The Livelihood of Man Quotes

“Of all the basic principles governing the development of early economic institutions, the need for the maintenance of communal solidarity deserves pride of place. Domestic and foreign relations are in stark contrast: solidarity here, enmity there, rule the day. "They" are the objects of hostility, depradation, and enslavement, "we" belong together and our communal life is governed by the principles of reciprocity, redistribution, and the exchange of equivalents.”
― Karl Polanyi, The Livelihood of Man

“The economy as an instituted process of interaction serving the satisfaction of material wants forms a vital part of every human community. Without an economy in this sense, no society could exist for any length of time.

[The Livelihood of Man]”
― Karl Polanyi, The Livelihood of Man

“Only in a symmetrically organized environment will reciprocative attitudes result in economic institutions of any importance; only where centers have been established beforehand can the cooperative attitude of individuals produce a redistributive economy; and only in the presence of markets instituted to that purpose will the bartering attitude of individuals result in prices that integrate the economic activities of the community.

[The Livelihood of Man]”
― Karl Polanyi, The Livelihood of Man

“It was characteristic of the economic system of the nineteenth century that it was institutionally distinct from the rest of society. In a market economy, the production and distribution of material goods is carried on through a self-regulating system of markets, governed by laws of its own, the so-called laws of supply and demand, moti­vated in the last resort by two simple incentives, fear of hunger and hope of gain. This institutional arrangement is thus separate from the noneconomic institutions of society: its kinship organization and its political and religious systems. Neither the blood tie, nor legal compulsion, nor religious obligation, nor fealty, nor magic created the sociologically defined situations that insured the participation of individuals in the system. They were, rather, the creation of institutions like private property in the means of production and the wage system operating on purely economic incentives.

[The Livelihood of Man]”
― Karl Polanyi, The Livelihood of Man