Gareth Dale

Double movements and pendular forces: Polanyian perspectives on the neoliberal age

In the neoliberal era, Karl Polanyi’s notion of the ‘double movement’ has been widely deployed by social scientists as a critique of the prevailing order and a predictor of its demise. This article presents the double movement theorem, drawing upon Polanyi’s published and unpublished writings. It explores parallels between his explanation of the advent of the 19th-century free-market regime in Britain and recent Polanyian accounts of the rise of neoliberalism. Following an analysis of the ‘pendular’ refunctioning of Polanyi’s thesis, it closes by asking whether the recent global financial crisis heralds a pendulum swing from neoliberalism (or ‘market fundamentalism’) towards a form of socially coordinated capitalism, or towards ‘more of the same’. As of 2011, it appears that neoliberal policy and ideology remain hegemonic, not in reinvigorated form but as an ‘undead’ policy regime, one that has spawned a burgeoning literature on ‘zombie capitalism’ and ‘zombie neoliberalism’.

Protest Waves in Western Europe: a Critique of "New Social Movement" Theory

A paradigmatic account of the recent development of social movements has become prominent in European sociology. Labor movements are said to be in decline, and new social movements to be taking their place at the center of contemporary protest and social transformation efforts. These changes are attributed to shifts in the underlying structures of modern society. This article challenges this view, questioning the underlying theoretical assumptions about the relation of class and movement, and offering an alternative framework for understanding recent developments within social movements. The article ends with some reflections on new emerging possibilities.

Social Democracy, Embeddedness and Decommodification: On the Conceptual Innovations and Intellectual Affiliations of Karl Polanyi

Of the several debates that revolve around the work of the economic historian and political economist Karl Polanyi, one that continues to exercise minds concerns his analysis of, and political attitudes toward, post-war capitalism and the welfare state. Simplified a little, it is a debate with two sides. To borrow Iván Szelényis terms, one side constructs a ‘hard’ Karl Polanyi, the other a ‘soft’ one. The former advocated a socialist mixed economy dominated by redistributive mechanisms. He was a radical socialist for whom the market should never be the dominant mechanism of economic coordination. His ‘soft’ alter ego insisted that the market system remain essentially intact but be complemented by redistributive mechanisms. The ‘double movement’ – the central thesis of his ‘Great Transformation’ – acts, in this reading, as a self-correcting mechanism that moderates the excesses of market fundamentalism; its author was positioned within the social-democratic mainstream for which the only realistic desirable goal is a regulated form of capitalism. In terms of textual evidence there is much to be said for both interpretations. In this article I suggest a different approach, one that focuses upon the meaning of Polanyis concepts in relation to their socio-political and intellectual environment.

Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation: perverse effects, protectionism and Gemeinschaft

Abstract Drawing upon Karl Polanyis journalistic writings and unpublished lectures from the 1920s and 1930s, this article reconstructs the lineaments of his research programme that was to assume its finished form in The Great Transformation. It identifies and corrects a common misinterpretation of the thesis of that book, and argues that Polanyis basic theoretical framework is best conceived as Tönniesian: market society is Gesellschaft, while the ‘protective counter-movement’ of The Great Transformation is Gemeinschaft, understood dynamically. It examines the two central mechanisms by which, in Polanyis understanding, Gesellschaft broke down in the mid-twentieth century: the ‘clash between democracy and capitalism’ and the ‘perverse effects’ whereby political intervention in markets impairs profitability and saps the vitality of the market system.

'Green shift': an analysis of corporate responses to climate change

This article explores corporate responses to climate change through an investigation of the rhetoric of several major UK companies that claim to be leading corporate adjustment. It argues that their actual business practice fall far sort of the claims made for it. This raises questions about the extent to which change based upon a philosophy of market and business solutions is capable of either meeting the ends claimed for it or confronting the scale of the problem of climate change. Bad remedies may be diverting attention from and even driving out good ones.

Heimat, “Ostalgie” and the Stasi: The GDR in German Cinema, 1999–2006

This article surveys three recent German films set in the former East Germany: Das Leben der Anderen (“The Lives of Others”), Good Bye Lenin!, and Sonnenallee. It finds the critical acclaim for Das Leben der Anderen to be warranted, but not the suggestion that it is a brave film. That claim rests on the assumption that the presentation of the German Democratic Republic in post-unification German culture has been overly nostalgic. The paradigm case most commonly cited is Good Bye Lenin!, but this article shows that criticism to be misplaced. The article closes with a discussion of theories of “Ostalgie”.

In search of Karl Polanyi’s international relations theory

Karl Polanyi is principally known as an economic historian and a theorist of international political economy. His theses are commonly encountered in debates concerning globalisation, regionalism, regulation and deregulation, and neoliberalism. But the standard depiction of his ideas is based upon a highly restricted corpus of his work: essentially, his published writings, in English, from the 1940s and 1950s. Drawing upon a broader range of Polanyi’s work in Hungarian, German, and English, this article examines his less well-known analyses of international politics and world order. It sketches the main lineaments of Polanyi’s international thought from the 1910s until the mid-1940s, charting his evolution from Wilsonian liberal, via debates within British pacifism, towards a position close to E. H. Carr’s realism. It reconstructs the dialectic of universalism and regionalism in Polanyi’s prospectus for postwar international order, with a focus upon his theory of ‘tame empires’ and its extension by neo-Polanyian theorists of the ‘new regionalism’ and European integration. It explores the tensions and contradictions in Polanyi’s analysis, and, finally, it hypothesises that the failure of his postwar predictions provides a clue as to why his research on international relations dried up in the 1950s.

The iron law of democratic socialism: British and Austrian influences on the young Karl Polanyi

Abstract A central thesis of Karl Polanyis The great transformation concerns the tensions between capitalism and democracy: the former embodies the principle of inequality, while democracy represents that of equality. This paper explores the intellectual heritage of this thesis, in the ‘functional theory’ of G.D.H. Cole and Otto Bauer and in the writings of Eduard Bernstein. It scrutinizes Polanyis relationship with Bernsteins ‘evolutionary socialism’ and charts his ‘double movement’ vis-à-vis Marxist philosophy: in the 1910s he reacted sharply against Marxisms deterministic excesses, but he then, in the 1920s, engaged in sympathetic dialogue with Austro-Marxist thinkers. The latter, like Bernstein, disavowed economic determinism and insisted upon the importance and autonomy of ethics. Yet they simultaneously predicted a law-like expansion of democracy from the political to the economic arena. Analysis of this contradiction provides the basis for a concluding discussion that reconsiders the deterministic threads in Polanyis oeuvre. Whereas for some Polanyi scholars these attest to his residual attraction to Marxism, I argue that matters are more complex. While Polanyi did repudiate the more rigidly deterministic of currents in Marxist philosophy, those to which he was attracted, notably Bernsteins ‘revision’ and Austro-Marxism, incorporated a deterministic fatalism of their own, in respect of democratization. Herein lies a more convincing explanation of Polanyis incomplete escape from a deterministic philosophy of history, as exemplified in his masterwork, The great transformation.

‘Marketless Trading in Hammurabi’s Time’: A Re-appraisal

Abstract In this article I revisit Karl Polanyi’s writings on ancient Mesopotamia. I begin by situating them in the context of his general approach to trade, markets and money in the ancient world. Next, I reconstruct his major theses on Mesopotamia, drawing upon his published works as well as unpublished documents in the Karl Polanyi and Michael Polanyi archives. Finally, I provide a critical assessment of the merits and demerits of his contribution, with reference to Assyriological research published in the decades that have elapsed since his death in 1964.

“A Very Orderly Retreat”: Democratic Transition in East Germany, 1989–90

East Germanys 1989–90 democratisation is among the best known of East European transitions, but does not lend itself to comparative analysis, due to the singular way in which political reform and democratic consolidation were subsumed by Germanys unification process. Yet aspects of East Germanys democratisation have proved amenable to comparative approaches. This article reviews the comparative literature that refers to East Germany, and finds a schism between those who designate East Germanys transition “regime collapse” and others who contend that it exemplifies “transition through extrication”. It inquires into the merits of each position and finds in favour of the latter. Drawing on primary and secondary literature, as well as archival and interview sources, it portrays a communist elite that was, to a large extent, prepared to adapt to changing circumstances and capable of learning from “reference states” such as Poland. Although East Germany was the Soviet state in which the positions of existing elites were most threatened by democratic transition, here too a surprising number succeeded in maintaining their position while filing across the bridge to market society. A concluding section outlines the alchemy through which their bureaucratic power was transmuted into property and influence in the “new Germany”.