The Power of Market Fundamentalism - Fred L. Block

The Power of Market Fundamentalism
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Autor: Fred L. Block

 Wydawnictwo: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674050716
EAN:
Format: ...
Oprawa: twarda
Stron: 280
Data wydania: 2014-05-01
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What is it about free-market ideas that give them tenacious staying power in the face of such manifest failures as persistent unemployment, widening inequality, and the severe financial crises that have stressed Western economies over the past forty years? Fred Block and Margaret Somers extend the work of the great political economist Karl Polanyi to explain why these ideas have revived from disrepute in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II, to become the dominant economic ideology of our time. Polanyi contends that the free market championed by market liberals never actually existed. While markets are essential to enable individual choice, they cannot be self-regulating because they require ongoing state action. Furthermore, they cannot by themselves provide such necessities of social existence as education, health care, social and personal security, and the right to earn a livelihood. When these public goods are subjected to market principles, social life is threatened and major crises ensue. Despite these theoretical flaws, market principles are powerfully seductive because they promise to diminish the role of politics in civic and social life. Because politics entails coercion and unsatisfying compromises among groups with deep conflicts, the wish to narrow its scope is understandable. But like Marx's theory that communism will lead to a "withering away of the State," the ideology that free markets can replace government is just as utopian and dangerous. Karl Polanyi s analysis should be an invaluable resource for social scientists, policy makers, and intelligent citizens who are grappling to find better ways of interpreting the economic and social distress that grips so many formerly comfortable societies of the industrialized North. Block and Somers, who are the premier analysts of Polanyi s work, do a wonderful job of bringing this invaluable resource to bear on today s debates.--Peter Evans, University of California, Berkeley"

Książka "The Power of Market Fundamentalism"
Fred L. Block