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Some history today … for those of who haven’t clicked away yet, thanks 😊
Good futures work is all about context. While we primarily focus on the future context, we do acknowledge the importance of history in shaping how we got to our current context and what clues that provides for the future, in our case, what comes After Capitalism.
Karl Polanyi’s 1944 classic, The Great Transformation, not only provides this context, but also reminds us how ideas that once seemed unorthodox may simply be ahead of their time. Indeed, our discussions of After Capitalism may seem unorthodox today, but are simply ahead of their time.
The Great Transformation is the shift to the market economy in the 19th century. Polanyi laments that this transformation shifted focus from social relations to economic ones. In essence it flipped the economy from being a means to social ends to the other way around. We agree! In Chapter 9, “Ten Shifts,” one of the suggested ten critical shifts for After Capitalism, is from “Economy to Society.” In essence, we’re recommending reversing the “economy first” present to a “society first.” future.
We have turned ourselves and everything around us into commodities that are bought and sold.
Is that the future we want?”
Polanyi argues that creating a fully self-regulating market economy requires that everything become a commodity with a”for sale” value, including human beings and the natural environment. We’ve turned ourselves and everything around us into commodities that are bought and sold. This has led to the destruction of both — witness today’s desperate states of the environment and the mental health crisis. He also exposes the myth of the free market. There never was a truly free, self-regulating market system and there certainly is not one now either. But it’s a powerful meme that is used to block change.
His historical analysis reminds us that conditions that seem like they are permanent and unassailable (remember, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism) are temporary when viewed through a historical lens. Similarly, a seemingly utopic idea of society first has historical precedent. It has actually existed. Granted, the future embodiment will and should be different, but it is not an alien idea. We can do it! – Andy Hines
[…] the good old days of market capitalism, sans regulations or other pesky interventions. [NOTE: See Polanyi’s Great Transformation, which argues that there never was a pure market […]