The Great Transformation

This is the title of a  book published in 1944 by the Hungarian-American political economist Karl Polanyi. It is widely considered to be an important work in political economy, so read it if you can.But the Wikipedia summary actually isn ' t bad. Polanyi addresses many of the problems and issues that concerned Karl Marx, but with 100 years of added perspective, including of course the experience of actually existing Communism. I ' m going to run a trick play here and quote from the Communist Manifesto, which was first published in 1848. (The wordsmithing was actually mostly by Friedrich Engels, who was a better communicator than Marx, whose books are turgid doorstops.) From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie* were developed.The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-mast...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs