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by Quincy Saul, March 2009

"[E]s la marcha a fondo..." -Hugo Chavez Frias, 2006
"[T]he long term starts now..." -Raul Prebisch, 1983

In 1944, the Austrian scholar and activist Karl Polanyi published his famous 
and most influential book, The Great Transformation. In this book he 
attempted to chronicle and describe the transformation of the world by 
markets. Simply, Polanyi endeavored to describe the emergence of capitalism. 
Markets existed before capitalism, Polanyi argued, but always within a 
social framework that limited their size and prerogative. The emergence of 
capitalism, as Polanyi described it, entailed the subordination of all of 
these social frameworks to the rules of the market. What transpired was 
nothing less than the most consequential and explosive revolution in the 
history of the world. Even today, the great transformation continues. 
Capitalism continues to transform lives and landscapes on both massive and 
intimate scales in unprecedented, and perhaps irrevocable ways.

Capitalism, understood as the systematic organization of the world around 
market forces,has unleashed productive capacities on scales never before 
imagined. What we call the industrial revolution was a tributary of the 
larger revolution of capitalism, which overturned ancient societies and 
power structures in mere generations on every continent. By subordinating 
the social to the economic, the power to change and create was abundant as 
never before. But the astounding dynamism of this new way of life has come a 
price. Markets are amazing at creating wealth, but they do so 
indiscriminately. Markets on their own know neither restraint nor regret. In 
their insatiable need for new resources, both human and natural, markets 
take too much too fast, leading to widespread abuses resulting in both human 
crises and ecosystem collapses. And in their equally insatiable accumulation 
of profits, markets are again indiscriminate. In markets, money and power 
talks, and it is those few who have them that reap their benefits. 
Meanwhile, those who lack them are forced into ever greater poverty, 
subordination and exclusion. As Eduardo Galeano writes in the opening lines 
of his book The Open Veins of Latin America, "[t]he international division 
of labor consists of some countries who specialize in winning, and others in 
losing." (p1) To summarize, capitalism creates breathtaking possibilities, 
and simultaneously prevents humanity from enjoying them in either a 
sustainable or a collective way.