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China's foreign policy has been long committed to a principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. While one could easily point out past and present-day inconsistencies in its implementation, this article argues that defenders and critics of the principle both rely on a limited interpretation of ‘interference’ or ‘intervention’ based on an ideology of Westphalian sovereignty. Particularly problematic is the conceptual distinction between the ‘political’ or...

In the context of the literature on 'actually existing neoliberalisms', this article analyzes the policies and services supporting Italian foreign direct investment (FDI) in Slovakia. It identifies a group of organizations, both Slovak and Italian, which shape and deliver neoliberal pro-FDI policies. By studying such an 'investment promotion community' (IPC) before and after the global financial crisis of 2009, and during Italy's prolonged crisis, this article shows both the persistence and...

Despite the absence of a systematic analysis of economics in Sartre's work, we argue that a Sartrean economics can indeed be said to exist, even if it is an economics that still awaits development. The status that Sartre accords to the concept of scarcity allows him to advance the critique of economism begun by Karl Polanyi, who, for his part, had been satisfied simply to challenge the reduction of economics to its formal definition. Scarcity, Sartre teaches us, should not be submitted to...

The article explores the conception of the Great Transformation (GT) by economic historian Karl Polanyi and its contemporary applications. Topics covered include the continued existence of free market fundamentalism as a prominent ideology and as a living political project, the persistence of free market utopianism, and Polanyi's genealogy of the market system. Also discussed are his conception of industrialism and his use of functionalist theory to build a unified image of the social system.

Karl Polanyi identified a double movement which took place during the bourgeoisie hegemony when, instead of liberalism, it has made use of interventionism to perpetuate its domination over the working class. Several studies have tried to update his analysis by identifying the double movement nowadays. Nevertheless, the academia has not addressed the possibility of a reversed phenomenon where the working class would make use of liberalism to perpetuate itself in power. This paper aims at...

The article explores the established conception of actually existing neoliberalism. Topics covered include free-market neoliberalism, the nature of neoliberal theory, and the distinction between esoteric and exoteric neoliberalisms. Also discussed are the ideas of scholars Karl Polanyi and Ha-Joon Chang about the role of the state in capitalist development, and scholar Damien Cahill's idea that neoliberalism is defined by microeconomic policies of privatization, marketization and deregulation.

As China, India, and other industrializing giants grow, they are confronted with an inconvenient truth: They cannot rely on the conventions of capitalism as we know them today. Western industrialism has achieved miracles, promoting unprecedented levels of prosperity and raising hundreds of millions out of poverty. Yet, if allowed to proceed unencumbered, this paradigm will do irreversible harm to the planet. By necessity, a new approach to environmentally conscious development is already...

In an attempt to analyse the socio-economic transformations of the European Union, an increasing number of scholars have resorted to Polanyi's double movement thesis. In doing so, some scholars, by looking at the evidence of intensified marketisation of social relations, consider the EU disembedded; whereas others identify a re-embedding tendency in the recent surge of socio-environmental protection. The paper follows Lacher, Burawoy, Dale and Streeck's readings of Polanyi and argues that...

Following decades of economic globalisation and market-oriented reforms across the world, Karl Polanyi'sdouble movementhas been invoked not only to explain what is happening but also to give reasons for being hopeful about a different future. Some have suggested a pendulum model of history: a swing from markets to society leading, in the next phase, to a swing from society to markets, and so on. The double movement can also be understood dialectically as a description of an irreversible...

Marx and Polanyi both held that socialism, in one form or another, was a preferable and possible alternative to capitalism. Their ideas are seen to offer theoretical tools to understand the tensions and contradictions of capitalism, and to inform ways to overcome them. This paper discusses Polanyi's work from a Marxist perspective in order to illuminate his strengths and weaknesses. Its main focus is to discuss Polanyi's juxtaposing of commodification against exploitation, in diagnosing the...

The crisis of neoliberal globalization has led many scholars back to Karl Polanyi in their search for alternatives to the present malaise. The dominant reading appropriates the concepts of embeddedness and the double movement in support of a system of regulated, welfare-state capitalism. This article contends, however, that the concepts of embeddedness and the double movement point not towards the need to regulate capitalist markets, but towards the radical supersession of capitalism itself.

Capitalism is the only complex system known to us that can provide an efficient and innovative economy, but the financial crisis has brought out the pernicious side of capitalism and shown that it remains dependent on the state to rescue it from its own deficiencies. Can capitalism be reshaped so that it is fit for society, or must we acquiesce to the neoliberal view that society will be at its best when markets are given free rein in all areas of life? The aim of this book is to show that...

In this ambitious work, Giacomo Marramao proposes a radical reconceptualization of the world system in our era of declining state sovereignty. He argues that globalization cannot be reduced to mere economics or summarized by phrases such as ‘the end of history’ or the ‘westernization of the world’. Instead, we find ourselves embarking on a passage to a new, post-nation state age destined to transform all civilizations – and to disrupt Western geopolitical dominance. To confront the...

EXCERPT [KM]: Karl Polanyi has experienced a renaissance in recent years.13 We refer to his work in our remarks on the failures of the European project for three interrelated reasons: (1) Polanyi has underlined that modern markets were not generated by some evolutionary process but established by political planning.14 Europe's “internal market project” is the best conceivable confirmation of his thesis. (2) One of the most important insights of his work concerns the “social embeddedness” of...

The decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union to ban sex discrimination in insurance has shown the potential reach of the principle of non-discrimination. This paper discusses the different positions taken by participants in the policy process leading up to the decision, in order to reveal the potential and limitations of non-discrimination as the basis for market-regulatory social policy. It is shown that the European Commission's initial support for prohibiting insurance...

Historically, the production of a market society has depended on the commodification of valuables such as land and labour, which has also meant the disembedding of capital from elements of the “primordial,” such as kinship, spiritual relations, and identities. Today we are still witnessing the invocation of such elements of moral economies as a basis for people's collective mobilization against market pressures. The case study in this article refers to Rosia Montana, a semi-urban village in...

In 2008 Ireland experienced one of the most dramatic economic crises of any economy in the world. It remains at the heart of the international crisis, sitting uneasily between the US and European economies. Not long ago, however, Ireland was celebrated as an example of successful market-led globalisation and economic growth. How can we explain the Irish crisis? What does it tell us about the causes of the international crisis? How should we rethink our understanding of contemporary economies...

Marketisation of urban service delivery gained renewed intensity in the crisis. Mobilising Polanyi’s concept of double movement, we analyse how marketisation of public services both creates and constrains the potential for urban counter movements in the USA and Europe. We identify three main urban responses: ‘hollowing out’, where cities engage in service cut backs; ‘riding the wave’, where cities attempt to harness the market; and ‘push backs’, where cities and citizen movements oppose...

In this article I discuss Polanyi's intellectual formation in early twentieth-century Budapest and in 1920s Vienna, focusing in particular upon his relationship to Guild Socialist and Marxist theory and to Austrian Social Democracy. It was a period in which Marxism was evolving rapidly, and Polanyi was too. In his twenties, he reacted forcefully against what he saw as the evolutionary and deterministic traits of Marxist philosophy. In his thirties, his relationship to Marxism underwent a...