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Seeing capitalism as a system defined by the imperative of the ceaseless accumulation of capital, instead of using the definition based on wage labor or international trade as Block questions, I argue that the concept of capitalism is still too useful to be abandoned, and cannot be replaced by the Polanyian concept of market in our critique of political economy. As Fernand Braudel and Giovanni Arrighi contend, the capitalist logic of capital accumulation, which is affined to monopoly and...

For more than a decade, social scientists have been analyzing the implications of the neoliberal turn in development policy and the implications of market-led agrarian reform for agricultural producers in the global South. Among this work is a spate of recent scholarship celebrating a number of flagship movements, such as the Zapatistas in Mexico or the landless movement in Brazil, which are interpreted as efforts by rural communities to resist the threat posed by the commodification of...

There are good reasons for preferring the concept of capitalism over that of "market economy." A capitalist economy is one that depends on the commercialization-through-monetarization of ever more social relations. The result is disequilibrium as the normal condition of a society placed under pressure by its "economy" for continuous reorganization in line with a need for ongoing capital accumulation. A capitalist society enlists the possessive individualism of its members as its principal...

The Polanyian expectation that disruptive marketization will lead to movements and policies that seek to 'embed' the market in society needs to be tempered by closer scrutiny to historical, religious and political contexts. This article studies how movements respond to marketization. The analysis proceeds through a comparison of the Turkish and Egyptian neoliberalizations, religious movements of the last decades, secular opposition, and finally recent processes, which have led to generally...

This article frames the failure of COP19 in Warsaw, the problems of the RIO+20 summit, the failure of the Copenhagen COP15, and the problems of the carbon markets within a broader legitimacy crisis of global governance, a consequence of the crisis of the global capitalist socio-ecology. Two mechanisms give rise to the loss of legitimacy: unequal development and mercantilization, or the reconfiguration of the power balance and the destruction of social ties. As a consequence, both winners and...

Contents of book: Primera parte: Karl Polanyi y su obra: Actualidad de Karl Polanyi / Jean-Louis Laville. Karl Polanyi : su vida y época / Marguerite Mendell y Kari Polanyi Levitt. Karl Polanyi y la otra economía en América Latina / José Luis Coraggio -- Segunda parte: Los ensayos de Karl Polanyi: El lugar de las economías en las sociedades (1957) ; La economía como proceso instituido (1957) ; Aristóteles descubre la economía (1957) ; Feudalismo primitivo y feudalismo de la decadencia...

The expansion of extractive corporations’ overseas business opera-tions has led to serious concerns regarding human rights–related impacts. As these apprehensions grow, we see a countervailing rise in calls for government interven-tion and in levels of socially conscious shareholder advocacy. I focus on the latter as manifested in recent use of the shareholder proposal mechanism found in corporate law. Shareholder proposals, while under-theorized, provide a valuable lens through which to...

This article analyzes the social potential of regional integration processes by using the example of European integration. Recent case law from the ECJ has led some observers to argue that judicial decisions increasingly provide European politics with a ôPolanyianö drive. We test this claim by distinguishing three dimensions to European economic and social integration: market-restricting integration, market-enforcing integration, and the creation of a European area of nondiscrimination. We...

A critical review of nine dimensions of economization of social relations and their repercussions on societal dynamics. Discusses fictitious commodification, financialization, finance-dominated accumulation, and issues of ecological dominance. Bibliographic note: Book contains selected papers from conference on Marketization of Societies, organized at Bremen University, 1-2 June 2012. This is the pre-print version of a planned conference collection with a commercial publisher.

Na raiz do pensamento Polanyiano, encontra-se a distinção entre economia no sentido substantivo e economia no sentido formal. Com efeito, a concepção substantivista que define a economia como um processo instituído de interação entre o homem e o ambiente natural e social que o rodeia e resulta em contínua oferta de meios para satisfazer as necessidades humanas constitui a base do método preconizado pelo autor: a análise institucional. Com tal distinção, Polanyi (1977a) pretende evitar a...

This contribution aims at exploring what is today the new "normal" in economic policy, namely, austerity. It must be read as a homage to Karl Polanyi, the first who understood the tragedy, and to Kari Polanyi-Levitt, who expanded on her father's thought. Austerity has nothing to do with old anticyclical or stabilizing policies. It is a permanent regime devoid of any sound foundations. It is a pure quasi-religious policy that is self-reinforcing. The author emphasizes the fundamental conflict...

An introduction is presented which discusses articles within the issue on topics including neoliberalism, the Austrian economist Karl Polanyi's perspective on the history of industrial society during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and free enterprise.

A propos de : Karl Polanyi, La Subsistance de l'homme. La place de l'économie dans l'histoire et dans la société, Flammarion

Karl Polanyi's demanding vision of freedom and democracy seems far from the reality of our times and current ideologies. However, a deeper analysis reveals the ability of his political philosophy not only to find a solution of the paradox of liberty in spite of social constraints, indeed through social institutions, but also to answer the most important practical question with which we are confronted: that of improving, as Polanyi says, "our chances of survival." The conception synthetically...

How can we explain why Karl Polanyi's book The Great Transformation is more relevant today than ever before? The central thesis of the paper is that Polanyi's analysis is groundbreaking because it goes far beyond the interpretation of the civilization of the nineteenth century. By focusing on the "belief of economic determinism," Polanyi challenges the juxtaposition of being and thinking, of material life-process and consciousness. He rejects the assumption that society encompasses a world...

In the first part of the paper, the concepts of "planning for freedom" by Friedrich Hayek and Karl Polanyi are compared. Hayek rejects "central planning" and also all kinds of "planning for specific aims," but he defends the principle of "planning for competition" as the main condition of a free society. This principle includes the provision of a pertinent institutional framework and state intervention to create markets in spheres of society previously ruled by nonmarket principles. Polanyi...