=================== HES POSTING ===================== This is not a reply to a specific comment on Polanyi's work, but a brief statement about it. The debate has recognized his critical contributions to economic history and anthropology but has exhibited as well some of the principal misreadings. One should understand that as far as the Great Transformation into market industrial capitalism is concerned the claim is that a market system (system of markets) including products and factors (labor, money (caplital), and habitat (land) had never before existed as the primary mode of organizing an economy (material provisioning). Polanyi fully recognized that markets (and money) were historically common and important (emergence of Athenian grain trade) BUT (large but) never formed a unified system with a logic (= general equilibrium analysis) of its own. The self-regulating market system was an artificial creation as was not "natural); neither was there an innate tendency to "truck, barter, and exchange." The myth of the anti-liberal conspiracy is that governments and social organizations and associations conspire to "intervene" or "obstruct" the natural play of self-interest and markets. In fact, (Sachs take note) the market system was consciously, ideologically, and politically constructed. The ceding of control to the market system of work, money, and habitat is unsustainable due to countervailing forces of social protection such as regulation (ICC, FDA) and labor unions and social welfare programs. The chief substantive contribution is to recognize that in addition to the market (and market places - e.g. fairs) economic activity and exchange relations may take the forms of reciprocity, redistribution (Xmas tree, centralized taxes), and householding (mother feeding children). I see a close affinity with Coase and the NIE tradition in IO. Even for capitalists markets are a poor way to organize exchange. I have argued that the modern corporation is an added type of non-market exchange system where resources are taken out of the market so that they can be more effectively managed. If you look at the modern U.S. economy a great deal of our exchange takes place outside the market in governments, corporations, non-profits, and households. We still have reciprocities within families, neighborhoods, and localities. Polanyi was not arguing by the way for a return to community; in his chapter, freedom in a complex society, he looks forward to enhanced social protections with maximal personal liberties in something like the modern democractic welfare state. John Adams [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]