[Marxism] Response to query on Polanyi

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(Received from Gareth Dale)

I'd like to add four points to your recent thread on the use of
Polanyi by Marxists.

1.      You're right, a lot of alterglobalisation discourse quotes 
Polanyi. See e.g. Naomi Klein's new book. David Harvey. William Greider. 
  Etc.
Etc.

2.      Do Polanyi's concepts point directly to social-democratic politics?
By and large yes, but I think it's a whole lot more interesting than
that. KP was never a revolutionary Marxist but was for a good while
(let's say, 1922-39) a socialist of the deepest red, and in that
period was strongly influenced by Marxism, esp. on alienation and
commodity fetishism. His work can be used to justify social democracy
(e.g. Bienefeld, Block, Habermas, Cox) or to critique it (Hannes
Lacher). His ideas can be deployed by Marxists creatively (see e.g.
Altvater/Mahkopf, 'Grenzen der Globalisierung') or as an axe to take
to the radical content of Marx/Engels – lopping off anything of which
Polanyi in social-democratic mood would not have approved (as was done
by Michael Burawoy in an article in 'Politics and Society').

3.      Polanyi is subject to such drastically variable interpretations 
for two main reasons. First, his own political orientation varied
considerably over the course of his life. Second, although his ideas
achieved greater clarity when he was involved in the cut-and-thrust of
debate on the Left (essentially, 1922-39), at other times (esp
1940-64) he had barely any connection to any socialist movement; in
such periods his style of thought tended even more than usual to the
abstract, and lay open to a wide range of interpretation. Thus, he
came to use crucial terms (market, decommodify, etc) in such varying
ways that virtually any left-wing project can claim him as a patron
saint. The waters have been muddied further by several crass
misreadings of the final chpt of The Great Transformation – the worst
offenders include Will Hutton, Heide Gerstenberger and Ira Katznelson,
all of whom (bizarrely, embarrassingly) read the book as a Liberal
Manifesto.

4.      In developing the concepts 'embedding' and 'fictitious 
commodities' Polanyi was doubtless influenced to a degree by Marx, but 
they are not Marxist concepts. I've lost count of the number of Marxists 
who assume the 'fictitious commodity' is derived from Das Kapital. In 
fact it was taken off the peg from Tönnies (who was of course influenced 
by Marx, but read him through the lens of what might nowadays be called 
academic social-democracy and was in his day termed Kathedersozialismus).

Tönnies partially went along with Marx's value theory, unlike Polanyi,
who -- on this issue if on few others -- followed marginalism. Polanyi
was an avid reader of Tönnies but played down references to him in his
periods in Britain and North America because at that time Tönnies was
barely known in the Anglophone world. For all the details on these
questions, and more, see my forthcoming article in 'Economy and
Society' and my book, on Polanyi, to be published in 2009.

Gareth Dale

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