Globalization, Labor and the 'Polanyi Problem'

This article outlines what the Polanyi problem consists of and provides information on some of the implications that arise in developing a Gramscian/Polanyian strategy of counter-hegemony for the labor and the modern social movements, as of August 2004. Labor and new social movements are allegedly an integral element for a progressive solution of the so-called Polanyi problem, which is how the tendency towards the creation of a global free-market economy can be reconciled with a degree of stability and cohesion in society. Taking a Polanyian perspective allows the development of a historical perspective on the dual transformations of globalization and labor. Towards the end of the Second World War, Karl Polanyi wrote of how a self-regulating market that allegedly could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society. Such a utopia would allegedly destroy humanity and transform the world into a wilderness, an opinion mirrored by modern eco-socialists. The strategy and ideology of globalization as transformative revolution seems to echo and confirm Polanyi's account of the 19th century industrial revolution, an attempt to set up a self-regulating market.