Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies: Essays of Karl Polanyi.
About this book
Polanyi used economic anthropology and early economic history to jar us loose from ideas and generalizations about man and society implanted by the Industrial Revolution. (Classical economics and the ideology of laissez-faire, as well as Marxian socialism, came out of the English Industrial Revolution). He was particularly concerned to dislodge the notion -so widely and implicitly held- that markets are ubiquitous and invariable form of economic organization; that any economy can be translated into market terms, and the further notion that economic organization determines social organization and culture in all societies. These he regarded as wrong generalizations from the one very special case (laissez-faire capitalism) for which they are true. He argued that these generalizations must be disproved and disbelieved if we are evet to make industrial technology serve the needs of human community, and indeed if we are to understand the nature of economic organization in early and primitive economies. -from the Introduction by George Dalton, professor of economics and anthropology at Northwestern University.This volume brings together some of the significant essays by late Karl Polanyi, whose writings are among the most influential factors in the present growth of interest in comparative economic systems and economic anthropology.