Trade and Market in the Early Empires

by Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg, Harry W. Pearson

Book by

Genres: History, Economics, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Archaeology, Politics

201 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

About the author

Karl Paul Polanyi was an Austro-Hungarian economic historian, economic anthropologist, economic sociologist, political economist, historical sociologist and social philosopher. He is known for his opposition to traditional economic thought and for his book, The Great Transformation, which argued that the emergence of market-based societies in modern Europe was not inevitable but historically contingent. Polanyi is remembered today as the originator of substantivism, a cultural approach to economics, which emphasized the way economies are embedded in society and culture. This view ran counter to mainstream economics but is popular in anthropology, economic history, economic sociology and political science.

Polanyi's approach to the ancient economies has been applied to a variety of cases, such as Pre-Columbian America and ancient Mesopotamia, although its utility to the study of ancient societies in general has been questioned. Polanyi's The Great Transformation became a model for historical sociology. His theories eventually became the foundation for the economic democracy movement. His daughter, Canadian economist Kari Polanyi Levitt (born 1923 in Vienna, Austria), is Emerita Professor of Economics at McGill University, Montreal.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a kind of casebook of examples backing up Polanyi's thesis set forth in "The Great Transformation", which is that what we know as "the economy" is something that only came into existence in the late 18th century, along with the concept of scarcity. This book discusses several ancient civilizations, plus some early 20th century non-Western cultures. It then goes on to demolish several key concepts of contemporary economic theory including "surplus", "accumulation", and "market".

Scarcity, "entrepreneurship", the universal self-regulating market with fixed prices for goods, and the system of trade as we know it, and economics as the fundamental driving sector for all of society --- are all unique to the modern West. Pace Adam Smith, Marx & Engels, and most modern economists, they are emphatically not "natural", universal, or even necessary for the existence of millions at high levels of comfort.

Ancient civilizations and medieval Europe had no "economies" -- no fixed prices for commodities, no production for markets. People have always exchanged goods, of course, but in the pre-modern world, exchange between individuals was most often done through social networks, always with a non-economic motivation.

Trade and its adjuncts -- money, banking, ports, shipping, etc. -- existed, but functioned in totally different ways, primarily as an instrument of empire.

[Toon Pepermans]

(tot p.113)

[Faran HPE · Rating 5 out of 5]

Está muy bien pero no entiendo la filia de los autores con el Imperio Austríaco

[Val Tudor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un teso.

[Thomas Ray]

Library-of-Congress HC31 P6 Memorial Library and College Library r. 1191