Market society

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The term market society can refer to either the free-market style of capitalism first popularized by Adam Smith, or (to a lesser extent) can also refer to government-instituted and/or controlled forms of the market, commonly called state capitalism. It is a term particularly associated with the Hungarian-American political economist Karl Polanyi and his book The Great Transformation , first published in 1944. [1] David Denham also argues that the analysis of market societies is a key feature of the thought and writings of Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. [2]

The term market society differs from market economy in implying that capitalist market economics influences not just the exchange of goods and services in a society, but also directly impacts and helps shape the personal attitudes, lifestyles, and political views of its people. Lisa Herzog, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , refers to Polanyi's distinction between "market economies" and "market societies" as "vague, but nonetheless helpful distinction". [3]

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The double movement is a concept originating with Karl Polanyi in his book The Great Transformation. The phrase refers to the dialectical process of marketization and push for social protection against that marketization. First, laissez-faire reformers seek to "disembed" the economy in order to establish what Polanyi calls a "market society" wherein all things are commodified, including what Polanyi terms "fictitious commodities": land, labor, and money. Second, a reactionary "countermovement" arises whereby society attempts to re-embed the economy through the creation of social protections such as labor laws and tariffs. In Polanyi's view, these liberal reformers seek to subordinate society to the market economy, which is taken by these reformers to be self-regulating. To Polanyi, this is a utopian project, as economies are always embedded in societies.

The concept of fictitious commodities originated in Karl Polanyi's 1944 book The Great Transformation and refers to anything treated as market commodity that is not created for the market, specifically land, labor, and money.

References

  1. Polanyi, K. (1944). The Great Transformation, Foreword by Robert M. MacIver. New York: Farrar & Rinehart
  2. Denham, D., Marx, Durkheim and Weber on Market Society, 37th World Congress of the International Institute of Sociology, Stockholm, 5-9 July 2005, accessed 14 September 2023
  3. Herzog, L., Markets, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, published 26 March 2013, revised 30 August 2021, accessed 14 September 2023