The Great Transformation

Polanyi argues that attempts to organize society around a self-regulating market produce social strains and movements seeking protection.

The market society he examines was constructed through political and institutional change, not simply discovered in nature.

Reciprocity and redistribution show that economic life can be organized through social obligations as well as prices.

Treating people, nature, and purchasing power as ordinary saleable goods creates distinctive dangers in his account.

Market expansion is met by efforts to protect social life; those responses are not necessarily democratic or benign.

Polanyi asks how institutions can protect people without abandoning freedom; his interpretation is an argument, not a timeless law.