=================== HES POSTING ====================== I would like just to make a point that, in my opinion, may be useful to settle the terms of the discussion. To put it crudely, the thesis under discussion is whether there has been a "great transformation" of a non-market society into a market society; if I am not wrong, sometimes this problem has been referred to in the course of the discussion as the transformation of a non-capitalistic society into a capitalistic one. It should be noted that "market" is not the same as "capital". I think that the historical evidence provided by Moser clearly points out that markets were already developed in ancient times and that they played a very dominant role in the social structure, so that, in this respect, it could be said that there is no essential difference between 19th century England and Ancient Athens (this is what his quotation from Edward Cohen comes to say). I agree with him that something similar to the Schumpeter's "Great Gap" has ocurred in this field. Moser refers to Aristotle as regarding the growing importance of 'market economy' as a new phenomenon (Politics 1258b1ff.). I feel, however, that that which Aristotle is looking at is not the market, but capital: exchange as such is not affected by the fact the the end of exchange is the satisfaction of a need or profit. What concerns Aristotle is the unnatural use of money, that is to say, its use not as a means of trade, which is its function by nature, but its use as the end of trade (and production), that is, the accumulation of money as the end of social economic activities; a very similar concern to that which we can find, for example, in Boisguillebert. Marx sees in Aristotle the first thinker who has noted the existence of a new way of structuring society, and of course, the market, namely, the capital ("Das Kapital", volume 1, section 2, chapter 4, note 6). I do not mean to say that Marx is right in his reading of Aristotle, nor in his view of social history as the development of capital; indeed, I think that his very concept of capital is defective in some important ways. My point is that the truth value of Polanyi's thesis depends crucially on what we understand capital to be (and, of course, a "capitalistic" society). Of course, it is very interesting to know to what extent money was used in ancient times or market forces (would "forces of capital" be a more accurate name?) allow to act, to know how markets were organized, etc., but, as the discussion shows, all these differences are of degree, not substantial ones, and this is what seems to be required by a transformation to be "great". Kepa M. Ormazabal Department of Economic Theory University of the Basque Country E-mail: [log in to unmask] ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]