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It is well known that Friedrich von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom and Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation were written contemporaneously (between 1940 and 1943), that their authors propounded antithetical political ideologies (right-wing liberalism and left social democracy respectively), and that the two books revolve around a similar problematique: the causes of the collapse of liberal order in the interwar era. This chapter undertakes a detailed comparison of Hayek and Polanyi’s...

In their new indictments of global neoliberalism and the economic profession's culpability in its harms, Dani Rodrik and Joseph Stiglitz press the case for reconstructed globalization that generates benefits for all and not just for corporate and financial elites. Both books are deeply consistent with the insights of Karl Polanyi, who had identified the inherent contradictions of the project to create what he called a self-regulating economy. Like Polanyi, Rodrik and Stiglitz are attentive...

In this contribution we offer a broad overview of the technological, institutional and policy dynamics associated with the great transformation--borrowing Karl Polanyi (1944) expression--leading from traditional, mostly rural, economies to economies driven by industrial activities (and nowadays also advanced services), able to systematically learn how to implement and eventually how to generate new ways of producing and new products under conditions of dynamic increasing returns. Such a...

Esta monografia versa sobre as visões críticas de Karl Marx e Karl Polanyi à ideia de livre mercado proposta por Adam Smith. Smith disserta sobre a positividade no funcionamento automático dos mercados e, assim, funda o bem-estar das sociedades nas ações livres e espontâneas no domínio econômico. Marx crítica essa sociedade livre por visualizar grandes contradições em seu funcionamento, em especial no que diz respeito à relação de trabalho, uma vez que o trabalho é elemento fundamental na...

En el presente trabajo mostraremos que la filosofía liberal operó en muchas ocasionesa través de un esquema teleológico, desde el cual entendía que la espontaneidad delmovimiento histórico conducía de forma natural hacia una economía de mercados libres.Semejante interpretación tenía que presuponer otra controvertida tesis, a saber, que lascategorías que informan la racionalidad práctica dentro de una sociedad de mercado no sonuna simple contingencia histórica, sino que responden a la...

Karl Polanyi's analysis of the genesis, crises, and institutional transformations of contemporary society is grounded on a theory of the basic features and dynamics of capitalism as a peculiar form of society. This article intends to develop this thesis on the basis of a reading of Polanyi's The Great Transformation, with references to Polanyi's preceding and later research. Polanyi's theoretical and methodological achievements suggest a wide comparative outlook and offer a critique of...

This article draws attention to issues about the institutional matrices theory (IMT) as perceived by and raised in the article by F. Gregory Hayden. To clarify the “controversial” points, I structure my response narrative along two lines. First, I present the prehistory of IMT, or X- and Y- theory, including earlier work by scientists related to the concept of institutional matrix. I connect the development of the actual IMT with the period of “perestroika” and the associated market...

Structural changes in Norwegian and Danish food industry since the 1990s is analysed as a path dependent response to the neo-liberal turn. Norway entered the 1990s as a protected market and Denmark as case of an export oriented industry. These developmental strategies are rooted in early 20th century industrialisation and influenced by institutional transformations in the 1990s, such as EU and WTO. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are studied in the context of changing political environments....

The subordination of society to self-regulating international markets is the reason why British workers and industries so often fall prey to predatory financiers, writes Ann Pettifor. It is also a fundamental cause of current political crises throughout the west – just as Karl Polanyi described almost 80 years ago.

Studies have pointed out that the value of markets is related to their impact on the character of a society. Karl Polanyi's thesis about social disembeddedness attributed to 19th century economic liberalism the responsibility for consolidating the process of separating markets from society, which changed the dynamics between the state and population when economic rationality began dictating their connections. However, Polanyi only suggested analyses regarding power relations between these...

The article presents the views of economic historian Karl Polanyi on the nature of economic and social embeddedness. Topics discussed include relationship between the economic and social embeddedness, the impact of the market economy, the transformation of society and production of material goods. Particular focus on limits of privatization, commodification, and marketization.

In this brief essay, I argue that the ‘Brexit’ vote is but the latest manifestation of popular dissatisfaction with the utopian ideal of autonomous markets beyond the reach of regulatory democracy. Brexit represented the collective, if (to my mind) often misguided, efforts of those ‘left behind’ in Britain to protect themselves from the predatory nature of market fundamentalism. In a Polanyian sense, it is a form of social self-protection from self-regulating markets in money, trade and labour.

This study approaches Aristotelian reflections on economy through the eyes of Karl Polanyi, as he resorts to the Greek philosopher to find useful elements when building a profound criticism of the modern market society. Aristotle intuited the uncertain future of a social order devoured by economic relations expanding at a hypertrophic rate. In his time, indeed, this was only a potential threat —he never saw the effective culmination of anything like what we are seeing today—. But he was...

Financialization challenges Karl Polanyi's thesis of double movement, the thesis that efforts to extend the market evoke efforts to protect humans, nature, and means of production from market forces. Financialization refers to the increased power of financial institutions. The government protects the incomes and assets of financial institutions, but it does little to protect the incomes and assets of households, which are necessary for people to afford healthcare, education, emergencies,...

This article provides a critical overview of the theoretical perspective developed by Karl Polanyi, in particular his 1944 book The Great Transformation. What does this approach offer to economic theory, especially heterodox economic theory? Three elements vital to his work are in focus: (1) “embeddedness” of the market in society, (2) fictitious commodities (labor, nature and money) and (3) the “double movement”, i.e. the political imposition of the self-regulating market and the protective...

Un examen de la « marchandisation » montre qu’elle s’accompagne d’un processus inverse de dé-marchandisation, en particulier du travail, des ressources naturelles, du corps et des échanges, sous l’impulsion de l’État-Providence, du droit et de la société civile. ENG: "Commodification" is accompanied by the opposite movement of de-commodification, in particular for labor, natural ressources, bodies and exchanges, under the impulse of the Welfare state, law and civil society.

Drawing on Polanyian logic, we focus on the gradual institutionalization of capitalism in the Czech Republic and the protests accompanying this process. We hypothesize that different configurations of political economy, or what we term the political economic opportunity structure, trigger different popular responses and are a potent indicator of expected protest forms. To analyze this we chose to carry out a country case study, in which many variables commonly associated with political...

Polanyi analyzes the historical deployment of a “formal” economic science starting from the “market-scarcity-instrumental rationality triptych.” This triptych, and the knowledge associated with it, is shown to be more than merely a “substantial” economic science’s interest in the triptych “need-nature-institution.” While we must agree with Polanyi that economism is ill-suited to the first triptych, we hesitate to accept his suggested alternative, a heterogeneous mixture of naturalism and...

The article discusses the function of the state within Polanyi's double movement and the limitations of the state as a governance mechanism under globalisation, the way transnational nongovernmental organizations (NGO) and social movements examine gaps in governance within capitalism as an alternative way of preventing the market powers exercised multinational corporation (MNC), and the way the Global South position itself within the global economy and the creation of governance mechanisms.

This paper analyses how the economic actions of water distribution and exchange are embedded in the culture of indigenous communities in the Cordillera highlands of Northern Luzon, Philippines. Such actions are fundamental to water access and provisioning. Data was derived from a series of focus group discussions conducted with various water users, including households, farmers, enterprises and local government officials, and from upstream, midstream and downstream communities along the...