The Economic Thought of Karl Polanyi: Lives and Livelihood

171 Pages·1986·16.308 MB·English

by  J. R. Stanfield (auth.)

THE ECONOMIC THOUGHT OF KARL POLANYI
Also by J. R. Stanfield
THE ECONOMIC SURPLUS AND NEO-MARXISM
ECONOMIC THOUGHT AND SOCIAL CHANGE
THE ECONOMIC
THOUGHT OF KARL
POLANYI
Lives and Livelihood
J. R. Stanfield
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-18436-1 ISBN 978-1-349-18434-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18434-7
© J. R. Stanfield, 1986
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1986
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly & Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1986
ISBN 978-0-312-23658-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stanfield, J. Ron, 1945-
The economic thought of Karl Polanyi.
Includes index.
1. Polanyi, Karl, 1886-1964. 2. Economists-Hungary.
I. Title.
HB102.P64S73 1986 330.1 85-27785
ISBN 978-0-312-23658-8
For Jackie, Bailey and Kellin,
who teach me every day about life and livelihood
Contents
Preface ix
1 THE LIFE AND WORK OF KARL POLANYI 1
2 THE METHODOLOGY OF ECONOMICS 26
3 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC INTEGRATION 54
4 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MARKET
CAPITALISM 93
5 INDUSTRIALISM AND FREEDOM 125
Notes 151
Index 159
Vll
Preface
By this book I seek to draw attention to the possibility and necessity
of an economics that is more existential and human-centred than the
conventional economics. Karl Polanyi did not underestimate the
significance of livelihood to lives; he recognized that an inadequate
quantity of the former is detrimental to the quality of the latter.
He emphasized nonetheless that beyond sufficient livelihood
preoccupation with more economic wealth greatly erodes the quality
of human existence. An economics and a larger culture that puts the
economy in its proper subordinate place in human society are
required to locate the golden mean that avoids the debilitating
consequences of meagreness as well as the humiliating enslavement
to avariciousness. For me, the work of Karl Polanyi is an excellent
start toward a new way of thinking about the economy and its place
in society, of lives and livelihood.
For convenience, throughout the book I have used parenthetical
abbreviations for several books written by Polanyi or the Polanyi
Group. They are:
GT Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1957; originally published in 1944).
TMEE Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg and Harry W.
Pearson (eds), Trade and Market in the Early Empires
(Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1971, originally published
in 1957).
DST Karl Polanyi in collaboration with Abraham Rotstein,
Dahomey and the Slave Trade (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1966).
PAME George Dalton (ed.), Primitive, Archaic, and Modern
Economies: Essays of Karl Polanyi (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1968).
LM Karl Polanyi (Harry W. Pearson, ed.), The Livelihood
of Man (New York: Academic Press, 1977).
ix
X Preface
TPE George Dalton (ed.), Tribal and Peasant Economies
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967).
EDSC George Dalton (ed.), Economic Development and
Social Change (Garden City, New York: Natural
History Press, 1971).
SAE Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago:
Aldine, 1974).
In the necessary endeavour of trying to acknowledge those who
contributed to this effort, I face a formidable task because they are
so many and I needed so much help. For discussion and suggestions,
I thank Ray Benton; Terry Neale, Ernie Diedrich, Doug Brown, Bill
Kern, Rich Stratton, Bruce McDaniel, Bill Dugger, Anne Mayhew,
Bud Hartman, Lee Gray, Hal Cochrane, and Bob Keller. For
sharing unpublished manuscripts with me, I thank George Dalton
and Fred Block. I took the inspiration for the book's title from Peter
Drucker who observed that Polanyi was one of the few since the
young Marx to raise the question of the relationship between
'livelihood', the economy, and 'lives', or the community. Special
thanks go to AI Eichner for his valuable interest and suggestions and
to Karl Polanyi-Levitt for helping me to avoid the more egregious
errors in the biographical synopsis of Polanyi. Some of the chapters
in the book reuse or are based on articles published previously in
the Journal of Economic Issues and the International Journal of
Social Economics. I appreciate the typists who are the really
productive people in this project: Willa Hintergardt, Gwendolyn
Ruffin, and Waneta Boyce. Finally, there are Jackie, Bailey, and
Kellin, and I have already said in the dedication that for which I
profoundly thank them.
1 The Life and Work of
Karl Polanyi
Although my principal concern in this book is developing the ideas
of Karl Polanyi for their significance to the practice of economics
and everyday life in the democratic industrial societies, a book such
as this one is by its very nature to some extent an exercise in the
history of ideas. Therefore, in this initial chapter I treat Polanyi
from that perspective, i.e. I attempt to convey an impression of the
man, his times, and his place in the evolution of social and economic
thought. I first briefly review his life and attempt to convey
something of his nature. Secondly, and thirdly, I summarize his
intellectual antecedents or influences and the influence he has to
date exercised on other scholars. The discussion of his influence is
particularly synoptic and intentionally suggestive with no pretense of
being definitive. There are several reasons for this. His principal
influence thus far is in anthropology, not in my chosen field of
economics. His influence is only now developing outside anthropology
and therefore difficult and fruitless to assess in detail. Finally,
exhaustive treatment of the matter of Polanyi's present influence
would carry me too far afield from my main purpose in the book:
interpreting the thrust of his work and arguing that it should be
much more influential in the practice of economics and everyday
life.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES1
Karl Polanyi was born in Vienna on 21 October 1886, to intensely
intellectual and politically concerned parents whose children inherited
all their fervour. Polanyi's father, Mihaly Pollacsek, birthdate
uncertain, was born into a Jewish bourgeois family in the town of
Ungvar, then located in a Hungarian province, now in Slovakia.
1