Clark on Polanyi (the Bad One)

by Will Wilkinson on June 12, 2008

Greg Clark’s NY Sun takedown of Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is ripping good fun. This response, by a sociologist, is entertaining for other reasons. For example, I like how it starts out strong by pointing out that Sun is a neocon rag. The commenters at Mark Thoma’s, from whence comes the link, are aghast at Clark’s lack of reverence for the wrong Polanyi. Anyway, I want more new reviews of sixty year-old books!

UOJim

I think of it as adorable pedantry. Hm. Must rethink.

Will Wilkinson

My big concern is Jim's obnoxious pedantry.

UOJim

My big concern is the redundancy of "from whence."

Matt

The review might be "fun" but it's not very accurate at summarizing Polanyi and so not very good at critiquing him, either. It's bad enough to make me wonder if he'd really read the book or just was going on what he'd read elsewhere. The claim that Polanyi is ignored by economists is also very odd- I was turned on to the book by my first econ professor in college who was a big fan. Brad Delong assigns him, Stilglitz wrote the introduction to the new version, etc. It's a weird review, based much more on a particular ideological take than a real effort to look at the book. I guess that can be "fun" but it's not very enlightening.

berger

If you can't draw a distinction between market economies and free market ones you really aren't qualified to review Polanyi.

bachwards

I fear Clark glosses over why other social scientists actually enjoy the book. Even if you disagree about the consequences of laissez-faire or Polanyi's anthropological claims, I think his point about the embeddedness of markets in society is still worth considering and is probably the main reason sociologists and others still recommend the book. I think Clark's general aversion to institutional explanations for economic outcomes (see also his negative review of Avner Greif's book) precludes him from giving this full consideration.

Santhi Hejeebu and Deirdre McCloskey had a really interesting piece on Polanyi a few years ago in Critical Review. I cannot find a non-gated link online, but here is a response they wrote to a critic of their original essay.