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A book review in a French journal

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...

This article sets out a framework for analysing the globalizing labour process, arguing that the old dualisms of ‘capital’ versus ‘labour’ and ‘formal sector’ versus ‘informal sector’ are inadequate and unhelpful. It begins by making conceptual distinctions between work and labour and between labour and labour power, and goes on to identify a globalizing class structure in which a ‘precariat’ is emerging as a potentially transformative new mass class. Denied so-called ‘labour rights’ and...

Le don et l’échange marchand sont généralement opposés. Pourtant, l’un et l’autre apparaissent comme fondateurs du lien social dans la mesure où l’on prend en compte la relation qu’ils créent au niveau interindividuel et collectif. Le don apparaît ainsi associé à une certaine forme de réciprocité et le marché à une certaine forme de gratuité., Gift and commodity exchange are generally opposed. But both appear as founders of the social bond when we consider the relationship they create...

Economics and the economy have an uneasy relationship. Economics is akin to the logic of mathematics in contrast to the term "economy," which is an institutional framework to provide for material wants. While they overlap in the modern market economy, economics provides distorted results when applied to tribal societies, the economies of antiquity, or modern state-organized economies. Harold A. Innis and Karl Polanyi both attempted to find a different conceptual framework for a truly general...

This article examines from a care approach the social and institutional responses to the development of the market economy in the European context. Studying this long period -which Polanyi called the double movement- is relevant because it constitutes the historical process by which the interests of the market, the logic of profits and its social and scientific naturalization come to dominate. Since then, the importance of care work in people's life, the reproduction of the labour force, and...

El artículo se centra en la vida y obra del historiador Karl Polanyi, quien escribió el libro "La Gran Transformación", en 2014 y también discute la investigación realizada sobre la vida económica de las sociedades primitivas por Polanyi.

Using Karl Polanyi's analytical instrument, I argue that the current withdrawal of the industrialized powers and the emergence of alternative policies in Latin America are determined by the crisis of the neoliberal model. The polarity between democracy and the market, observed since the beginnings of liberal capitalism, has deepened since the inter-war period due to the appearance of so-called "mass democracy." Since that period, foreign policies of industrialized countries have derived from...

The social protests ort the streets of indebted sovereigns in crises across the Eurozone have made debt restructuring an imperative. Further delay in achieving this expeditiously and equitably significantly exacerbates the social costs of crises from which current and future generations will struggle to recover. This article examines the feasibility of the drastic and widespread debt restructuring needed to resolve the problem in the face of existing private law sanctions that protect...

In this study author will try to make comparative analysis of Adam Smith and Karl Polanyi's ideas about market. According to Smith market is a mechanism which allocating resources through invisible hand. Contrary to Smith, Polanyi, asserts that a market is a intervention style to economy. Intervention is an inherent property of market. In the first part of this study Adam Smith's opinions about market which assings limited duty to state and defends social interest will come true through...

This paper aims to clarify the logical structure of Karl Polanyi's concept of institution, especially with regard to his most important contribution to political economy—the conception of self-regulating markets as institutions. Although Polanyi did not provide a well-developed concept of institution, this article argues that such a concept exists in his work. Moreover, there is in Polanyi's work a sophisticated institutionalist account of the self-regulating market that has been largely...

In this article I revisit Karl Polanyi's writings on ancient Mesopotamia. I begin by situating them in the context of his general approach to trade, markets and money in the ancient world. Next, I reconstruct his major theses on Mesopotamia, drawing upon his published works as well as unpublished documents in the Karl Polanyi and Michael Polanyi archives. Finally, I provide a critical assessment of the merits and demerits of his contribution, with reference to Assyriological research...

This article challenges some fundamental propositions of property rights theory by revealing the inability of new institutional economics to fully grasp the notion of property, as reflected in its narrow and problematic definition of property rights. The concept of property relations is proposed as better suited to capture the social and institutional aspects of property. By reconsidering the case of the Montagnais, originally used by Alchian and Demsetz for illustrative purposes, and...

As the environmental debate has intensified, post-Keynesians, Regulationists and Polanyians remain relatively silent. All treat time as historical, consider economic issues subordinate to politics and have plenty to say about growth, institutions, uncertainty, and path-dependent events. These concepts seem pertinent to understanding the economic-environment problematic. This article explores the 'environmental potential' of these three heterodox economic traditions. We examine the conception...

Using the work of Karl Polanyi as its axis, this study attempts to sketch a criticism of economicism and of the society that produces it, a society launched on a historical cultural path that may well be understood as a gradual economic totalization of human life. That is the critical path which will be posed here, if only in an embryonic manner.

The problem of the governance of economic transactions arises from the fact that they are sequential. This creates uncertainty regarding the fulfilment of implicit or explicit contracts. Institutional economics understands this uncertainty as arising from opportunism and seeks a solution in specialised contract enforcement institutions. Economic sociology understands the uncertainty as a result of misunderstanding and finds a solution in mechanisms of governance that, in addition to...

The problem of the governance of economic transactions arises from the fact that they are sequential. This creates uncertainty regarding the fulfilment of implicit or explicit contracts. Institutional economics understands this uncertainty as arising from opportunism and seeks a solution in specialised contract enforcement institutions. Economic sociology understands the uncertainty as a result of misunderstanding and finds a solution in mechanisms of governance that, in addition to...

This paper proposes an analytical framework using the regulation approach and consisting of explanations of some concepts and a simple way of modeling; the concepts and modeling are developed by focusing on the distributive aspect of environmental issues and using environmental costs as key indices. As a basis for the framework, we refer to the ideas of Polanyi and the surplus approach, and we recognize the socio-economic system as interlinked triple reproductions of the economy, humans, and...

This article investigates China's market reforms and rapid economic development from the late 1970s. The following questions are posed: (1) How did the Chinese 'peasant revolution' and the rural policies and institutions of Mao China influence the market reforms and subsequent economic development? (2) How does China's development after the market reforms relate to Marxist and Polanyian notions of proletarization and commodification of land and labour as preconditions of capitalist...