Can society be commodities all the way down? Post-Polanyian reflections on capitalist crisis

AbstractIn his classic 1944 book, The great transformation, Karl Polanyi traced the roots of capitalist crisis to efforts to create ‘self-regulating markets’ in land, labour and money. The effect was to turn those three fundamental bases of social life into ‘fictitious commodities’. The inevitable result, Polanyi claimed, was to despoil nature, rupture communities and destroy livelihoods. This diagnosis has strong echoes in the twenty-first century: witness the burgeoning markets in carbon emissions and biotechnology; in child-care, schooling and the care of the old; and in financial derivatives. In this situation, Polanyi's idea of fictitious commodification affords a promising basis for an integrated structural analysis that connects three dimensions of the present crisis: the ecological, the social and the financial. This paper explores the strengths and weaknesses of Polanyi's idea.Keywords: Karl Polanyicapitalist crisiscommodificationdouble movementdomination AcknowledgementsFor helpful comments, I am grateful to Leila Brannstrom, Andries Gouws, Steven Lukes, Adrian Parr, Hartmut Rosa, Bill Scheuerman and Ines Valdez. For research assistance, I thank Blair Taylor.FundingThis work was supported by the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study; the Humanitas Visiting Professor Scheme at Cambridge University; the Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Justitia Amplificata’, Goethe University Frankfurt; and the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Bad Homburg, Germany.Notes1 An exception is Adelheid Biesecker and Sabine Hofmeister (Citation2010).2 Hegel (Citation1967 1821): I read this work as arguing, contra social contract theory, that society cannot be contract all the way down, and as invoking that argument to establish the necessity of embedding ‘Abstract Right’ within the broader context of ‘Ethical Life’. For a detailed interpretation along these lines, see Rosenfeld (Citation1989).3 For neo-Keynesian critiques, see Krugman (Citation2008) and Skidelsky (Citation2009). For neo-Marxian critiques, see Harvey (Citation2010) and Albo, Gindin and in Fraser (Citation2011). I have applied it to gender politics in Fraser (Citation2013b).7 For Marx's usage, see Marx (Citation1990, chapter 16, p. 645). For the ‘real subsumption of nature’, see O'Connor (Citation1994) and Smith (Citation2007)8 The phrase ‘embedded liberalism’ is from Ruggie (Citation1982).9 For the concept of ‘misframing’, see Fraser (Citation2005). For a fuller discussion of the misframing of social protections and of colonialism as a protection racket, see Fraser (Citation2011).Additional informationFundingFunding: This work was supported by the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study; the Humanitas Visiting Professor Scheme at Cambridge University; the Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Justitia Amplificata’, Goethe University Frankfurt; and the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Bad Homburg, Germany.Notes on contributorsNancy FraserNancy Fraser is Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Philosophy and Politics at the New School for Social Research in New York. An Einstein Fellow at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Free University of Berlin, she also holds the Chair in ‘Global Justice’ at the Collège d’études mondiales, Paris. In winter 2014, she will be The Diane Middlebrook and Carl Djerassi Visiting Professor of Gender Studies at Cambridge University.Nancy Fraser's most recent book is Fortunes of feminism: From state-managed capitalism to neoliberal crisis (Verso, 2013). Other publications include: Scales of justice: reimagining political space for a globalizing world (Columbia University Press, 2008); Adding insult to injury: Nancy Fraser debates her critics (Verso, 2008), edited by Kevin Olson; Redistribution or recognition? A political-philosophical exchange, with Axel Honneth (Verso, 2003); Justice Interruptus: Critical reflections on the “postsocialist” condition (Routledge, 1997); and Unruly practices: Power, discourse, and gender in contemporary social theory (Polity Press, 1989).Her work has been translated into more than 20 languages and was cited twice by the Brazilian Supreme Court (in decisions upholding marriage equality and affirmative action).The recipient of honourary degrees from Roskilde University (Denmark) and the University of Cordoba (Argentina), Nancy Fraser has delivered the Jan Patočka Memorial lecture (Vienna), the Leibniz Lecture (Vienna), the Rosa Luxemburg Lecture (Berlin), the Collegium Lecture (Helsinki), the Humanitas Lectures (Cambridge), the Giambattista Vico Lecture (York), the Patten Lectures (Indiana University), the Messenger Lectures (Cornell), the Storrs Lectures (Yale Law School), Mary Wollstonecraft Lecture (Hull), the Blaise Pascal Lectures (Paris), the Ralph Miliband Lecture (London), the Spinoza Lectures (Amsterdam), and the Tanner Lectures on Human Values (Stanford).Nancy Fraser is currently working on a book called Crisis, critique, capitalism: A critical theory for the 21st century.