"The Great Transition": A visionary report envisions how to reverse Polanyi's "Great Transformation"

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from OnTheCommons.org:




"The Great Transition"
A visionary, intelligent report envisions how to reverse Karl Polanyi's "Great Transformation."

By David Bollier


“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” So begins a significant new report by the New Economics Foundation in the U.K., quoting economist Kenneth Boulding. “The most pressing problem facing humanity now,” says the report, The Great Transition, “is how to share scarce planetary resources in ways that are just, sustainable and support the well-being of us all.”

The “Great Transition” is meant to echo the phrase used by Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, the title of Polanyi’s important 1944 book describing the shift from the world of the commons to that of the total market order. Polanyi argued that the coming of the market order swept aside all sorts of social arrangements that had prevailed for millennia of human history: the role of family, kinship, community and religion, the importance of moral order and other non-market principles.

Polanyi is a great friend of the commons because he sought to find a new middle ground between the market and the commons, and between the individual and the community. He intimately plotted the ascendance of the market realm and its eclipse of the commons; now the Great Transition seeks to develop decentralized, effective means to reverse the Great Transformation, and re-inscribe the market into a set of coherent and constructive social relationships. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.onthecommons.org/great-transition-0