Retelling the Great Transformation

In this paper I partly retell Polanyi's narrative of the industrial revolution found in his Great Transformation. I discuss how new labor laws consolidated in the 19th century created a legal structure of coerced contractual labor, that did not fit the ideals of free market economics. My retelling focuses on how capitalists in some industries relied on legal coercion of their workers as a means of discipline and labor process control. Through this retelling I demonstrate that Polanyi was still beholden to neo-classical economics in his historical account, errantly seeing the rise of a free market in labor with the Poor Law reforms of 1834 when in fact no such freedom existed. Therefore, he could not provide a fully-fledged institutional analysis of economic embeddedness that lies at the core of his theory. To realize a fully-developed institutional analysis I argue that we need to bring class conflict back into the narrative of institutional change through an analysis of legality and its transformation. I partly map out the outlines of a revised institutional analysis that places emphasis on the spatial organization of power, with 'stateness' conceptualized as a variable in which political power (and more especially authority) is scrutinized as historically accreted institutional structures. I also emphasize the historically specific role of the 'local state' in this narrative. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript