Karl Polanyi and the destructive power of Western capitalism

You are here to be a good prisoner not a good citizen.

  Escape from Alcatraz

 By Nicolas Bonnal

During the three last centuries we have assisted not only the so-called decline of the west but the disappearance and bleak extinction of all traditional and primitive cultures that had lasted through the centuries or even millenniums; Asia, Africa, Northern America, even central or eastern Europe are no more what they were before the industrial revolution. And in every region in the world, including India and China, we assist a homogenization of urban mediocrity; a mediocre uniformity as always based on the American way of life, made of warehouses and suburbs, highways, commercial centres and also tech routine and media-oriented daily life. The actual western rage and will to accelerate this entropic process everywhere cannot be ignored.

The trivial way of life of the west has been imposed by capitalism and its best tool old colonialism, even if in some cases post-colonialism has played a more sinister role. In a way old communism that altered 'development' had its good side. Inefficient economics were slower in burning the woods and communism despite its defects preserved resistant peasants in many areas.

These disasters, the development of misery and tourist ugliness, the explosion of favelas or residential areas are no more denounced in the west. We only dream of growth, cars and gums. Yes it still was blamed in a near past, and by Hungarian economist Karl Polanyi, the famous author of the great transformation, which he wrote during WW2.

Polanyi presaged this sad fact without viewing modern Shanghai, L.A. or Sao Paulo: the modern man would be first a rootless and detribalized man. In this aspect he would follow the model described by Tocqueville when the great French philosopher described the physical and spiritual destruction of the Indian tribes in America. Any quotation of Tocqueville is valuable; so let's quote a brief passage of his immortal Democracy:

The social tie, which distress had long since weakened, is then dissolved; they have lost their country, and their people soon desert them: their very families are obliterated; the names they bore in common are forgotten, their language perishes, and all traces of their origin disappear. Their nation has ceased to exist, except in the recollection of the antiquaries of America and a few of the learned of Europe.

This modern way of death and extinction is what we call civilization. And it happened everywhere during the last century.

The main intuition of our author is the similarity between capitalism in the south and capitalism in the west; it works in either case as a destroyer of humanity. Writes Polanyi:

Several authors have insisted on the similarity between colonial problems and those of early capitalism. But they failed to follow up the analogy the other way, that is, to throw light on the condition of the poorer classes of England a century ago by picturing them as what they were-the detribalized, degraded natives of their time.

The Hungarian sociologist quotes in his book many contemporaneous authors who could still consider the extermination of the old cultures by capitalism and modern institutions we are so proud of:

First among the destructive tendencies inherent in Western institutions stands "peace over a vast area," which shatters "clan life, patriarchal authority, the military training of the youth; it is almost prohibitive to migration of clans or tribes" (Thurnwald). 

The boring modern routine life only interrupted by cheap cruising, boozes and disco is linked to the destruction of the old traditional life based on pride and -it is a very interesting paradox, close to Kojève's intuitions on the End of History - fighting. Speaking of great African tribes, Polanyi writes:

The abolition of fighting decreases population, since war resulted in very few casualties, while its absence means the loss of vitalizing customs and ceremonies and a consequent unwholesome dullness and apathy of village life (F. E. Williams).

Polanyi establishes a connection between the countrymen of the traditional Britain and colonial and third world's people, both destroyed by greed, new rules and the industrial revolution. We are often invited to ruminate our hatred of former feudalism, communism and of course fascism. But, as a leftist writer asked once in France, when shall we judge the ubiquitous crimes of liberalism-capitalism conglomerate and its fake promise of development?

So the modern poor are mainly victims of industrial civilization. Polanyi speaks even of a 'living death' that characterizes our modern or post-modern lifestyle. And he compares our lives to a kind of sickness, which quickly destroys old communities, villages and families everywhere:

The economic index of population rates serves us no better than wages. Goldenweiser confirms the famous observation Rivers made in Melanesia that culturally destitute natives may be "dying of boredom."..."The restriction of former interests and activities seems fatal to his spirits. The result is that the native's power of resistance is impaired; and he easily goes under to any kind of sickness".

The result is always the same, with the rural exodus, the destruction of old communities and the exploitation of the human resources, including the infamous destruction of childhood. In a definitive expression Polanyi compares the situation in nineteenth century Britain to that of contemporaneous Africa:

It was in this process that some of the native tribes like the Kaffirs and those who had migrated to town lost their ancestral virtues and became a shiftless crowd, "semi-domesticated animals," among them loafers, thieves, and prostitutes-an institution unknown amongst them before-resembling nothing more than the mass of the pauperized population of England about 1795-1834.

Modern life in Africa or other tropical cheap zones looks in fact like the life in the prisons described by Dostoyevsky in a famous novel. A modern poor is merely a convict, a semi-domesticated animal, and his vices are sure to be developed in order to conform humanity and societies to their new master: the green buck. 

The vices developed by the mass of the people were on the whole the same as characterized coloured populations debased by disintegrating culture contact: dissipation, prostitution, thievishness, lack of thrift and providence, slovenliness, low productivity of labour, lack of self-respect and stamina.

Polanyi is unfairly considered as a guru by neo-liberal and néocon fast-thinkers. I hope these lines demonstrated the contrary and emphasized on his clear understanding of the darker side of modern capitalist agenda. In order to get more profit or free trade, the dark lords of liberalism have destroyed entire civilizations, old conceptions of happiness, social ties and cosmogony. It is interesting thus that this critical approach came from the most prestigious liberal theoretician... 

The spreading of market economy was destroying the traditional fabric of the rural society.

Nicolas Bonnal