Karl Polanyi Research Articles

Non-market institutions and crime in US counties: Hayek v. Polanyi

Karl Polanyi’s The great transformation emphasized the importance of non-market institutions for social equity and stability. In that same era, Friedrich Hayek postulated in The road to serfdom that superior economies were market-based and featured minimal government. I compare these worldviews in relation to property and violent crime. Using US county data, change in crime is modeled as a function of economic structure, economic conditions, and demographics. Consistent with Polanyi, the size of the public sector in the economy negatively associates with crime. Within the public sector, education is a critical crime-reducing function, more so than law enforcement. Industry diversity is positively associated with crime, contrary to Hayek. Manufacturing equates with lower crime and the size of the private non-profit sector is unrelated to crime. Overall the results favor Polanyi’s assertion that non-market institutions are necessary to counter the harsh outcomes arising from market economic systems.

Karl Polanyi, the “always-embedded market economy,” and the re-writing of The Great Transformation

This article seeks to subject Fred Block and Margaret Somers’ influential reconstruction of Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation to a systematic review. I show that Block & Somers’s central claim—that Polanyi’s thinking underwent a “theoretical shift” as he wrote his seminal book—is not supported by archival evidence. I demonstrate that all the narrative keys that Block & Somers advance to lend plausibility to their discovery of a “theory of the always-embedded market economy” in The Great Transformation, wither under critical probing. While this article does not advance a comprehensive alternative reconstruction of Polanyi’s main work, the essential continuities it uncovers in his social thought suggest that Polanyi’s book is best understood as the culmination of his long-standing efforts to rebuild a radically transformative socialism on non-Marxist foundations. The recognition that Polanyi’s political purposes extend far beyond regulated capitalism or social-democracy, I conclude, makes it possible—and indeed necessary—to read The Great Transformation as an internally coherent work of social theory.

The struggle for bread. The Emperor, the city and the bakers between moral and market economies of food in Vienna, 1775–1791

ABSTRACTIn the second half of the eighteenth century, a larger socioeconomic struggle about society, the market, and food occurred in Vienna, the capital of the Habsburg Empire. As in Paris two decades earlier and New York City some decades later, in Vienna food was reconceptualised from a public to a private good. This paper argues that in all three cities, surprisingly similar attempts were made to commodify food and to make it a ‘fictitious commodity’. As this triggered resistance, the process can be described as a double movement between embedded and disembedded markets coined by Karl Polanyi that significantly affected how food was sold and bought. By using heretofore-disregarded archive material of the capital’s Bakers’ Guild, the contribution traces the double movement around bread between 1775 and 1791 and introduces Vienna into the internal debate on the political economy of food and the city.

The Moral Economy and Industrial Politics in the UK from the 1960s to the 1980s

The 'moral economy perspective' has enriched a number of recent analyses in the history of industrial relations. Focusing on perceptions of fairness helps to explain the reasoning and activism of workers and trade-unionists engaged in industrial politics, movements and protests. A moral economy framework seems particularly apt where activists were animated by a sense of the established order being disturbed and dismantled by employers and policy-makers. Working-class and trade-union responses to the loss of industrial employment from the 1960s to the 1980s were often articulated in terms of collective injustice. Examination of these responses has been influenced by the works of E. P. Thompson and Karl Polanyi. Seeing the erosion of manual employment and changing working-class organization through the twin frameworks of deindustrialization and the moral economy is more productive than older and arguably dead-end narratives of economic decline and trade-union defeat.

Integrated commodities in the digital economy

At the heart of the digital economy is the willful imposition of a powerful combination of hardware and software, time and data, surveillance, prediction and behavourial control. This article argues that a central ambition of digital society has been the pursuit of an integrated commodity form. The novelty of this integrated commodity stems not only from the convergence of production and consumption but also from the subsumption of sociability itself. As a consequence, we are required to consider all social actions within digital society as being transactions enshrined within an economy of integrated markets. Our acceptance of these new commodity relations is paving the way for a ‘great integration’ of simultaneous transactions across different social domains. Borrowing from Karl Polanyi’s account of an earlier transformation, this article will propose that the prerequisites of digital society and the integrated commodity form have been established through the constitution of a series of ‘fictitious commodities’.

SEE Beyond Substantive Economics: Avoiding False Dichotomies

The proposal has been put forward that ecological economics seek to become substantive economics (Gerber and Scheidel 2018). This raises important issues about the content and direction of ecological economics. The division of economics into either substantive or formal derives from the work of Karl Polanyi. In developing his ideas Polanyi employed a definition from Menger and combined this with Tönnies theory of historical evolution. In this paper I explore why the resulting substantive vs. formal dichotomy is problematic. In particular the article exposes the way in which trying to impose this dichotomy on history of economic thought and epistemology leads to further false dichotomies. Besides Polanyi, the positions of other important thinkers informing social ecological economics (SEE) are discussed including Neurath, Kapp and Georgescu-Roegen. The aim is to clarify the future direction of ecological economics and the role in that future of ideas raised under the topic of substantive economics.

Ethnoracial Populism: An Alternative to Neoliberal Globalization?

ABSTRACTWorldwide emergence of strongmen leaderships and eroded or failed democracies suggest that the era of unchallenged neoliberal hegemony may be winding down and that alternatives are rising. The presidential election of Donald Trump has inspired rightwing populists at home and abroad. This paper will analyze the Trumpist fusion of authoritarian ethnoracial nationalism with neoliberal adventure capitalism and the broader matter of how neoliberal de-democratization opens way for right-wing populism and illiberal capitalism. The topics will be explored in part through discussions of earlier theories of Friedrich Hayek, Carl Schmitt, John Dewey, and Karl Polanyi that have been revived and deployed in the current debates over neoliberalism, populism, and democracy.

Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left

Karl Polanyi—Gareth Dale concludes in the epilogue to his expansive biography—was more ‘typical’ of his generation of social democrats than a ‘dominant’ figure among them. In following his life we are not looking at a pivotal presence but for whom things might have turned out differently. We meet, rather, a person who ‘encapsulates a historical moment, their individuality condensing the defining elements of a movement or era’. Polanyi was not the outstanding figure among his generation of intellectuals in Budapest before the war, Vienna between the wars or Britain and the United States from 1934 onwards. But he is a protagonist —Dale suggests—through whom the ‘details’ of the intellectual movements with which he is associated (liberal reformism in post-Habsburg Hungary; socialism in interwar Britain; pluralism in the postwar social-scientific academy) ‘can be limned in a way that is not possible when a dominant figure is selected for portrayal’. (p. 283)

Una aproximación a la economía política: riqueza natural y poder en Metztitlán, siglo XVI

El objetivo de este artículo es determinar los procesos económicos y políticos que tuvieron lugar en la región de Metztitlán en el siglo XVI. Se partirá del marco teórico de la economía política y en particular de su postura antropológica. Los postulados de los principales representantes de la antropología económica y política como Karl Polanyi y Morton Fried permiten reconocer la relación entre la economía y la política, la cual determinó el desarrollo de Metztitlán desde el periodo prehispánico hasta la implantación de la encomienda por parte de los primeros conquistadores. El caso de Metztitlán es sumamente interesante ya que, a raíz de la gran riqueza natural y económica de la región, comenzó a formarse un núcleo de poder que se centralizó en la figura del encomendero, quien se encargó de controlar los recursos naturales y humanos y ejercer un poder basado en la fuerza y la coerción para la extracción del tributo. Los postulados teóricos de la antropología económica y política se pueden aplicar a este caso, lo que nos permite no sólo describir los hechos históricos, sino también ofrecer una interpretación.

Karl Polanyi’s Social Freedom and Debt Recognition: The Vision of a New Moral Society

Karl Polanyi’s Social Freedom and Debt Recognition: The Vision of a New Moral Society

Dom e Carisma na economia: reflexões a partir do pensamento de Chiara Lubich

O presente artigo versa sobre a busca de critérios e motivações econômicas que contrastem com a lógica instrumental predominante nos dias de hoje. O nosso percurso teórico partirá da distinção entre economia formal e substantiva, conforme enunciada por Karl Polanyi, passará pela crítica à lógica utilitarista, chegando à exigência do resgate de critérios em desuso, como o dom e a reciprocidade, presentes nos carismas. Aproximamo-nos, assim, do carisma e do pensamento de Chiara Lubich, perscrutando nesses os elementos antropológicos e a lógica relacional que sejam capazes de infundir a economia. Entendemos que, como realidade comunitária, o carisma engendra e fortalece, nas relações, a dinâmica do dom, sendo, assim, capaz de realocar a lógica instrumental para aquelas relações que são estritamente instrumentais. Por fim, apresentamos a Economia de Comunhão como exemplo concreto de realização econômica que busca estabelecer novas formas de pensar e agir na economia.

The Contemporary Relevance of Karl Polanyi to Critical Social Enterprise Scholarship

The importance of the work of Karl Polanyi to social enterprise scholarship is often maintained. However, explanations as to how and why his ideas are so relevant to the field are still relatively scarce. In this essay, we argue that engaging with Polanyi’s work directly, and Polanyian scholarship more widely, can provide a deep understanding of the underlying assumptions within current social enterprise conceptualizations, and provide insights into how the relative positioning of market and society may be manipulated to maintain hegemonic positions. Three of Polanyi’s key concepts are considered and discussed in turn: the ‘substantive economy’, the notion of ‘embeddedness’, and his ‘double movement’ thesis. The contemporary relevance of each concept, and the implications for future research, are presented and discussed, with a view to providing a platform from which to pursue a reinvigorated, emancipatory critical research agenda.

Knowledge and social freedom

For quite some time, the reception of Karl Polanyi’s writings has concentrated on those works that had been published during his lifetime. Starting with the later studies collected in Trade and Mar...

On Transformations: Past, Present and Future?

In this article, which originated from the keynote address to the conference “Karl Polanyi and the Transformation of the Contemporary World System” in Budapest in 2004, Kari Polanyi Levitt provides a vivid account of her father’s life and work. She shows how Karl Polanyi’s prediction of the fateful consequences of unleashing the destructive power of unregulated market capitalism has assumed new urgency and relevance in times of globalization and financialization, which manifest similarities with earlier penetrations of capitalism into the developing world. We have arrived at a critical moment in history. To gain perspective on possible futures we need to lengthen parameters of inquiry to embrace the history of European hegemony and the evolution of capitalism from its beginnings in mercantilist conquest. Thus, we must turn to the concepts that underlie the narrative of The Great Transformation—the fictitious commodities, the disembedded economy and the double movement—to make sense of past and present transformations and shape them in the future.

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, and Contemporary Capitalism

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, and Contemporary Capitalism

Karl Polanyi and the Law of Market Society

Karl Polanyi started his career as a doctor of law and practiced law for a while; but he did not become a legal scholar. As an economic historian, anthropologist, or sociologist, he was concerned with the relation of economy and society. But even though law is an important factor in mediating this relationship, Polanyi gave little attention to the law as such. As part of an endeavour to advance a ‘Polanyian’ economic sociology of law, this article develops the ‘law of market society’ as an analytical category. For this purpose, three argumentative strategies are combined. First, the article draws on The Great Transformation to reconstruct the role of law in the processes of commodification and decommodification. Second, it turns to Marxist scholarship to explore the conceptual link between law and economics and to ponder to what extent law itself can become a commodity. Third, it links Polanyi’s approach with American institutionalism, and Commons’ work in particular, to show how the evolution of the ‘law of market society’ can also be understood as a collective enterprise which continuously evolves. It is argued that these perspectives complement each other and help to bring the law back in where it is missing.

Historicizing Karl Polanyi

Karl Polanyi’s book The Great Transformation has found great resonance in the social sciences in recent years—especially in sociology, political economy and political science. The interest in Polanyi among historians is still modest in comparison. There are not enough studies that treat Polanyi as an object of intellectual history/history of science, nor has Polanyi been used hitherto as an idea-giver for the growing field of global history—despite the fact that his book can be understood as global history. It is high time to “historicize” Polanyi in several ways.

Karl Polanyi and the Global Network Inspired by His Work

Karl Polanyi and the Global Network Inspired by His Work

The Double Movement Ten Years After the Fall of Lehman Brothers

:Ten years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the sharpest moments of panic within the global—and particularly the United States banking system—a somewhat strange dynamic has appeared. While the principal agents behind the crisis have collapsed their own institutions, the markets that they dominated, and even provoked what has been called the third crisis of economic theory, their political power has not waned. This theme has been well addressed by some academics such as Philip Mirowski (2013), while it has flummoxed others. In this article, we will argue that Karl Polanyi’s theory of the “double movement” offers a coherent framework that is able to account for the history of the last ten years. Polanyi argues that different groups and members of society seek protection from the market, and that this search for protection has been the driving force between historical change. Polanyi does not ignore class; rather, he argues that different social classes can protect themselves in more or less effective ways. We argue that during the last ten years, the interests of globalized financial capital have been able to protect themselves with utmost effectiveness, while all other classes have been trammeled, often not even recognizing how or why actions are taken against the general interest.

Financialization, Class Interests, and Karl Polanyi’s Protective Response

:Many observers expected a stronger countermovement against neoliberalism following the Great Recession. This article argues that such a protective response failed to materialize because the financialization process has aligned the preferences of labor and rentier classes. The result has been weaker support in democracies for expansionary monetary and fiscal policies during the early stages of recessions, which further lowers aggregate spending by increasing uncertainty. Thus, reversing the culture of financialization may be a necessary condition for preventing and responding to financial crises.