Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market

Abstract

Preface. Abbreviations. Introduction. Karl Polanyi for the neoliberal age. Individual responsibility and the quest for community. Some systemically satanic features of capitalism. From civilizational breakdown to neoliberalism. Chapter 1: The economics and ethics of socialism. Responsibility and 'overview': the socialist accounting debate. Critique and rejoinder. The subjugation of moral ends to economic means. Towards a synthesis of Communism and Christianity. Chapter 2: The Great Transformation. The Liberal Century: contradictions of a golden age. Birth of the market economy. Malthus, Ricardo and Speenhamland. Marketization and its backwash. Disruptive strains and the end of elasticity. The originality of The Great Transformation. Some criticisms of the conceptual framework. Some criticisms of the historical argument. Chapter 3: The descent of Economic Man. From homo conomicus to homo communisticus. The debate over methods. From marginalism to formalism. Two meanings of economic. Mechanisms of integration. Inconsistencies and ambiguities. The formalist rejoinder. Marxist interpositions. The debate scatters and dissolves. Chapter 4: Trade, markets and money in archaic societies. Introduction: the oikos debate. 'Primitive' and archaic trade, markets and money. Ancient Mesopotamia: three theses. Mesopotamia: evaluation and critique. Trade and markets in Bronze and Iron Age Greece. Greece: evaluation and critique. West Africa: Dahomey, Whydah and Tivland. Dahomey and the Tiv: evaluation and critique. From Meso-America to rural India via the Berber Highlands. Conclusion. Chapter 5: 'Disembedded' and 'always embedded' economies. Embeddedness: a genealogy. Further adventures of a concept. Embeddedness and decommodification in the mid-twentieth century. Chapter 6: 'At the brink of a great transformation?' Neoliberalism and the countermovement today. Explaining the neoliberal ascendancy. Alternative futures: participatory planning and the mixed economy. No dearth of countermovements. Pendular forces. The Great Oscillation. In place of a conclusion: thoughts on the current predicament. Conclusion. A liberal anti-Communist? A Marxist? A Romantic? Tribute and critique. Notes. References. Index.

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