For a New West

At a recent meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, it wasreported that a ghost was haunting the deliberations of theassembled global elite - that of the renowned social scientist andeconomic historian, Karl Polanyi.In his classic work, The Great Transformation, Polanyidocumented the impact of the rise of market society on westerncivilization and captured better than anyone else the destructiveeffects of the economic, political and social crisis of the 1930s.Today, in the throes of another Great Recession, Polanyi'swork has gained a new significance. To understand the profoundchallenges faced by our democracies today, we need to revisithistory and revisit his work.In this new collection of unpublished texts - lectures, draftessays and reports written between 1919 and 1958 - Polanyi examinesthe collapse of the liberal economic order and the demise ofdemocracies in the inter-war years. He takes up again thefundamental question that preoccupied him throughout his work - theplace of the economy in society - and aims to show how we mightreturn to an economy anchored in society and its cultural,religious and political institutions.For anyone concerned about the danger to democracy and social lifeposed by the unleashing of capital from regulatory control and thedominance of the neoliberal ideologies of market fundamentalism,this important new volume by one of the great thinkers of thetwentieth century is a must-read.