by
Robert Cauneau
6 July 2025
Abstract
This article explores how what we call « real » is not a raw or natural given, but a social and historical construction. It attempts to demonstrate that our categories (such as public debt, the market, growth) are human creations which, through habit, education, and repetition, appear as indisputable truths.
The article emphasizes the role of language in this naturalization: words, metaphors, and dominant narratives guide our perception of the world and limit our political imagination.
Using the example of public debt and the obstacles encountered by Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the article shows how misleading metaphors (for example, the state as a household) and alarmist vocabulary (burden, chasm, abyss) prevent any calm debate and close the horizon of possibilities.
In conclusion, he calls for awareness: changing society requires starting by uncovering the constructed nature of the assumptions that alienate us.
Introduction
Have you ever felt that dull anxiety when hearing about the « wall of debt »? That intuitive certainty that « one day we’ll have to pay » and that « our children will inherit it »? If so, rest assured, you’re normal. You share one of the most deeply held beliefs of our time.
But what if this belief, this « common sense » shared by everyone, from columnists to family dinners, was based on an illusion? What if this anxiety weren’t the product of an inescapable economic reality, but the result of a powerful story we’ve been told for decades?
This article invites you on a journey to the heart of our assumptions. It explores how concepts like « debt » or « the market » are not laws of nature, but human constructs. Constructs that, once accepted as « real, » limit our imagination and prevent us from seeing the solutions that are right in front of our eyes. Because before changing the world, we must first dare to question what we believe to be real.
1. Reality as a Social Construct
To understand this mechanism, let’s take an example so familiar that it seems perfectly natural: the weekend. The idea that Saturday and Sunday are days of rest seems self-evident to us. Yet, there is nothing natural about the weekend. It is a purely human invention, the fruit of decades of social struggles and political choices at the turn of the 20th century. What began as a mere demand became an institution, then a given.
The weekend perfectly illustrates what sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann called « the social construction of reality. » The process takes place in two stages, like a cooking recipe:
- Invention (historical production): First, humans create rules, institutions, ways of seeing the world. These creations are the result of power relations, ideologies, and historical coincidences. The « market, » « national borders, » or « public debt » are, like the weekend, inventions.
- Forgetting (naturalization): Then, and this is where the magic happens, we forget that these institutions are inventions. Through habit, education, and repetition, they lose their arbitrary nature. They solidify, becoming a mental landscape, a « second nature » that seems as objective and constraining to us as a mountain.
Language is the cement of this construction. It doesn’t just describe this landscape: it makes it exist. By naming things, we classify them, prioritize them, and above all, we give them an appearance of eternity. What we have no word to express simply becomes invisible.
This is what the philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis called the « imaginary institution of society »: each society is immersed in a « magma » of invisible meanings that define for us, without our knowledge, what is possible, impossible, desirable, or senseless. Understanding this is to hold the first thread to unravel the skein of our own alienations.
2. The Power of Words, the Tyranny of Categories
Words are discreet weapons. They name, they classify, they prioritize, and above all, they frame what is thinkable. Each word we use carries a framework of meaning, a moral subtext, an imaginary world that guides our understanding of the world much more deeply than we realize.
Language categories are subtle traps. Saying « social charges » rather than « contributions » transforms a collective right into an individual burden. In the first case, we evoke a burden on the company, a cost to be reduced; in the second, we recall that it is a participation in a common system of solidarity. This simple lexical choice determines our stance: whether we see it as a problem to be solved or a common good to be preserved.
Similarly, speaking of « public debt » without ever mentioning its counterpart – the net private wealth it represents in national accounts – is to impose a guilt-inducing prism: the state is a poor manager, debt a sign of derailment, public spending a fault. The word « debt » immediately activates a moral framework: debt must be repaid, debt is shameful, debt is a fault that must be corrected1.
Words are not neutral: they are the invisible matrices of our perceptions. They guide emotion—guilt, fear, pride, mistrust. They close or open the political imagination: what we can conceive of as possible, desirable, or legitimate depends on the categories in which we think.
As George Lakoff has shown, dominant metaphors profoundly structure our political thinking. Take the example he dissects: « the state as a household. » This seemingly innocuous metaphor smuggles in an entire moral model: the good father who spends no more than he earns, who plans for the future, who is wary of debts and practices the virtue of saving. Thus, any expansionary fiscal policy becomes immoral; any deficit becomes a fault; any public spending a hint of debauchery or laziness.
These metaphors, these categories, these words act like invisible glasses. We think we see reality, when we see reality as our words make it appear to us.
And this power of language is all the more powerful because it is discreet: we think we are describing the world, when we are recreating it with every sentence, every analysis, every decision.
It is important to understand that the dominant economic language does not reflect an objective reality: it creates a certain social order, it legitimizes policies and power relations. When we talk about the « labor market, » we transform a human relationship (an exchange of time, effort, and skills) into a market transaction, subject to the laws of supply and demand. When we talk about « the cost of labor, » we erase the reality of living labor, of know-how, of value creation: we only consider what weighs in a column of costs.
The tyranny of categories stems from the fact that they impose themselves as natural. We no longer perceive them as choices, but as neutral descriptions. And it is precisely because we stop questioning them that they become mental prisons.
This is why mastering language means mastering reality. Whoever imposes words imposes the framework of what is thinkable. Whoever imposes categories imposes what will seem serious, reasonable, and admissible.
It’s not just a matter of choosing different words to sound pretty or politically correct: it’s a matter of freeing our ability to imagine another world. As long as we say « social security contributions, » « debt burden, » « labor market, » we remain captive to a mental universe where solidarity is a problem, where public debt is a fault, where human labor is a commodity.
Changing words opens the doors to another possible reality.
⤵️ But why do these words, these metaphors, these categories manage to impose themselves on us to the point of becoming invisible? How does a linguistic construct become an indisputable mental landscape? This is what we will now examine.
3. Why does this reality seem indisputable to us? The mechanism of evidence
If these social constructs are so fragile at the outset, how do they become mental fortresses? Because they self-reinforce themselves through a relentless three-step mechanism that transforms an opinion into « common sense. »
- Internalization through habit and education: the invisible mold
From childhood, we are immersed in a world that already exists, full of categories, narratives, and norms. School, family, and culture teach us to think « correctly » without ever presenting it as such. We don’t learn opinions; we learn « the truth. » This is what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called habitus: this set of dispositions that we internalize so deeply that they seem natural to us. We end up wanting what the system expects of us and seeing the world through its lenses. - Validation by the Choir of Authorities: The Circle of Reason
Once adults, this « common sense » is constantly validated by a powerful chorus. Experts, editorialists, political leaders, international institutions… all seem to repeat the same obvious statements, the same diagnoses, the same « inevitable » solutions. This superficial consensus doesn’t prove the truth of an idea, but it does make it socially unassailable. Any dissenting voice is then easily discredited, dismissed as irrational, utopian, or incompetent. We are no longer in disagreement; we are « outside » the circle of reason. - The Black Magic of Performativity: When Saying Is Doing
This is the most subtle and powerful mechanism. A performative discourse doesn’t just describe reality: it creates it.
Let’s take a clear example: rating agencies. When an agency downgrades a country’s rating by claiming it is becoming « risky, » it isn’t making a prediction. It triggers panic among investors who, by massively selling their securities, provoke the rise in interest rates and the crisis the rating was supposed to anticipate. The prophecy has become self-fulfilling. The rhetoric didn’t describe reality; it produced it.
Similarly, the injunction « we must reassure the markets » is enough to justify austerity policies. These policies, by weakening the economy, can make the markets… even more nervous, thus justifying further cuts. It’s a vicious circle where language doesn’t reflect the world; it bends it to its will.
These three mechanisms—habit that molds us, authority that validates, and discourse that creates—weave the web of what the philosopher Antonio Gramsci called « cultural hegemony. » It is not domination by brute force, but by consent. The system’s most complete victory is achieved when the dominated end up thinking about the world through the categories, fears, and assumptions of those who dominate them.
⤵️ Understanding the mechanics of assumptions is already a step toward freeing ourselves from them. For once we perceive the constructed and maintained nature of social reality, a question arises: how can we break these invisible chains and open up a new horizon?
4. From Awareness to the Reconstruction of Reality
Understanding the mechanics of the obvious is liberating, but it’s only a beginning. The burning question is: how can we break these invisible chains and open up a new horizon?
A Revolution of Perspective: The First Decisive Step
The first and most decisive step is a revolution of perspective. No structural change is possible as long as individuals remain prisoners of categories they have not chosen. The great strength of dominant systems is to pass themselves off as natural: capitalism, public debt, austerity are presented as inevitable. As long as we fail to see their fabricated, historical, and contingent nature, we adapt our desires and actions to the limits they impose on us.
The Lessons of History: Unveiling and Shift
History shows us that major upheavals always arise from this unveiling. Take the example of the minimum wage. At the beginning of the 20th century, the very idea was considered absurd. Wages were the « natural price of labor, » set by the law of supply and demand. Any intervention was heresy. But when critical movements began to denounce this « natural law » as a mask of structural domination, the collective outlook changed. The unveiling of arbitrariness made politics possible: what seemed impossible became self-evident. This was the case for democracy against monarchy, for social rights against poverty, for decolonization against empires.
Lucidity as a key and a test
This awareness places us before a fundamental choice, summarized by the philosopher Judith Butler: « Reality is that which can cease to be as it is. » Accepting this idea means understanding that everything that has been instituted can be transformed.
This lucidity is the key, but it requires courage. The courage to face the arbitrary nature of our most cherished beliefs and to free ourselves from the fear of being judged as « unrealistic » or « naive. » Because reconstructing another reality means first reconstructing another language, another imaginary, against the comfort of the dominant « common sense. »
Reconstructing another reality: concrete work
Reconstructing another reality means first reconstructing another language, another imaginary, against the comfort of the dominant « common sense. »
- Where we speak of « social contributions, » we speak of solidarity contributions or socialized wages.
- Where we invoke the « necessity of markets, » we must remember that they are a political institution, regulated and regulated, and not a force of nature.
- Where we deplore the « burden of debt, » we must explain that, in accounting terms, it is the net financial wealth of private sector agents.
This is not a simple play on words, but a war of position for control of reality. Because it is not through numbers that we change the world, but through shared ideas and stories that mobilize. Remaking the world means starting by naming it differently, to finally give ourselves the right to govern it.
Disclosure: A Prerequisite to Any Transformation
No reform, no alternative project, no emancipatory policy has any chance of success until individuals become aware of the fact that they are, first and foremost, locked into an imposed language and imagination. The first act of any real transformation is an act of disclosure: making each person realize that they think in terms of words and categories they have not chosen, but that have chosen them. It is not brute force that holds us back: it is a manufactured consent, an invisible manipulation, that of the narratives and frameworks we internalize without questioning them. Until this act of conscience takes place, any change remains wishful thinking.
⤵️ To gauge the power of these mechanisms—and the challenges of challenging them—let’s examine a concrete example: public debt. For if there’s one area where language creates our mental prison, it’s this one.
5. Anatomy of a « Truth »: The Case of Public Debt
To see concretely how a « reality » that alienates us is created, let’s dissect the most emblematic case of our public debate: public debt2, and the obstacles faced by an approach like MMT.
5.1 The Queen Metaphor: The State-Household, a Story So Easy to Believe
We must admit: the analogy is incredibly effective. « A state must manage its finances like a good father, » « You cannot indefinitely spend more than you earn »… These phrases seem like common sense. Why? Because they speak to our most intimate and concrete experience: managing a personal or family budget. The power of this story is that it is familiar to us.
It is precisely this familiarity that makes it such a perfect mental trap. By reducing the unknown (a nation’s economy) to the known (our wallet), it reassures us, but at the cost of a completely misleading simplification. Here’s why comparing a sovereign state to a household is not only a mistake, but a misinterpretation:
- Source of money: A household uses a currency that it must earn before spending it. A sovereign state like the United States, Japan (or France via the ECB) creates this same currency. The constraint is not at all the same.
- Nature of debt: This is the crucial point. A household’s debt is a burden for it and an asset for its banker. At the national level, public debt is the net financial wealth of its own private sector.
This false analogy is not innocent: it imposes an immediate moral framework where debt is a « fault, » austerity a « virtue, » and public spending a « sin » of laxity.
5.2 Semantic Overkill: The Lexical Field of Catastrophe
Once the metaphor is established, carefully chosen vocabulary reinforces it to the point of obsession. Public debate is saturated with words whose function is not to describe, but to frighten: « burden, » « chasm, » « abyss, » « time bomb, » « wall of debt, » « hemorrhage »…
This lexical field transforms a technical question into a frightening thriller. It shuts down the debate before it even begins. Who in their right mind would dare defend a « chasm » or argue for a « hemorrhage »?
5.3 The Chorus of Experts and Validation by Authority
The final act of the play is performed by the chorus of authorities: politicians of all stripes, editorialists, rating agencies, international institutions… All repeat the same mantras about the need to « reduce the deficit » and « control the debt, » without ever making the fundamental distinction between debt issued in the national currency and debt issued in foreign currencies. This apparent consensus is not an argument for truth; it is an instrument of social discipline. It makes the idea « socially true. » To challenge it is no longer simply to disagree; it is to exclude oneself from the circle of « serious » and « responsible » people.
This is how an approach like MMT is marginalized. To understand why, we must distinguish its two levels:
- Its description of accounting reality. When MMT states that « the government deficit is the private sector surplus » or that « public debt is the counterpart of private net financial wealth, » it is not proposing a theory. It is describing an accounting identity, a fact as irrefutable as saying that for every buyer, there is a seller. This is not ideology. It is basic logic.
- Its policy proposals. Based on this description, MMT theorists propose policies (such as the job guarantee). These proposals are political and, by nature, democratically debatable.
MMT is therefore rejected not because its description of the facts is false, but precisely because it is true. By revealing that the government’s financial constraint is a political construct and not a law of nature, it exposes the ideological nature of the dominant narrative and opens up a field of possibilities that the latter seeks at all costs to keep closed. It is fought not for its mistakes, but for the disturbing truth it brings to light.
Conclusion: A Call to Conscience
What we take to be reality is therefore not an insurmountable horizon, but a human edifice, built of words, metaphors, and habits. The « burden-debt » is not a law of nature; it is a story we tell ourselves. An extraordinarily effective story, but a story nonetheless.
Understanding this is not a simple intellectual exercise. It is an act of emancipation. For if reality is a construct, then it is fragile. It can be dismantled, criticized, and, above all, rebuilt differently. The walls of our mental prison are made only of our own beliefs.
We therefore have a collective responsibility: to open our eyes and take the battle where it is most decisive, on the terrain of ideas and narratives. To stop being subjected to words and finally choose them. To reject paralyzing evidence and dare to think the unthinkable. For it is not the laws of economics that bind us, but the fables we choose to believe. And the first of all freedoms is to regain the power to write new ones.
References
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
Bourdieu, P. (1980). Le sens pratique. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
Castoriadis, C. (1975). L’institution imaginaire de la société. Paris: Seuil.
Gramsci, A. (1949). Cahiers de prison. Paris: Gallimard.
Kelton, S. (2020). The deficit myth: Modern monetary theory and the birth of the people’s economy. New York: PublicAffairs.
Lakoff, G. (2004). Don’t think of an elephant! Know your values and frame the debate. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing.
Mitchell, W., Wray, L. R., & Watts, M. (2019). Macroeconomics. London: Red Globe Press.
Mosler, W. (1995). Soft currency economics. West Palm Beach, FL: Self-published.
Mosler, W. (2010). The seven deadly innocent frauds of economic policy. Lake Jackson, TX: Valance Co.
Notes
1 It is telling that the German word for « debt, » Schulden, is inseparable from the word Schuld, which means « fault » or « guilt. » In the Germanic imagination, then, debt is never simply an accounting fact; it is intrinsically a moral transgression, a fault that must be atoned for, often through budgetary rigor.
2 See this article : De la véritable nature du déficit et de la dette publics
3 See this article : Les soldes financiers sectoriels
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