Karl Polanyi - A Grande Transformação

NOTA: O artigo a seguir é um resumo em inglês dos capítulos 1 ao 10 de "A Grande Transformação", Karl Polanyi. O autor é citado abaixo. O texto contém edições e grifos meus.

Comentário: Este texto foi excelente para mim quando precisei fazer uma resenha de alguns capítulos deste livro. Polanyi é muito detalhista e explica os fatos em longa narrativa. Como escritora e leitora gosto de textos informativos e expressivos, mas de igual modo objetivos. É uma boa dica, além de apenas ler um texto longo, com o sério risco de se 'perder' no meio de tantas ideias, ler resenhas e fichamentos feitos por outra pessoa, pois assim o leitor atual 'dialoga' com outros leitores prévios mentalmente, e tem a oportunidade de ter mais de uma visão do que foi lido.

_________________________

The Great Transformation  - Chapters 1-10 (Por Adam Melkus)

[...]

Extremely rough summary of points from each chapter. No comment offered.

1. The structural foundation of European peace until World War I was a large, interlocking and complex “haute finance” system built on credit. This system could not operate with a risk of general war at hand, and the health of interlinked European economies helped contain military competition. However, colonial expansion and protectionism were harbingers of a larger conflict ahead.

2. The end of the international gold standard (IGS) at the close of WWI marked end of prewar system. Efforts to restore the IGS after WWI, symbolically linked with the prewar political order, failed. Currency crises that exposed wealthier countries to the maladies of poorer European states signaled the beginning of a new reality inherent in a completely monetarized international economy. Polanyi argues that failure to rescue IGS and birth of true market economy put nail in coffin of old order.

3-4. Polayni begins with vignette about impact of agricultural advances in 1490s Britain–shift in technological and economic means leads to disruptive social changes and state desire to slow rate of change and impact. Survey of anthropological research arguing that premodern societies did not have market economies that we might recognize, and instead practiced redistribution and householding.

5. Origin of trade in “external sphere” unrelated to “internal economy.” Long-range trade for barter purposes did not necessarily create markets. Internal economy created by origin of state in Western Europe, with controlled system of local markets. Inherent conflict between protectionist town markets and mobile capital in the form of long-range trade. Mercantilism, a reaction to need for centralized states for greater resources, broke down urban power and created national markets.

6. Conflict between mercantilist national policy and the idea of national market. Frozen land and labor relations embedded in feudal order and guilds conflicted with need for market economy that could trade both as commodities. Conflict, in essence, between idea of self-organizing market that stood outside society and the societal relations that underpinned English politics.

7. Speenhamland reforms as response to challenge posed by emergence of national markets. Physical restriction of labor to poorhouses, minimum income allocated to poor and paupers regardless of productivity/willingness to work. No incentive for employers to pay wages. New classes of employers created by national market, but no employees because labor still tightly controlled. Speenhamland, intended to slow down social change, backfired and pauperized English poor.

8. Statute of Artificers and Poor Laws laid down organization of labor. Enforcement of labor, seven years’ apprenticeship, and yearly wage assessment by public officials. Local control delegated to parishes, which maintained poorhouses. Growth of external trade and industrial tech made Speenhamland policies untenable. Paupers multiplied, and became national social crisis. Fluctuations in external trade generated unemployment and end of labor mobility restrictions led to paupers being free to roam. Repeal of Speenhamland reforms and Poor Laws signal of dawn of industrial revolution.

9. Pauperism and utopian visions went hand in hand. Quakers, liberals, and other political thinkers despaired about the problem of the pauper and set up charities, communes, and industry houses that would aim to give paupers an opportunity to work. Many of these schemes did not work out fairly well, but some would later inspire 19th century Communist ideas of utopia.

10. Comparison of Townsend, Malthus, Bentham, Burke, and other thinkers. Townsend uses allegory of an island in which population is controlled by hunger (e.g. balance of nature). In the eyes of Townsend and Malthus, political economy was a function of nature, whereas other political thinkers had merely analogized humans to animals. Biological vision (which seems to have prestaged social Darwinism) motivates idea of a natural order free of government control. Burke was worried about growing population of paupers and thought freeing of labor would remove burden on parishes. Bentham disliked idea of enforced labor as punishment and thought ‘natural’ incentives enough. Combination of liberal and conservative demand for end of Speenham system developed true market system in England.

________________________________________

Fonte integral e sem edições minhas disponível em (http://adamelkus.tumblr.com/post/43476465164/the-great-transformation-chapters-1-10). Acesso em 09/06/2017.