Globalization and Contestation: A Polanyian Problematic, Article Review Example

Ronaldo Munck says Karl Polanyi’s double movement has validity today just as in 1946. Polanyi said society protects itself from a self-regulated market system in the form of a double movement which attracts as much attention today as it did in 1950 by suggesting another world is possible besides globalization. Polanyi says there never was a self regulating free market. This thesis appeals to globalization challengers in the face of ecological harm and plant closures. It is not just anti-globalizers who are utopian in their ideology but a globalizing socially embedded, self-regulating, market and its unattainable goal as well. (Munck 176)

Socialism is relevant because it imposed democracy on self-regulating markets. The counter movement challenges commoditizing humans and life. Munck views Polanyi’s socialism and his double movement as a unifying force for social change. Capitalism is exchange based and where once markets were cultural accessories they are now cultural factors. The market rules unchallenged and changes society with a market economy for a market society. (Munck 177)

Self-regulating markets are utopian because they are socially and environmentally unfriendly. Polanyi’s self-regulating markets on a world scale would ensure the functioning of the market itself where one huge marketplace has everything for sale with society reduced to market relationships. Neo liberal order is where social relations are rooted in the economic system rather than being fixed in social relations. The counter movement reacts to social distortion with a welfare state, Medicare, and social security. New capitalism defines new classes in classic Marxist form as unrest emerges in the globalized world in response. (Munck 179, 180)

Polanyi’s problematic explains globalization and contestation and the new world disorder by confronting dominant institutions. Which groups will respond? Perhaps we need a moral authority such as we had before the unfettered free market. And to which of the challengers will we assign higher or lower value? Good or bad? Put local back into global? (Munck 185)

References

Munck, Ronaldo. Globalization and Contestation: A Polanyian Problematic. Globalizations. (June 2006). Vol. 3, No. 2, pp 175-186