To Fix Our Economy, Consult a Book from 1944
from OnTheCommons.org:
To Fix Our Economy, Consult a Book from 1944
Hungarian economist Karl Polanyi anticipated our current economic mess
By David Bollier
Economy and Markets
Events of the past several years have altered some deeply rooted assumptions about economics and politics. The market-based worldview a rosy vision of deregulation, privatization, free trade, limited government and few public services has been discredited. Who can seriously talk about a free market and freedom to choose when taxpayers were forced to pay trillions of dollars to prop up right-wingers ideological fantasy?
Yet I wonder why there are so few substantive conversations about what should replace the market fundamentalism promoted in the U.S. and around the world for the past 30 years. It may take years for the shell-shock of the economic crisis to ease, but when that occurs, I recommend that we resume the conversation that Hungarian economist Karl Polanyi initiated with his 1944 book,
The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time.
Polanyi understood that the modern market economy is not a natural, universal system for organizing societies, as its champions assert. It is, in fact, an anomaly in the long sweep of human history one that has produced many benefits, to be sure, but has also spawned deep structural tensions that threaten to overwhelm human societies.
The Next Great Transformation
Prior of the rise of the market as an ordering principle for society, politics, religion and social norms were the prevailing forces in society. Land, labor and money itself were not regarded chiefly as commodities to be bought and sold. They were embedded in social relationships, and subject to the moral consideration, religious beliefs and community authority. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://onthecommons.org/magazine/fix-our-economy-consult-book-1944