Karl Polanyi (1886–1964)

I really didn't like this book, mostly because I felt that it was poorly formulated and based on a lot of incomplete examples. Every time Polanyi tried to prove something he'd give 4 examples of random indigenous populations in which the event occurred. All of his examples seemed like exceptions rather than base cases for a rule, and his strange statements like "previously to our time (the 1940s/Industrial Revolution period in general) no economy has ever existed that, even in principle, was controlled by markets" made me question if we were even living in the same world. Because of this I wasn't able to accept any of his statements, even when they seemed logical, and the book generally fell flat.… (more)

It's difficult to review this book. I can see why it has been considered a classic and why it is still read today. The author is very knowledgeable in the economic history of the 19th century and his breadth of vision is impressive enough to captivate even critical readers. On three accounts, he criticizes the idea of a society organized solely on free market principles: (1) labour, (2) land and (3) money cannot be bought or sold as commodities. Attempts to supply them through free markets were made in the 19th century and early 20th, and this book is an attempt to illustrate and emphasize how destructive those attempts were.

However, although the book is fine as far as illustration and emphasis are concerned, I think it falls short on explanation. The writing is superb but the logic of the arguments often seems flimsy. The author discusses a number of events from the history of British industrialization in the 19th century and compares them occasionally to anthropological studies of primitive societies. But far too often the discussion yields no clear conclusion. It seems like the author then skips ahead without having established any cause-consequence relationship, and states his preferred conclusion as a matter of fact: the consequences of this or that policy were disastrous. Considering the breadth of the author's arguments and the consequences he attributes to them, the explanations he provides are far too brief.

I don't mean to say that I was not convinced. As far as I could tell, the author's three main points are valid criticisms of free-market liberalism. But this book needed to be at least twice as long if the author wanted to present truly convincing arguments for his main points. In comparison to the writers whom the author criticizes, such as Hayek and von Mises, his biggest failure is that he does not present any clear theoretical framework for the transformation he describes. I'm not sure if that framework should have been an economic theory or a theory in social or political philosophy, but something theoretical needed to be said to truly make this book a work for the ages. It still stands as a fine intellectual achievement in economic history and a pleasure to read 75 years after it was written, but it's also a product of its age. I could not see what practical implications it might have for societies in the 21st century.… (more)