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The Great Transformation

The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

Author: Karl Polanyi

One of the 20th century’s most important pieces of social and economic theory, highlighting the rise and reality of capitalism as it shaped our world

A limited Beacon Classics edition

In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi tracks the economic and social changes brought about by the “great transformation” of the Industrial Revolution. He pays particular attention to capitalism’s rise and its role in fundamentally altering life after the Industrial Revolution. While previous economic arrangements were embedded within social relations, capitalism reverses this: social relations are defined by economic relations. This seminal analysis explains not only the deficiencies of the self-regulating market, but the potentially dire social consequences of untempered market capitalism.

In an era of ever-increasing globalization and free trade, Polanyi’s cogent historical, social, and economic analysis offers grounded insight into the inner workings of the modern world. Polanyi suggests that capitalism is a historical anomaly. The rules of reciprocity, redistribution and communal obligations were far more consistent as guiding principles of exchange than market relations throughout human history. Capitalism, however, does not exhibit these obligations, and in fact its rise irreversibly destroyed them. The true “great transformation” of the industrial revolution was to completely replace all modes of interaction with capitalism and market relations, forever altering the function, and result, of human relations.

Now with a new hardcover package, this treatise from one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century will illuminate seminal economic and social theory for fans old and new.