duminică, 26 aprilie 2015

Un Prospectiv
March 10, 2014 
.
Despre piatza, ca economie de piatza si societate a pietzei, aceasta religie laica a carei apocalipse vine cu periodicitatea ciclurilor economice; in conceptia lui Karl Polanyi, acest vienez din parinti maghiari, care mai tarziu a scris si publicat in engleza.
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The roles which Germany or Russia, or for that matter, Italy or Japan, Great Britain or the United States, are playing in World War II, though forming part of universal history, are no direct concern of this text; fascism and socialism, however, were live forces in the institutional transformation which is its subject. The elan vital which produced the inscrutable urge in the German and Russian people to claim a greater share in the record of the race must be taken as factual data of the conditions under which our story unfolds, while the purport of Fascism and Socialism or New Deal is part of the story itself.
This leads up to our thesis which still remains to be proven: that the origins of the cataclysm lay in the Utopian endeavor of economic liberalism to set up a self-regulating market system. Such a thesis seems to invest that system with almost mythical powers; it implies no less than that the balance of power, the gold standard, and the liberal state, those fundamentals of the civilization of the nineteenth century, were, in the last resort, all shaped by one common matrix, the self-regulating market.
The assertion appears extreme, if not shocking in its crass materialism. But the peculiarity of the civilization the collapse of which we have witnessed was precisely that it rested on economic foundations. Other societies and other civilizations, too, were limited by the material conditions of their existence—this is a common trait of all human life, indeed, of all life, whether religious or
nonreligious, materialist or spiritualist. All types of societies are limited by economic factors. Nineteenth century civilization alone was economic in a different and distinctive sense, for it chose to base itself on a motive only rarely acknowledged as valid in the history of human societies, and certainly never before raised to the level of a justification of action and behavior in everyday life,
namely, gain. The self-regulating market system was uniquely derived from this principle.
The mechanism which the motive of gain set in motion was comparable in effectiveness only to the most violent outburst of religious fervor in history. Within a generation the whole human world was subjected to its undiluted influence. As everybody knows, it grew to maturity in England, in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, during the first half of the nineteenth century. It reached the
Continent and America about fifty years later. Eventually in England, on the Continent, and even in America, similar alternatives shaped daily issues into a pattern the main traits of which were identical in all countries of Western civilization. For the origins of the cataclysm we must turn to the rise and fall of market economy.
Market society was born in England—yet it was on the Continent that its weaknesses engendered the most tragic complications. In order to comprehend German fascism, we must revert to Ricardian England. The nineteenth century, as cannot be overemphasized, was England's century. The Industrial Revolution was an English event. Market economy, free trade, and the gold standard
were English inventions. These institutions broke down in the twenties everywhere— in Germany, Italy, or Austria the event was merely more political and more dramatic. But whatever the scenery and the temperature of the final episodes, the long-run factors which wrecked that civilization should be studied in the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, England.
(Karl Polanyi, 1944)
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  • Smaranda Dobrescu, Gavrila Ch and 2 others like this.
  • Un Prospectiv .
    It is with the help of the commodity concept that the mechanism of the market is geared to the various elements of industrial life. Commodities are here empirically defined as objects produced for sale on the market; markets, again, are empirically defined as actual contacts between buyers and sellers. Accordingly, every element of industry is regarded as having been produced for sale, as then and then only will it be subject to the supply-and-demand mechanism interacting with price. In practice this means that there must be markets for every element of industry; that in these markets each of these elements is organized into a supply and a demand group; and that each element has a price which interacts with demand and supply. These markets— and they are numberless—are interconnected and form One Big Market.

    The crucial point is this: labor, land, and money are essential elements of industry; they also must be organized in markets; in fact, these markets form an absolutely vital part of the economic system. But labor, land, and money are obviously not commodities; the postulate that anything that is bought and sold must have been produced for sale is emphatically untrue in regard to them. In other words, according to the empirical definition of a commodity they are not commodities. Labor is only another name for a human activity which goes with life itself, which in its turn is not produced for sale but for entirely different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from the rest of life, be stored or mobilized; land is only another name for nature, which is not produced by man; actual money, finally, is merely a token of purchasing power which, as a rule, is not produced at all, but comes into
    being through the mechanism of banking or state finance. None of them is produced for sale. The commodity description of labor, land, and money is entirely fictitious.

    Nevertheless, it is with the help of this fiction that the actual markets for labor, land, and money are organized; they are being actually bought and sold on the market; their demand and supply are real magnitudes; and any measures or policies that would inhibit» the formation of such markets would ipso facto endanger the self-regulation of the system. The commodity fiction, therefore, supplies a vital organizing principle in regard to the whole of society affecting almost all
    its institutions in the most varied way, namely, the principle according to which no arrangement or behavior should be allowed to exist that might prevent the actual functioning of the market mechanism on the lines of the commodity fiction.

    Now, in regard to labor, land, and money such a postulate cannot be upheld. To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society. For the alleged commodity "labor power" cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting also the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar
    commodity. In disposing of a man's labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity "man" attached to that tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed. Finally, the market administration of purchasing power would periodically liquidate business enterprise, for shortages and surfeits of money would prove as disastrous to business as floods and droughts in primitive society. Undoubtedly, labor, land, and money markets are essential to a market economy. But no society could stand the effects of such a system of crude fictions even for the shortest stretch of time unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organization was protected against the ravages of this satanic mill.

    Karl Polanyi, 1944

  • Smaranda Dobrescu Intreaga filosofie a liberalilor economici se bazeaza pe ideea ca laissez-faire-ula fost o evolutie naturala in timp ce legislatia ulterioara anti-laissez-faire a fost rezultatul actiunii intentionate din partea adversarilor principiilor liberale. Izvoarele utopice ale dogmei laissez‑faire sunt înţelese doar incomplet atâta vreme cât sunt privite separat. Cele trei principii – piaţă a muncii concurenţială, etalon aur automat şi comerţ liber internaţional – formau un întreg. Sacrificiile implicate de realizarea oricăruia dintre ele erau inutile, ba chiar mai rău, dacă celelalte două nu erau la rândul lor asigurate. Era totul sau nimic. Daca ma uit ca Polanyi a scris cartea sa in 1944, rascolind si intelegand ce a fost legic in Anglia secolelor 18 si 19 pentru aparitia liberalismului economic, ca mai departe, a intuit evolutia periculoasa a liberalismului, nu pot sa fac altceva decat sa-l salut pe acest vizionar.

  • Un Prospectiv .
    [It was, however, generally agreed among eighteenth century thinkers that
    pauperism and progress were inseparable. The greatest number of poor is not to be found in barren countries or amidst barbarous nations, but in those which are the most fertile     and the most civilized, wrote John M'Far-lane, in 1782. Giammaria Ortes, the Italian economist, pronounced it an axiom that the wealth of a nation corresponds with its population; and its misery corresponds with its wealth
    (1774)- And even Adam Smith in his cautious manner declared that it is not in the richest countries that the wages of labor are highest. M'Farlane was not, therefore, venturing an unusual view when he expressed his belief that as England had now approached the meridian of her greatness, the "number of poor will continue to increase."

    Again, for an Englishman to forecast commercial stagnation was merely to echo a widely held opinion. If the rise in exports during the half century preceding 1782 was striking, the ups and downs of trade were even more so. Trade was just starting to recover from a slump which had reduced export figures to the level of almost half a century before. To contemporaries the great expansion of trade and apparent growth of national prosperity which followed upon the Seven Years' War merely signified that England too had had her chance after Portugal, Spain, Holland, and
    France. Her steep rise was now a matter of the past, and there was no reason to believe in the continuance of her progress, which seemed merely the result of a lucky war. Almost unanimously, as we saw, a falling off of trade was expected.
    In actual fact, prosperity was just round the corner, a prosperity of gigantic proportions which was destined to become a new form of life not for one nation alone but for the whole of mankind.

    But neither statesmen nor economists had the slightest intimation of its oncoming. As for the statesmen, this may have been a matter of indifference, as for another two generations the rocketing trade figures only dented the edge of popular misery. But in the case of the economists it was singularly unfortunate as their whole theoretical system was erected during this spate of "abnormalcy," when a tremendous rise in trade and production happened to be accompanied by an enormous increase in human misery—in effect, the apparent facts on which the principles of Malthus, Ricardo, and James Mill were grounded reflected merely paradoxical tendencies prevailing during a sharply defined period of transition.]

    Am luate aceste citate din acelasi Karl Polanyi (1944). pentru a ilustra contextul malthusian din jurul ideii de *inegalitate ca o constanta societatilor umane*. De atunci incoace, s-a vazut ca in societatile capitaliste, s-a putut progresa mai ales in conditiile reducerii disparitatilor. Mai mult, in societatile umane NECAPITALISTE nu exista disparitate la nivelul din capitalism--aceasta fiind o externalitate negativa a conceptului de piatza. Adica, inegalitatea apare tocmai ca o disfunctionalitate a functionarii nu numai a economiei, ci a intregii societati, pe modelul pietei. Sa repet, cu cat inegalitatea e mai mare, cu atat e dezvoltarea mai anevoiasa.

    P.S. E interesant cum ideile lui Ortes le preced pe cele ale lui Malthus, desi romanii par ca au schimbat 'totul s-a descoperit in URSS' cu 'totul s-a descoperit de catre savantii britanici'. Vrand sa aflu mai multe despre acest Ortes, am gasit numai o referinta la el in Italo Calvino si acest link:http://tarpley.net/.../giammaria-ortes-the-decadent.../

    E interesant cum aceste idei re/apar cand capitalismul da de greu. Venetia, acest prim experiemnt capitalist, era pe duca la timpul lui Ortes. La fel si Britania in timpul lui Malthus. SAMD

  • Smaranda Dobrescu Un eveniment notabil: aparitia cartii lui Karl Polanyi, "Marea Transformare" in limba romana la sfarsitul anului trecut.http://www.criticatac.ro/.../marea-transformare-ca.../

  • Un Prospectiv .
    Am citit semnalul celor dela CriticAtac. Prea mult despre unele, prea putin despre altele. Pe cine intereseaza politica editoriala romaneasca, un domeniu netrivial, e brici! Pe cine intereseaza Polanyi sa faca bine sa mearga direct la carte--autorul surprinde niste lucruri, insa pare prea marcat sa faca dreptate textului. Comentariile si mai si.

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