#karl polyani

[feministdragon]

wow so I was today years old when I learned that the concept of the UBI is as old as the concept of a labor market

and that also by effectively preventing the establishment of a labor market (i.e. the buying and selling of human being's labor time) for at least 40 years, it eased the suffering of workers in Britain during the transition to the market economy.

and the middle class opposed it for the same reason it's opposed now: that if people didn't have to work for a living, they wouldn't

and by 'work for a living' they meant 'staff our businesses'

'nobody wants to work' is a 300 year old whine

--The Great Transformation, Karl Polyani Ch.7 p.78

[zwischenstadt]

We hit here on the limits of a constructivist conception of morality. As much as contemporary political economy has been minded to refute the fact that norms are merely brute, objective facts, it still relies on the assumption that their effects tend to correspond to their manifest meaning. Norms are seen as operating through inscription or interpellation, or, when actors are seen to play a more active role, through internalization or rule-following. This model, however, is too literal, linear, or ‘clean’ a reading of the role of norms in contemporary society. It underestimates the complexity of the process of moral constitution: it is too preoccupied with the overt meaning of norms and has little interest in their latent content. In pursuing this line of argument, this article draws inspiration from scholars who have highlighted the centrality of affect to issues of political economy. Such approaches also concern themselves with the normative dimension of human life but situate this in a wider and more complex constellation of human motivations. Our political imaginary is layered, composed not just of norms and discursive representations but equally of drives and affinities that have a certain degree of autonomy and interact with the more cerebral and conscious aspects of moral life in complex and often surprising ways.

Seen from such a perspective, norms are not like external principles that inscribe themselves on us or that we internalize; instead, they are immanent, emerging from within the connectivity that is the stuff of social life. That is not to deny that there are strongly hierarchical aspects to the operation of norms in modern life, but rather to argue that the operation of this normative force reflects the distinctive process through which it emerges: precisely because norms are immanently generated, their influence tends to become more deeply and organically embedded in the basic structure of our personality and character. That is, our relationship to social order and political authority becomes invested with emotional energy. Norms do not cleanly shape the world in their image but operate through a complex affective economy on which a concept like rule-following provides little analytical grip.

Martjin Konings, "Imagined Double Movements: Progressive Thoughts and the Specter of Neoliberal Populism"

[feministdragon]

“The crucial point is this: labor, land, and money are essential elements of industry; they also must be organized in markets; in fact, these markets form an absolutely vital part of the economic system.”

“But labor, land, and money are obviously NOT commodities; the postulate that anything that is bought and sold must have been produced for sale is emphatically untrue in regard to them. In other words, according to the empirical definition of a commodity they are not commodities. Labor is only another name for a human activity which goes with life itself, which in its turn is not produced for sale but for entirely different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from the rest of life, be stored or mobilized; land is only another name for nature, which is not produced by man; actual money, finally, is merely a token of purchasing power which, as a rule, is not produced at all, but comes into being through the mechanism of banking or state finance. None of them is produced for sale. The commodity description of labor, land, and money is entirely fictitious.”

“To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society. For the alleged commodity "labor power" cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting also the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of a man's labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity "man" attached to that tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes de-filed, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed. Finally, the market administration of purchasing power would periodically liquidate business enterprise, for shortages and surfeits of money would prove as disastrous to business as floods and droughts in primitive society. Undoubtedly, labor, land, and money markets are essential to a market economy. But no society could stand the effects of such a system of crude fictions even for the shortest stretch of time.”

[feministdragon]

"The major tragedy attendant on the Industrial Revolution was brought about not by the callousness and greed of profit-seeking capitalists--though there was inhumanity enough in the record--but by the social devastation of an uncontrolled system, the market economy."

"Men failed to realize what the cohesion of society meant."

"The tremendous problem of the social control of a revolutionary change was unappreciated; optimistic philosophies obscured it, shortsighted philanthropies conspired with power interests to conceal it, and the wisdom of time was still unborn."

this was written around 1950, and yet, it's so applicable today, especially to the accelerating digital transformation

[feministdragon]

jfc a market economy is basically a totalitarian system

。it's an economic system controlled, regulated, directed by markets alone

。order in production and distribution entrusted to self-regulation

。expects all human beings to be only interested in maximizing gains

。assumes prices of goods/services equals their real value (see Maria Mazzucato about why this is not true)

。assumes presence of money

。assumes production/distribution is controlled by prices because profits depend on them and therefore goods will be distributed equally (lmao)

。self regulation means ALL production is for sale, and ALL incomes must derive from production of some kind

。all elements of industry MUST have markets in order for this to work

goods and services -> commodity prices = income from profit

labor -> wages = price for use of work, income for work-providers

land -> rent = price for use of land, income for land-providers

money -> interest = price for use of money, income for money-providers

。under the above conditions, all incomes derive from 'sales' on the 'market', and incomes will be sufficient to buy all goods produced (lmao)

ALSO:

。NOTHING must be allowed to inhibit market formation

。NO INCOMES other than through sales (i.e. foraging, production for self-use, native landways)

。NO INTERFERENCE to price setting, regardless of goods labor land or money

it's totalitarian.

life is subordinate to Market

it's all Market, no Life

.

[zwischenstadt]

Oh my God Rothbard’s critique of Polyani is hilarious

“ There are several things to be said about this worship of the primitive. First, it is absolutely illegitimate to do, as Polanyi does, and infer the history of pre-Western civilization from analysis of existing primitive tribes. Let us never forget that the existing primitive tribes are precisely the ones that didn’t progress—that remained in their primitive state. To infer from observing them that this is the way our ancestors behaved is nonsense—and apt to be the reverse of the truth, for our ancestors presumably behaved in ways which quickly advanced them beyond the primitive stage thousands of years ago. To scoff, therefore, at the idea that our ancestors among primitive tribes engaged in barter, then in monetary exchange, etc., on the basis of the magic and games indulged in by present-day primitives, is a blunder of the highest order.“

Polyani failed to take into account the free market, gold standard economy of the Cro Magnons, Celtic Tribes, and French peasants!

https://mises.org/library/down-primitivism-thorough-critique-polanyi

[zwischenstadt]

Quite coincidentally, and no doubt affirming Hayek's fears, the Workers' Education Association (WEA) was about to recruit a new lecturer, to teach night-school classes on English social and economic history in Kent and Sussex.  The impressive letters of recommendation, from G.D.H. Cole and R.H. Tawney, explained that while the subject was quite new to him, Karl Polyani could be relied upon to rise to the challenge.  Confronted by the ascendancy of Austrian fascism, Polyani had reluctantly left Vienna in 1933, living a hand-to-mouth existence in Britain for several years before securing the WEA appointment.  Both the rich historical subject matter and the immediate social context were to have a huge effect on Polyani, since he could not help but contrast 'the inferior status of the English working class in the richest country in Europe with the social and cultural achievements of the workers of socialist Red Vienna.'  Experiencing at first hand the 'trauma' of the British class sytem, Polyani's wife recalled, 'He was teaching and he was learning.'  Polyani's voluminous lecture notes formed the working draft of The Great Transformation.

[feministdragon]

Karl Polyani on fascism. He was speaking in the past tense because he wrote this in 1944.

i'm posting this because I was surprised. I knew about the 'irrationalist philosophies' and the 'racialist esthetics', which are of course going on today, but the 'anticapitalist demagogy, heterodox currency views' and 'criticism of the party system' took me by surprise, because not only are these definitely going on now, I had no idea they were signs of fascism.