Karl Polanyi
The C^reat
Transformation
The Political and
Economic Origins
of Our Time
F O R E W O R D BY
Joseph E.Stiglitz
I N T R O D U C T I O N B Y
Fred Block
BEACON P R E S S B O S T O N
To my beloved wife
Ilona Duczynska
I dedicate this book
which owes all to her help and criticism
Beacon Press
25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892
www.beacon.org
Beacon Press books
are published under the auspices of
the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
© 1944) 1957) 2001 by Karl Polanyi
First Beacon Paperback edition published in 1957
Second Beacon Paperback edition published in 2001
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
05 04 03 02 01 00 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper ANSI/NISO
specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.
Text design by Dan Ochsner
Composition by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Polanyi, Karl, 1886-1964.
The great transformation: the political and economic origins of our time / Karl
Polanyi; foreword by Joseph E. Stiglitz; with a new introd. by Fred Block.—2nd
Beacon Paperback ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1944 and reprinted in 1957
by Beacon in Boston.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8070-5643-x (pa: alk. paper)
1. Economic history. 2. Social history. 3. Economics—History. I. Title.
HC53 .P6 2001
330.9—dc2i
00-064156
Contents
FOREWORD BY JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ Vll
INTRODUCTION BY FRED BLOCK X v i i i
NOTE ON THE 2 0 0 1 EDITION XXxix
AUTHOR'S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xl
Part One: The International System
i. The Hundred Years' Peace 3
2. Conservative Twenties, Revolutionary Thirties 21
Part Two: Rise and Fall of Market Economy
I. Satanic Mill
3. "Habitation versus Improvement" 35
4. Societies and Economic Systems 45
5. Evolution of the Market Pattern 59
6. The Self-Regulating Market and the Fictitious
Commodities: Labor, Land, and Money 71
7. Speenhamland, 1795 81
8. Antecedents and Consequences 90
9. Pauperism and Utopia 108
10. Political Economy and the Discovery of Society 116
II. Self-Protection of Society
11. Man, Nature, and Productive Organization 136
12. Birth of the Liberal Creed 141
13. Birth of the Liberal Creed (Continued):
Class Interest and Social Change 158
14. Market and Man 171
15. Market and Nature 187
[vi]
Contents
16. Market and Productive Organization 201
17. Self-Regulation Impaired 210
18. Disruptive Strains 218
Part Three: Transformation in Progress
19. Popular Government and Market Economy 231
20. History in the Gear of Social Change 245
21. Freedom in a Complex Society 257
NOTES ON SOURCES
1. Balance of Power as Policy, Historical Law,
Principle, and System 269
2. Hundred Years' Peace 273
3. The Snapping of the Golden Thread 274
4. Swings of the Pendulum after World War I 275
5. Finance and Peace 275
6. Selected References to "Societies and
Economic Systems" 276
7. Selected References to "Evolution of the
Market Pattern" 280
8. The Literature of Speenhamland 285
9. Poor Law and the Organization of Labor 288
10. Speenhamland and Vienna 298
11. Why Not Whitbread's Bill? 299
12. Disraeli's "Two Nations" and the Problem
of Colored Races 300
I N D E X 305
[ Joseph E. Stiglitz ]
Foreword
(~it is a pleasure to write this foreword to Karl Polanyi's classic book
A. describing the great transformation of European civilization from
the preindustrial world to the era of industrialization, and the shifts in
ideas, ideologies, and social and economic policies accompanying it.
Because the transformation of European civilization is analogous to
the transformation confronting developing countries around the
world today, it often seems as if Polanyi is speaking directly to present-
day issues. His arguments—and his concerns—are consonant with
the issues raised by the rioters and marchers who took to the streets in
Seattle and Prague in 1999 and 2000 to oppose the international fi-
nancial institutions. In his introduction to the 1944 first edition, writ-
ten when the IMF, the World Bank, and the United Nations existed
only on paper, R. M. Maclver displayed a similar prescience, noting,
"Of primary importance today is the lesson it carries for the makers of
the coming international organization." How much better the policies
they advocated might have been had they read, and taken seriously, the
lessons of this book!
It is hard, and probably wrong even to attempt to summarize a
book of such complexity and subtlety in a few lines. While there are as-
pects of the language and economics of a book written a half century
ago that may make it less accessible today, the issues and perspectives
Polanyi raises have not lost their salience. Among his central theses are
the ideas that self-regulating markets never work; their deficiencies,
not only in their internal workings but also in their consequences
(e.g., for the poor), are so great that government intervention becomes
necessary; and that the pace of change is of central importance in de-
termining these consequences. Polanyi's analysis makes it clear that
popular doctrines of trickle-down economics—that all, including the
poor, benefit from growth—have little historical support. He also
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