The Great Transformation

“Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness. Inevitably, society took measure to protect itself, but whatever measures it took impaired the self-regulation of the market, disorganized industrial life, and thus endangered society in yet another way. It was this dilemma which forced the development of the market system into a definite groove and finally disrupted the social organization based upon it.” 

Polanyi candidly asserts his thesis within the very beginning of the first chapter, arguing that the self-regulating market represented a utopian ideal, one that could not be attained. The very idea of the utopia here is important, as it directly refutes the belief of economic liberals that the self-regulating market was natural. Rather, Polanyi constructs the ideal of the self-regulating market as not only an unachievable utopia but also something that is inherently destructive; he believes that the self-regulating market is essentially at odds with both man and nature, as it actively seeks their destruction. If the self-regulating market essentially equates to a kind of utopian apocalypse in regard to nature, then it is not only unnatural, as Polanyi suggests but also antithetical to that which is natural. Polanyi therefore equates social protectionism, and, by extension, society itself with nature, again implying the inherently-destructive nature of the self-regulating market in terms of its relationship to human and natural existence. 

“Civilizations, like life itself, spring from the interaction of a great number of independent factors which are not, as a rule, reducible to circumscribed institutions.” 

Polanyi equates civilizations with living beings, personifying the nature of civilizations so that they become a kind of breathing entity. He continues the metaphor by arguing that as a living being, civilizations emerge out of the interaction and the relationships between various things that are often unquantifiable in nature.