Polanyi, Piketty, and the Twenty-First Century Market Economy

Abstract

Both Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation and Thomas Piketty in Capital and Ideology make use of the long historical roots of our current high levels of inequality and disappearing safety net, in an effort to understand the ideological basis of, and turmoil within, market societies. Both Polanyi and Piketty decry the erosion of the social institutions that maintained social stability and their replacement by market institutions. In this article, we provide brief overviews of the arguments of both Polanyi and Piketty and then use their framework to analyze current economic and social developments.