieves genuine vitality.

IV. Mechanisms of Function

If we begin to imagine the agonistic economy as a wheel, a rotating and living form that only stays balanced in motion, then we must understand the core elements that hold the structure in place and generate its force. At the center is competition, the continuous flow that moves the wheel, as the motion itself. And as every wheel must have parts to hold and transmit that movement, we begin to see the three structural arms of the system: ownership, labour, and access. Each carries a different type of tension, a different way of touching the flow of contest.

Ownership, as it appears in this configuration, is the right to possess something or to extract benefit from it. It is the act of holding a space of responsibility and control within the system, a seat at the table of production. It sometimes is subject to hierarchy, sometimes order that may become subject to rotation when it hardens into dominance. In the logic of conventional systems, especially those modeled after 19th-century industrial capitalism, ownership was layered with permanence and increasingly abstracted into legal established and dominant actors. It became, over time, less about use and more about distancing from risk and from competitor claim. In the agonistic market vision, dominant ownership begins instead with exposure. To own something is to hold it under light, to use it visibly, and to be prepared to yield it when that ownership slides into monopolistic or system‑shaping power, or when others arrive with clearly stronger intent, better ideas, or more refined skill. Ordinary, non‑dominant ownership is not required to be cyclic or automatically replaceable; the obligation to rotate or yield appears only when a position becomes structurally protected from contest. If ownership is too strong, labour and access degrade; if it’s too weak and permanently unstable, then labour and access become too strong, the wheel will not turn, and competition dies.

Labour, meanwhile, appears as the capacity to enter into contest with economic power. In traditional formulations, labour was defined as a factor of production, measured by time or output, and disciplined by routine. As observed in the writings of post-industrial theorists, labour was considered both the exploited mass and the creative source of surplus. Yet in a market that frames competition as an ongoing field of appearance and return, labour is the body of the agonist, providing the value of the endless well of the agon - yet again the state of perpetual contest - which in turn returns to the labour as the stronger the agon it is. Labour engages in defining what work means under changing conditions while producing units of value. Labour in the field of agonist market represents and embodies the totality of protection for the muscles of the endless wheel of competition. In such representation, we would imagine collaborative and community consented protection or welfare, of new, current and old generations of players (labour) in the wheel, with the purpose of maintaining the endless contest to maintain the agon. We, henceforth, consider protection as fundamental in the wheel of agonistic market.⁶

And access, the third supporting part of the three, binds the system together by determining who may enter the field and how. It should not be considered simply charity, as this is a function which relies entirely on the consent of the competitors. But, its structural theoretical foundation is openness and opportunity. The infrastructural and symbolic provision that ensures new challengers can appear without waiting for permission or translation. In many legacy economies, access becomes selectively controlled, gated by institutional filters, credentialing mechanisms (like licensing, degree inflation or guild membership in order to practice a trade). Access must not become inheritance in disguise, so the institutional mechanism of access must be designed to maintain the wheel, the opportunity and the leveled playfield. In Market Agonism, access is structured as a kind of civic architecture roads that must stay open, doors that must be routinely unsealed, tools and platforms that are kept in view and within reach. Some would say that entry would be enough to represent access, but in order to maintain the agon, there must be mechanisms to requalify the entry. Such as defined before, access in agonistic market would be represented by freedoms and rights of participation in economy, or the arrangements of fair participation to the endless contest. In such theoretical cog in the wheel, we would imagine examples such as democracy (right to vote), anarchism, consented regulation between participants, access to information. For example anarchism offers the most empowered access and implicitly the most productive field for competition to survive, but in practice (not necessarily in theory) fails to provide ownership or labour. Complementary to the example before, the function of capital redistribution away from the wheel and function of competition towards labour, will increase labour protection, but will decrease access, and implicitly it will slow down the agonistic wheel up to stagnation if labour becomes too strong and overcomes access or ownership. But that does not mandate redistribution of capital away from labor under the form of (consented or unconsented) taxation on income as example under a formed centralized authority, or consented transaction without a centralized authority.

Together, these three arms ownership, labour, and access spiral inward toward the axis of competition. The wheel spins because the interplay between these parts is continuously recalibrated by the pressure of new entrants, the decay of old advantages, and the seasonal requalification of the dominant positions in the field. And where other systems try to smooth things over and slow the wheel, Market Agonism welcomes the struggle as the only way to move forward; it is in the hard contact between rivals, the meeting of different “greedy” wills, and the open display of conflict that the system finds the power to stay alive.

IV.A. Small metaphoric conclusions on mechanisms of function

The way this economy works is through circles of action that feed back into themselves built to let new things grow on their own rather than forcing a specific result from the start like in many other examples we have seen over the course of history. It’s closely like a living body that stays healthy by constantly shifting and adjusting to stay active, this market finds its true strength in the endless small tremors, and shakes, that keep it awake and pumping. The goal that I’m defining here is to make sure that every single part of the system always feels the weight and the push of reality of contest, since realistically the wheel would stop spinning if it would be about the old established entrants.

In the old ways of thinking, success is treated like a holy grail where winners can retire and pull up the drawbridge, using their past trophies to write laws that stop new battles from ever happening. But in the turning wheel of Market Agonism, winning is never a permanent home. We do not punish success. We ensure success is in overdrive. And in the same time, we ensure that no victory is allowed to become a wall that blocks the path for those who come after. We keep the rules clear and the standards open because we want every potential rival to see exactly how the game is played so they can find the courage to enter it. The agonistic thought of action is furthered even by the help offered to newcomers, the game isn’t exactly a closed circle.

Even the way agonistic thought and function that makes and moves goods will assure a vibrant supply chain that adapts quite quickly.

Ultimately, the only question that matters for our machinery is who gets the chance and glory to prove themselves tomorrow. Every part of the agonistic wheel must hold a door open for the newcomer, for without that invitation, without that access, the wheel stops turning. And with it we build something far more valuable than established or regulated efficiency. We build the renewal of courage.

IV.B. Scale and generational continuity of competition

At small scale, where competition remains open and human in dimension, the agon reveals itself most directly as the foundation of durable economic life. Here, daily contest produces stability. Position is earned through continuous demonstration of merit. Inherited privilege or regulatory protection have no place. Generational continuity emerges organically: skills and roles pass across decades precisely because the field stays contestable. The continuity is earned. It is not granted or given. The contest itself becomes the stabilizing force disciplining complacency, rewarding genuine capability, filtering unsustainable performance, and preserving space for those who can endure. At this scale, the agon is closest to reality.

At larger scales, where ownership consolidates into platform control, where market power shapes entire sectors, where structural advantage replaces daily performance, explicit requalification mechanisms become necessary. Here, the agon grows distant from lived reality. Competitive pressure is mediated through abstract metrics, delayed by bureaucratic layers, and evaded through regulatory capture. Periodic re-tendering, time-limited privileges, mandatory transparency, and forced exposure to displacement serve to artificially restore what small-scale competition provides naturally: the requirement to continuously earn position through visible merit.

The principle: Market Agonism recognizes that stable and healthy competition at appropriate scale is the source of economic continuity. The system presevers competition, while dismantling barriers and privileges that close the field. Where competition remains genuine and entry remains open, the agon sustains itself. Where dominance becomes structural and access becomes controlled, Agonistic Sovereignty acts to reopen the arena and restore the conditions under which competition, and through it stability, can endure.

V. Rational conclusions without the metaphor

Thus I have define Market Agonism is an economic framework in which continuous competition (the agon) is treated as the primary organizing principle of economic life. The system is constructed so that no economic position whether held by a firm, an individual, or an institution can ever become permanently secure. All advantages are conditional and temporary, and all dominant positions must remain vulnerable to displacement through competitive challenge. The purpose of the market, in this model, is the sustained activation of competitive pressure across all sectors I define Economic Freedom as the condition in which every actor is subject to open challenge and can also challenge others under transparent and universally legible rules, be them public, institutional, or private. Stability produced by protective regulation, long-term privilege, monopoly, or inherited advantage is considered as systemic failure because it reduces competitive entry and reduces the number of active competitors in the economic system. When competition weakens due to consolidation or institutional shielding, corrective mechanisms are required to dismantle entrenched advantage and re-open access to competition or re-entry.

Economic Equality is interpreted strictly as equality of market entry and participation. The market agonistic system does not aim to equalize outcomes or wealth. The foundational economic equality principle in market agonism requires that no legal, institutional, or structural barrier converts temporary success into permanent exclusion of others. Economic justice, in this framework, exists only when previously dominant actors must repeatedly re-establish their position under old or renewed competitive conditions or under the threat of fair challenge. Theoretical institutions (be it within a consolidated authority or outside of consolidated authority) in Market Agonism exist to enforce the conditions of continuous contestability. Their function is procedural mostly. They enforce time limits on certain privileges, force mandate transparency in performance measurement, and prevent the accumulation of non-contestable power. Authority is limited to maintaining these procedural conditions and is itself subject to rotation and challenge. Institutions do not select winners, or provide protection from failure, or stabilize market positions beyond what is necessary for transactions to occur.

Under the contract of an authority, firms are treated as organizational configurations that exist only as long as they continue to prevail in open competition, otherwise they can be supported to re-enter competition or dismantled at own will. Without a authority, under the contract of a market, firms are treated as temporary competitive advantages that must be continuously re-established. Capital is expected to move toward sectors where competitive pressure is weak and away from sectors where dominance has become structurally entrenched. Investment is directed toward stimulating competition and establish stable, yet dynamic, competition. Institutional long-term protection of old established actors is treated as misallocation.

I define labour as the concrete activity of work and effort, the embodied hardship through which production is made possible and economic participation is sustained. In a contractual market under a constituted authority, labour appears as employees and contracted workers whose time and effort are formally organized for production. In the absence of such an authority, labour is the direct investment of work and hardship by individuals or collectives in order to achieve production and sustain their presence in the agonistic field. Employment security, in this frame, comes from the freedom to choose protected jobs, and from the capacity to continually reinvest one’s labour in new roles and configurations as conditions change. Welfare, support, and protection of labour are therefore treated as the ideal stance for production: the more labour is effectively protected and maintained, the more reliably stable production capacity is assured over time. At a philosophical level, however, there exists a degenerate configuration in which labour is absolutized as the single organizing principle of the economy: when collective labour becomes too strong relative to ownership and access, ownership is reduced to mere administration, access is overwhelmed by organizational hierarchy, and the natural human impulse to compete is displaced by a drive to survive through bureaucratic or collective organization. In such a configuration, the agon is emptied of genuine contest, natural production is gradually replaced by structural maintenance, and the system drifts toward deconstruction.

Access refers to the legal, technical, and infrastructural conditions that allow new actors to enter markets without permission from incumbents. Credential monopolies, excessive licensing, inherited control, and closed platforms are treated as structural barriers that suppress competition and must be dismantled. Entry must remain practically and absolutely achievable and information relevant to participation must remain publicly available. At a philosophical level, however, a maximally open field shows what it looks like when access dominates: barriers are minimal, but mechanisms of requalification, tournament design, and long-horizon projects are hard to sustain. In Market Agonism terms, such a configuration is a useful edge-case for thinking about openness, but if left unchecked it can undercut the stabilizing roles of ownership and structured labour, making the agon more fragile than renewable. Conversely, when access is enforced through burdensome regulatory institutional systems rather than organically maintained, it paradoxically reduces genuine access: bureaucratic procedures, mandatory compliance frameworks, and administrative gatekeeping transform entry from a direct confrontation with market conditions into a mediated passage through institutional filters, thereby placing access itself in slight opposition to the agon by substituting procedural friction for competitive challenge. Probably the only case where agon is not directly opposite to regulatory burden is interoperability, where the burden is not a direct confrontation with market conditions. The “burden of interoperability” in this case is seen as a confrontation within the market itself. We must make sure, instead, that the interoperability will not become or transcend into a entry limitation, beacuse under this form and condition pluralism will be reduced, or even destroyed. Pluralism should superseede interoperability in the case when interoperability itself degrades or the interoperable platforms become dominant, unchalleangeable. Such as the case of specific software companies and products that are used as a entry-blocking mechanism, especially when the mechanism itself is non-optimal. In this regards, pluralism of interoperable regulation and platforms must be maintained.

Ownership is defined as a general right of control over an asset, resource, or productive position within the market. In its ordinary, non-dominant form, ownership may remain stable and need not be constantly cycled or exposed to displacement. At a philosophical level, however, ownership in its dominant form appears as an absolutist, anti-accessial structure of control, or as an anti-competitive hierarchy that seeks to monopolise decision, close entry, and neutralise contest; historical configurations in which access to production and exchange was centrally directed and tightly controlled represent extreme cases of this degenerate form. Within Market Agonism, such dominant ownership marks the point at which a general right of control becomes structurally incompatible with the agon and therefore must be actively exposed to competitive displacement through time as direct confrontation within the market. It must be understood that requalification in this context does not mean automatic seizure or expropriation. What we mean by requalification is rather the requirement to periodically re-prove fitness and competitive standing under transparent, publicly known criteria; for non-dominant actors engaged in ordinary market participation, this process is indistinguishable from daily competition itself. If ownership becomes too dominant, competition collapses. If ownership becomes too weak, investment incentives collapse. Market Agonism requires constant and dynamic recalibration between these forces.

The ethical framework of the system treats voluntary exposure to competition as economically virtuous and avoidance of contest through legal shielding, and procedural obstruction as economically illegitimate. Failure should be treated as a normal outcome of participation. But even though failure is sometimes inevitable, the system should offer the possibility of re-entry into competition, under fair conditions. As a example we might observe that some firms or economical actors produced value to the market, but due to some inevitable factors, they are unable to continue to produce value. In this case, the market should offer them the possibility to re-enter competition, as mentioned before, under fair conditions.

Human economic behavior is interpreted as being primarily oriented toward survival through continuous competitive participation rather than toward speculative accumulation. Individuals tend to favor stable participation in competitive systems over high-risk accumulation strategies. Informal and subsistence markets demonstrate that perpetual competition can function as a survival mechanism even in the absence of long-term wealth accumulation. However, it remains analytically unresolved whether this behavioral orientation would persist under conditions of isolation or closed communal organization.

In this framework, the economy has no final equilibrium state, and in the same time the equilibrium state is the exact state of perpetual market competition. We consider it to be in a permanent state of “dynamic” equilibrium, maintained by institutional rules that systematically prevent consolidation, or permanent dominance of too few actors and inherited market power.

Requalification must be distinguished from arbitrary expropriation or forced turnover. Where competition remains open and actors face competitors of comparable capability, requalification occurs naturally through daily market participation: the craftsman who serves customers well, the firm that adapts to changing conditions, the cooperative that maintains member trust. These actors continuously requalify through performance without additional institutional intervention. Explicit, time-bound requalification mechanisms apply only where dominance has become structural: where market power, platform control, or regulatory capture has created immunity from organic competitive pressure. In such cases, requalification means re-entering open competitionary market under the same transparent criteria available to all entrants. Confiscation of earned position should be out of the question, since it is incompatible with the agon due to severe reduction of participation.

VI. Ontology of the agonistic market

I observe that under conditions of material constraint and limited choice, human beings tend to prioritize stable survival even when such stability is produced through competition with others. When forced to choose between the continuity of existence within a competitive structure and the maximization of temporary gains generated by conjunctural instability, the former is generally preferred. From this perspective, economic agonism appears as the mode of organization most closely aligned with survival, precisely because it combines permanent competition with reproducibility over time.

Reframed for precision: from the perspective of agon, understood here as the structural condition of perpetual economic competition and conflict under scarcity, the human being is ontologically oriented toward survival through continuous confrontation. In limit-situations of decision, the individual is guided by the preservation of the continuity of their own existence within a dynamic and competitive environment over the pursuit of speculative accumulation of profit. Stability, in this sense, denotes the capacity to reproduce existence over time through participation in an ongoing agonal structure.

Crucially, such stability cannot be substituted by externally imposed order that negates individual or collective agency. While human beings may accept authority instrumentally, stability that is imposed as a replacement for participation in economic confrontation lacks ontological legitimacy as a foundation of survival. Survival thus emerges as the central axis of being, structuring a hierarchy of economic options: the individual prioritizes those economic forms and structures that sustain existence under pressure, even when these forms entail permanent competition, yet again over the pursuit of ephemeral accumulation that introduces existential instability.

In this tension between stability generated through agonistic competition, stability imposed through external authority, and instability produced by speculative accumulation human decision-making under constraint is grounded in the priority of maintaining being through a consented, conflictual order. The human being thus appears as an agonal subject oriented toward the conservation of existence within conditions of structural confrontation.

An empirical illustration of this orientation can be observed in subsistence micro-economies and informal markets. In such contexts, economic actors operate under precarious material conditions and within regimes of intense competition. Economic activity here is rarely oriented toward significant accumulation; it is rather directed towards the daily support of existence. Agon, as continuous economic confrontation, functions as survival’s operative condition. Stability emerges through ongoing participation in competitive exchange, confirming agon as a mechanism through which survival becomes possible and sustainable under constraint.

What remains to be seen and determined is whether this survival-oriented agonal prioritization persists under fundamentally different conditions such as complete isolation, abundance, or tightly integrated kinship structures where the pressures that activate this ontological orientation may be absent or transformed.

But this, indeed, remains to be seen.

VII. Glossary of Key Terms

Agon (ἀγών): From ancient Greek, meaning “contest” or “assembly.” In Market Agonism, the agon refers to the structural condition of perpetual economic competition and conflict. It is the organizing principle itself the continuous state of competition that defines economic life and reveals the capabilities of economic actors. Note: The term “agon” should not be confused with “agony” (from Greek ἀγωνία, agōnía, meaning “struggle” or “anguish”); agon does not denote suffering or biological distress.

Agonistic Sovereignty: The custodial authority responsible for constituting and reconstituting the competitive arena. It sets the rules of play, enforces transparency, mandates open interfaces, and can trigger time-boxed resets when dominance becomes structural and enforced. Unlike managerial authority, it does not pick winners or stabilize positions; it maintains the procedural conditions under which fair competition remains possible. This authority may be formal or emergent, permanent or temporary, and is itself subject to contestation and rotation.

Time-boxed reset: is a scheduled, predetermined intervention that clears accumulated advantages and restarts competitive conditions after a fixed period, regardless of individual performance.

Requalification: The periodic requirement to re-prove fitness and competitive standing under transparent, publicly known criteria. For non-dominant economic actors engaged in ordinary market participation, requalification occurs naturally through daily competition itself. Explicit requalification mechanisms become necessary only when positions achieve structural dominance when market power, platform control, or regulatory capture creates immunity from organic competitive pressure. Requalification is distinct from expropriation or seizure; it is the restoration of competitive exposure, without punitive displacement. It must not be understood as a method forced replacement outside the field of contest. It is to be insisted that requalification is a natural mechanism that occures without the interference of any authority. And the rules of requalificatoin must be transparent and publicly known, and free of limitations.

Equipotentiality: Term mostly derived from biology. In organizational management it’s the universal equality of entry and participation, as well as performance. The condition in which any agent, regardless of provenance, may enter the economic arena and meaningfully affect and enhance its order without facing insurmountable barriers, as well as to replace other agents if they fall. Market Agonism does not in no way require equality of outcomes, it demands that fair climable “ladder”, with a “floor” that remains non-sticky, so to say. Implicitly, temporary wins cannot be converted into permanent structural advantages that exclude future challengers.

Degenerate Forms: Configurations in which one element of the triadic structure (ownership, labour, or access) becomes absolutized and overwhelms the others, thereby undermining the agon itself. When ownership becomes too dominant, it creates monopolistic control and closes entry, while weakening labour. When labour becomes too strong relative to ownership and access, it displaces genuine competition with bureaucratic survival. When access dominates without structure, it undermines the mechanisms of requalification and long-term coordination. Each degenerate form represents a distinct failure mode that must be corrected to restore competitive vitality.

Dynamic Equilibrium: The paradoxical state in which the economy has no final resting point, yet the perpetual motion of competition itself constitutes equilibrium. Unlike traditional economic equilibrium (which assumes markets settle into stable, predictable states), dynamic equilibrium is maintained by institutional rules that systematically prevent consolidation and inherited market power. The system is stable precisely because it remains in continuous competitive motion.

Structural Dominance: A market position that has become shielded from organic competitive challenge through scale, regulatory capture, platform control, or accumulated advantages that no longer require continuous performance to maintain. Structural dominance marks the point at which ordinary competition can no longer discipline an actor’s position, and explicit intervention (through requalification mechanisms, forced transparency, or time-limited privileges) becomes necessary to restore contestability. Whether it is a state actor, a private actor or a communitary actor, the same rules apply.

Institution: In Market Agonism, an institution refers broadly to any organized structure, rule system, or coordinating mechanism that shapes economic behavior and maintains the conditions of competition. Institutions may be formal (state bodies, regulatory agencies, professional associations) or informal (consented rules, community norms, industry standards). They may be centralized (government authorities) or decentralized (peer-to-peer coordination frameworks), or anarchic (self-organizing networks). They may be permanent organizational entities (firms, cooperatives, mixed) or procedural arrangements (credentialing systems, access mechanisms, tournament structures). Whereas if a society has no central planinng, the sole responsibility of the agonistic institutions are purely voluntary between economic actors. But what matters most is their (the institutions’) function: whether they preserve contestability and whether they keep the agon alive as to what their purpose suggests.

References and Acknowledgments

This theoretical framework draws primarily from the agonistic philosophy tradition, particularly the work of post-modernist political theorists who have developed agonism as a productive foundation for democratic and social theory.

Works Cited

Mouffe, C. (2000). The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso.

Mouffe, C. (2013). Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically. London: Verso.

Connolly, W. E. (1991). Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Connolly, W. E. (2005). Pluralism. Durham: Duke University Press.

Hayek, F. A. (1944). The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Friedman, M. (1962). Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.

Schelling, T. C. (1960). The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Akerlof, G. A. (1970). “The Market for ‘Lemons’: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 84(3), 488–500.

Smith, J. Maynard. (1982). Evolution and the Theory of Games. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Liddell, H. G., Scott, R., & Jones, H. S. (1996). A Greek-English Lexicon (9th ed., with revised supplement). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Influences / Further Reading (Not Directly Cited)

Nietzsche, F. Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Nietzsche, F. On the Genealogy of Morals.

Nietzsche, F. “Homer’s Contest.”

Post-industrial labor theory (selected authors/works to be specified and expanded in a later revision).

Note on Development:

Market Agonism represents an original synthesis applying agonistic philosophical principles to economic organization. While drawing conceptual foundations from the above sources, the specific economic mechanisms, institutional designs, and ontological claims regarding survival-oriented competition constitute important new theoretical contributions not directly attributable to any single precedent work.

Author and License

Author: Brîndușă Ștefan Cristian
Date: 13 December 2025

Email main: stefan.cristian@rogentos.ro

Email secondary: stefan.brindusa@protonmail.com

License: This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
You are free to share and adapt this material for any purpose, even commercially, under the following terms: you must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made; if you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

Footnotes

Mouffe-Connolly Agon: For the political-theoretic framing of agonism and pluralism used here, see Mouffe (2013) and Connolly (1991; 2005).
Agon: For the classical Greek sense(s) of ἀγών as “contest” and also an “assembly/arena,” see standard lexicon usage (Liddell, Scott & Jones).
Agonism Agency: The contrast between agency as constituted through contestation/resistance versus depoliticized consensus is consistent with agonistic theory as developed by Mouffe (2000; 2013) and Connolly (1991).
Agonism Freedom: On contestability, pluralism, and the critique of depoliticized closure as conditions that constrain freedom, see Mouffe (2013) and Connolly (2005).
Hayek-Friedman: Hayek (1944) and Friedman (1962) are cited here as prominent examples in a liberal tradition that prioritizes property, contract, and limits on coercion; the broader neoclassical equilibrium tradition is larger than either author.
Postindustrial-Labour: “Post-industrial labor theory” is used here as a broad placeholder for scholarship on labor, production, and agency under post-industrial/network conditions; specific sources are listed (in part) in References and should be expanded if this section is developed further.