Re-reading Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation

Abstract

In 1886, Karl Polanyi was born into a world that was changing in ways that resonate today. The first decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed a polycrisis that brings together a multitude of strains: staggering levels of inequality, sluggish GDP growth, catastrophic harms to the natural world, and intensifying volatility as world order lurches from US domination toward multipolarity. Economic nationalism has reappeared in the form of protectionism and trade wars. Political nationalism is resurgent too, often wearing authoritarian populist clothes. Conspiracy theories proliferate, linking vaccination paranoia to anti-semitism to a nefarious globalist elite.