The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

Much of this book was heavy reading for me, mainly due my not being familiar with the background development and history of various economic theory and associated laws over 500 or so years of British history. I did stick it out and am glad I did. There are many insights as to how we have arrived at today and the book is still relevant even though it was written in 1942. I found the last few chapters and the comments in Sources to offer the most explanations to fit modern times especially with regard to the rise of fascism. Thick but worth it.

This is a great book. I wonder why we were not taught this in the freshman year, or at least as a counterpoint to Econ101. It opens up the perspective to seeing culture, economics, politics, and technology in an integrated way with an emphasis on social choesion as a unifying fabric for humanity and, looking for the right rate of economic reform. Much of what we do as "development" can in fact be harmful in the long (also short) run if we are not sensitive to the premises Polanyi is alerting us to. This is not counterpoint or counterfactual thesis per se. I am a strong proponent of the market system and also realize that this system is subsumed and must be complementary to the larger, complex social system where things are interconnected. An effective policy can only result from the collective consideration of these together. Polanyi's writing style is clear, direct, and simple and, unlike deeply nomenclature-intense economics write-ups, this book is rather an easy read. When we prescribe/teach The Industrial Revolution as an essential or secondary reading, The Great Transformation should also be a companion reading.

The good part is that at the end of the day, I learned a lot here, and Polanyi raised a lot of very interesting and under-discussed historical points to create his argument. It felt very similar to David Graeber (or I guess Graeber is similar to Polanyi) in that way. The bad part is that, whereas Graeber writes with exceptional clarity and vividness, Polanyi is obtuse and dense. And I've read other books from this era, I don't think it's the time. I think it's Polanyi's writing. Beyond that, his work serves more as analysis than prescription. It's a bit unclear exactly what he's advocating for. Which maybe is OK, though I prefer when non fiction writers offer solutions rather than just pointing out problems. All in all, if you can settle in with his writing, there are definite gems in there.

This is one of those books that can provide an epiphany to the reader -- but not very many American readers have even heard of it, unfortunately. That could be due to it's being a book primarily about English economic history, with assumptions that the reader is familiar to some extent with things like the Poor Laws and Tory socialism. But I wasn't, and was still able to glean some great insights from the work. That could be because Polanyi is not afraid of repetition. :-) A key insight, and the one that could be summed up as the theme of the book, is Polanyi's realization that prior to about 1830, the market and the economy were considered part of society. That is, economic activity was something that people did along with everything else they did, like engage in social/familial relationships, religious rituals, etc. But with the 1830s came a paradigm shift: the advent of rational capitalism. Now, the market was considered an entity by itself, outside of society. This market entity was viewed as governed by universal laws. Like laws of physics, these market laws were independent of culture, independent of social group, independent of time period, and, in fact, independent of human behavior. While any observer of human nature would say that people often make decisions for emotional reasons -- and modern neurological research shows that virtually every decision we make is a combination of the rational and the emotional -- these market laws assumed only rational behavior on the part of economic actors. Though Polanyi doesn't mention it, it's now easy to see how Alfred Marshall could get carried away with creating a mathematical foundation for microeconomics and how Leon Walras could, reportedly, say that if something couldn't be studied mathematically, it wasn't worth studying. There's no current way to model emotions with math, and so the Ricardian prototype of an emotion-less economics continues into the modern economics of today. These universal market laws frees the market from any social constraints. A number of modern neo-classical economists assert that this makes economics purely amoral, i.e., without regard for any ethics. Therefore any attempts by the public, by politicians, or by workers to add ethics to the market is an interference with pure market workings, which, according to their interpretation of Adam Smith's "invisible hand", will produce optimal results if just left alone. But Smith never said that, and in fact rational capitalism, in elevating greed and selfishness to the status of goals -- see the Ayn Rand work "The Virtue Of Selfishness" -- is, IMO, not amoral at all, but rather is a morality of its own. Anyway, back to Polanyi's insights. Another key one is the concept of a "double movement" in 19th century England. Each move to create a purer market created an ad-hoc counter move. E.g., Ricardian free trade was faced with opposition from workers losing their jobs and local firms losing business Americans can easily think of another example: where the employment of children (eventually) led to laws restricting that employment, simply because human beings have too much of a sympathetic nature to sit still for children losing limbs in the dangerous factories and mines of the time. Polanyi notes that capitalists often blame these anti-capitalist laws on planned activity by socialist anti-market groups, but he says they're actually the result of the recognition by the general public that they don't want to live under a pure market system. Yet another good insight is Polanyi's recognition that market laws treat labor, land, and money as commodities. We can see that today, where neo-classical economists assert that the law of supply and demand should apply to workers as it applies to anything else in the economy. That is, if there's a surplus of workers in one area and a shortage in another, supply and demand dictates the flow of workers from the one area to the other. But a laid-off textile worker in South Carolina is not going to move to China for a job. That's my own example, but Polanyi offers his own from modern English history. The book isn't perfect. Polanyi does have a tendency to generalize, a common failing among authors, IMO. E.g., in discussing the rise of fascism in the 1930s, he's on very shaky ground when he starts talking about the US or about Russian policy intentions during that period. I gave The Great Transformation 5 stars because, even with its faults, the reader will be thinking about Polanyi's insights for some time to come. I am.

The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Karl Polanyi. 1944. In 1944, the opposing monumental classics, The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek and The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi, were published. From the right, Hayek argued that market liberalism led to prosperity, political liberty, and prevention of authoritarian governance. From the left, Polanyi argued that the rise of market liberalism during the industrial revolution led to intolerable hardship, inevitable unsustainable countermeasures, and finally collapse into fascism, the Great Depression, and World Wars I and II. Since their publication during World War II, these markedly opposed ideas have now been tested by seventy years of history. For the first thirty years after the war, policies reflecting Polanyi’s ideas led to a mixed economy of government policies and regulated markets in the US, northern Europe, and elsewhere that produced robustly increased prosperity broadly shared at all income levels. For the next forty years, ascendency of Hayek’s ideas led to reduction of the role of government with attendant economic instability, rising inequality (with all economic gains going to the rich in the US), and coercive imposition of market liberalism by authoritarian governments with disastrous results throughout Latin America and the former Soviet Union. Given the adverse consequences of resurgent market liberalism, the rebuttal of its ideas in The Great Transformation is as important today as ever. In The Great Transformation, Polanyi maintains that before the industrial revolution, markets did not play an important role in human society—they were embedded in society rather than the other way around. Goods and services were generally distributed without the motive for profit by the non-market mechanisms of reciprocity according to social relations, centralized storage with redistribution, and production for one’s own use known as householding. When present, the role of markets was peripheral and subordinate to politics, religion, and social relations. The industrial revolution brought about an almost miraculous improvement in the tools of production accompanied by catastrophic dislocations of the lives of the common people, of which poverty was merely the economic aspect. During this time, English thinkers created the theory of market liberalism, which radically reversed the previous subordination of markets to society by removing the role for government so that society was instead subordinated to self-regulating markets (without government interference). This change required that human labor, nature, and money be turned into commodities that could be bought and sold without regard to human and social considerations. Efficient functioning of markets also required callous indifference to the social dislocation, poverty, and damage to nature that resulted and even to hunger as a motivating factor for the working class. This change from regulated to self-regulating markets that organized the whole of society on the principle of gain and profit marked a great transformation of the nature of society by the removal of democratic control of markets. The goals of this transformation were unrealistically utopian and could never be achieved without annihilating the human and natural substance of society. Even during its installation, laissez-faire proved to be a myth. Government action was mandatory to adjust the supply of money and credit, to enforce provisions for labor and land, and to prevent political disruption. Even with this level of government activity, market liberalism still imposed unsustainable hardships on ordinary people from speculative excess, growing inequality, competition from imports, depressions, unemployment, poverty, and reduced entitlement to assistance. By the late 1800s, these impossible pressures of the self-regulating market necessarily led to a countermovement in industrialized nations to protect their societies from the market. This countermovement included protectionism for national markets and competition for colonies to take resources from other societies. In exotic and colonial regions with the absence of protective measures unspeakable suffering resulted. Thus Polanyi characterizes market societies as having two opposing movements, referred to as a “double movement.” These two contradictory movements resulted in simultaneous struggles to expand the scope of the market because of the opportunities for some and to limit the scope of the market because of the adverse consequences for many. These internal contradictions led to disruptive stresses and strains that were unsustainable for market societies. In the domestic economy, class conflict resulted from issues like the choice between inflation for stability of workers incomes and employment and deflation for stability of currency for investors. Market liberals from Spencer to Mises held that popular democracy was a danger to capitalism and that workers should not have the right to vote. In the international economy, relentless shocks imposed by the gold standard forced nations to consolidate around heightened national and imperial boundaries. In international politics, intensified political, military, and economic rivalries finally culminated in World War I. By this time, the class struggle over market liberalism was at an impasse. For a critical decade, economic liberals supported authoritarian intervention in service of their deflationary policy to protect currency exchange and investment. This merely weakened the democratic forces that might otherwise have averted the fascist catastrophe. During the Great Depression, the gold standard finally collapsed, foreign debts were repudiated, capital markets and world trade dwindled away, and the global political and economic system disintegrated. In a second great transformation of society that followed, the replacements of market society by fascism, socialism, and the New Deal were similar only in discarding laissez-faire principles. The conflict between the market and the elementary requirements of an organized social life had ultimately destroyed society. World Wars I and II merely hastened its destruction. In 1944, Polanyi appears to have regarded the utopia of market liberalism as utterly discredited. He expressed the hope that the passing of market economy could become the beginning of an era of unprecedented freedom. He noted that freedom as the absence of power and compulsion as claimed by market liberals is not possible in a complex society. The function of power is to ensure the measure of conformity which is needed for the survival of the group: its ultimate source is opinion. Regulation both extends and restricts freedom; only the balance of freedoms lost and won is significant. The comfortable classes enjoy the freedom provided by leisure in security. They resent the suggestion to spread out income, leisure, and security to extend to others the freedom they enjoy. Obviously, those who lack security cannot enjoy the same freedom as the comfortable classes. Those who want more freedom for all need not fear that either power or planning will undermine their freedom. Regulation and control in a complex society strive to give us all the security we need to achieve freedom not only for the few, but for all.

Polanyi presents economic history through an analysis of the "utopian" catastrophy of the self-regulating market economy. Polanyi argues that the free market economy treats the most essential elements of human society - labor, nature, and money - as if they should be exploited like commodities. When liberalism (free marketeerism) rules, then the economy dictates what is possible in human society, and these rules are intolerable because they create conditions under which humans are impoverished and disempowered. In his final chapter he lays out the battle ground between liberalism and its alternatives, which when he was writing (1945) were socialism and fascism. Fascism refuses the dictates of economic liberalism but substitutes in its place the dictates of a state that denies individual freedom. Socialism, alternatively, holds the only promise of true freedom for the individual where economic and political rules are developed and enforced democratically for the protection of society. While this is not an easy read because it demands a background in history, he is a fluent and persuasive writer.

Well, I was going to review this wonderful work. However, Robert Moore's review is so spot on that there is really no need to take up more space. Also I need a nap. Anyway, this book is truly fascinating. If you are at all interested in Political Economy, this is perhaps one of the most important books you will ever read. There is no school which has the authors name attached to it, nor is there a political movement dedicated to the realization of his ideas. In most cases this is because the author did not contribute original thought or make an adequate connection of his thought process with reality. In Polanyi's case, this is because the originality of his thought cuts through the specialized form in which science and social studies is presented today and cannot possible be claimed to belong to 'economics' any more than it can of 'sociology', 'anthropology', 'history', 'international relations', etc.. Read this book.

A must read.

Historical exceptionality of market-driven society. A great book. A classical investigation concerning the relationship between economy, culture, and politics. Anthropologically sound.

ハイエク、ミルトン フリーマンといったネオリベラルの市場万能主義の経済学者を信奉して、規制撤廃や官から民の流れを主導した学者やジャーナリズムが、口にすることさえなかった学者が著わした本書が再び世界では関心を集めている。浅薄皮相な学者やジャーナリズムが、日本という国の現在の停滞と混迷に大きな力を貸してきたことを思うと､遅きに失している感もあるが、ハイエク等と同時代者であるこの経済学者の深い思索に富む言説に触れることは、今こそ求められていることだと思う。

In my opinion, this book is the most important book of the 20th century. With historical, empirical and anthropological diligence, Polanyi shows that the "market" is not something which arises naturally or spontaneously but has been created by heavy and brutal as well as planned interventions of the state. On the other hand, social countermovements happened spontaneously to safe nature, men and the economy from the brutal force of free markets. Polanyis conclusions are based on profund historical and empirical analysis. With Polanyis insight it is unbelievable what happened since the 1980s in a (Neo)liberal backlash, completely ignoring the implications of the book with respect to nature, men and our society. We now have the empirical evidence, that Polanyi was true and that (1) markets have to embedded into the economy and (2) the economy has to be embedded into society and not the other way around. I would highly recommend this book to everyone, it is more important than ever.

This in an outstanding work on economics and is a must read for anyone interested in how we got to where we are economically speaking. It is written with verve and although a tour de force, is a fairly challenging read. The book delivers incisive commentary on the impact of economic practice on human life, an aspect frequently overlooked in most economic writing and, as it was written many decades ago, may be considered prophetic.

"The Great Transformation" by Karl Polanyi is a classic economic exposé. It was written during WWII and first published shortly thereafter. It doesn't contain or mention postwar economic refinements. It does explore the economic attitudes that accompanied the Industrial Revolution. Polanyi's incisive analysis is no less relevant today than it was 70 years ago. # In short, Polanyi debunks the free-market economy. He debunks economists who call for less government interference. Whenever markets have been deregulated, bad things have happened. Financial players if left unopposed have boosted prices to fantastic levels that bear no resemblance to reality. Employers if left unopposed have dehumanized workers till they've become mere commodities or zombie machines. Landowners if left unopposed have turned thriving ecological systems into wastelands that are the remains of short-term profits. # From the 17th-century till WWII, Polanyi gives concrete examples where governments have been forced to intervene in the market economy to prevent social catastrophes. The old saw that "supply and demand will prove beneficial for everyone" is debunked six ways to Sunday. # The major problem for economic theorists is that they assume human industry is somehow divorced from Nature. They take no account of the capital losses to The Commons when metal ingots are extracted from the earth. New reserves of gold, copper or oil are recorded as gifts from on high. Economic ledgers make no allowance for the "consumed" oil as if it will always be there in limitless supply. # Without a social conscience, business reverts to a destructive plague that helps no one but the elite at the top of the rock pile. Polanyi documents the countless results of deregulation from 1795 to 1940. In every case, unfettered markets dehumanized the bulk of citizens. Unfettered markets bankrupted traditional family farms. They lowered wages, created greater unemployment, promoted unhealthy lifestyles, destroyed priceless artifacts and assigned nonsensical values to everyday staples. # At present, we live on the fragile surface of a bubble which has been stretched out of all proportion. # Over 90% of the money that is recognized in international trade is monopoly money i.e. M2, M3, M4, etc. You or I cannot spend monopoly money. We only see the currencies issued by banks i.e. M1. Our money (M1) is taxed to the hilt since it represents transactions in the REAL economy. The elite industrialists, investment bankers and absentee landlords deal with monopoly money. Only THEY can turn monopoly money into currencies that will buy stuff in the real world. Worse, monopoly money is rarely if ever taxed. 99% of us work to support governments that give the elites a free ride. # One day the bubble of interdependent debt will burst. Most of us will become destitute, but the elite will retain their assets because monopoly money won't be touched. It's fantasy money afterall. Only everyday currencies will disappear or become worthless as toilet paper. # I recommend Karl Polanyi's "The Great Transformation" and please take his advice to heart before robots, controlled by the elite, herd all of us into concentration camps.