[Marxism] marxist critique of polanyi?

[Husunzi <husunzi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Has anyone seen a Marxist critique of Polanyi? Or of the general
Polanyian flavor of a lot of anti/alter-globalization analysis,
rhetoric, and politics?

I've noticed a number of Marxists refer to Polanyi's analysis of the
market's disembedment from society, "fictitious" commodification of
land, labor, and money, etc., uncritically, as if it weren't
inconsistent with Marxism. (Perry Anderson's "Jottings on the
Conjuncture" for instance.) I usually can't tell whether they really
think the two frameworks are consistent, or whether they think their
inconsistency is too obvious to need pointing out, and they're just
playing the bricoleur and borrowing some of Polanyi's concepts for fun
or as a heuristic device. But I've noticed several people point out
how a lot of alterglobalization discourse reproduces, consciously or
not, both Polanyi's way of understanding the market and the
social-democratic politics that it directly points to. (See, for
instance, "Peasants Make Their Own History, But Not Just as They
Please . . ." by Philip McMichael in the current issue of the Journal
of Agrarian Change - there he actually contrasts the food sovereignty
movement with "Polanyi's vision," but I find the similarities more
striking.) So it seems like a Marxist critique of the limits of
alterglobalization politics should also address this Polanyian vision
directly and systematically. What do other folks think? Is this a
worthwhile project? Has someone done this already?

The closest I've seen are a few offhanded references to Polanyianism
detected in some adversary being reviewed, sometimes followed by an
allusion to Polanyi's politics, but no systematic critique or
elaboration on what's wrong with this framework. For example, in Gopal
Balakrishnan's review of Retort's Afflicted Powers (NLR 36), he says
that they give a "Polanyian twist" to the Luxemburgian (I would point
to David Harvey or the autonomists are more immediate influences)
notion of permanent "primitive accumulation," in that what capital
appropriates in these "new enclosures" is "myriad forms of common
wealth embedded in the non-market environment upon which capitalism
feeds" (the quotation is from GB, I can't remember whether Retort
actually says anything like that). This comment makes me wonder to
what extent the ideas of "new enclosures" (or "accumulation by
dispossession" for Harvey) and "struggle over the commons" - which
seem pretty prominent themes of alterglobalization discourse - are
related to a Polanyian logic, and if so, whether this points to a
problem with these ideas. (I'm not ruling out the possibility that
either of these might be accurate descriptions of reality - I'm less
convinced by Polanyi, but I've got mixed feelings about Harvey's
theory of accumulation by dispossession, for one; noticing this
similarity with Polanyi just makes me a little more suspicious.)
(Incidentally GB is a student of Perry Anderson, and remembering this
makes me think twice about whether he intends the "Polanyian" label as
an insult or a neutral description - rereading the passage, and one in
another review where he calls Habermas Polanyian as well, I'm not so
sure what he intends.)

Anyway, I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on all this, and in
particular, whether you can point me to any Marxist critiques of
Polanyi.



Matt

Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson

    * To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    * Subject: Re: [Marxism] Perry Anderson
    * From: Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>
    * Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 21:40:07 -0500

Good to see someone on the left taking Karl Polanyi seriously. The
three fictitious commodities created by capital-- nature, labor, and
money, (and also the three vulnerabilities to the system), have
expanded their range since the '80's, as Anderson says, moving in a
direction diametrically opposed to Polanyi's hopes of reformist curbs
on their inherently destructive tendencies. Polanyi predicted that
any society which allows these three commodities to run amok would
soon perish. Anderson is clear on this part of Polanyi's argument,
which is taken from his excellent history titled "The Great
Transformation". Anderson isolates each commodity and analyzes their
current state of fortitude in the current conjuncture, and singles
out money as the most vulnerable commodity at present, with labor
being ever so plentiful and nature somewhere in the middle.

But rather than isolate each commodity separately and rank them in
scorecard fashion, more interesting perhaps would be to see how they
interrelate in reinforcing their respective strengths, or multiplying
their respective weaknesses. Most interesting perhaps would be the
negative dialectic between money and nature. I'm a bit more
pessimistic than Anderson in terms of the ecological limits of the
current globalist expansion, and I expect to see massive shifts in
nature's ability to sustain the current set-up in the near and/or
medium term. We're already beginning to see some of the effects.
Whether or not Klein's "Shock " theory proves to be a successful
elite strategy is difficult to predict, but I rather believe it will
begin to implode as the shocks of nature increase in number and
severity.

Politically speaking, Anderson may be correct with his analogy to the
"concert of powers", with the USA as the primary hegemon, but the USA
seems to have spent a lot of political capital in the last 5 years
since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Pakistan is looking
like much less of a "great anchor in the east" these days, and much
more like a failed state which might need to be propped up by direct
US military intervention. A fight between the US military  and the
assorted elements in Pakistan in opposition to the US could turn out
to be even more bloody than the debacle in Iraq. But that's just
speculation. The situation is too fluid to make solid predictions,
and as we all know, the US strategic planners thrive on chaotic
situations. But the question remains: with a worn down and
overextended military, could the country successfully fight such a
difficult war?

Greg McDonald

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