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The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time Paperback – March 28, 2001

by Karl Polanyi (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars 414 ratings
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In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought about by the "great transformation" of the Industrial Revolution. His analysis explains not only the deficiencies of the self-regulating market, but the potentially dire social consequences of untempered market capitalism. New introductory material reveals the renewed importance of Polanyi's seminal analysis in an era of globalization and free trade.
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  1. Print length
    360 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Beacon Press
  4. Publication date
    March 28, 2001
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    080705643X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0807056431
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Editorial Reviews

Review

As the Second World War was drawing to a close in 1944, two great works of political economy were published. One was Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, the driving force behind the free-market revolution in the final quarter of the twentieth century. The other was Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation. . . . [It] is well worth reading. -Larry Elliott, The Guardian

"[The Great Transformation] did more than any work of that generation to broaden and deepen the critique of market societies."-John Buell, The Progressive

About the Author

Karl Polanyi (1886-1964) is considered one of the twentieth century's most discerning economic historians. He left his position as senior editor of Vienna's leading financial and economic weekly in 1933, became a British citizen, taught adult extension programs for Oxford and London Universities, and held visiting chairs at Bennington College and Columbia University. He is co-author of Christianity and the Social Revolution; author of The Great Transformation; Trade and Market in Early Empires (with C.Arnsberg and H.Pearson) and posthumously, Dahomey and the Slave Trade (with A.Rotstein).

Joseph E. Stiglitz was formerly chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors, and chief economist of the World Bank. He is professor of economics at Stanford University, and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Fred Block is professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Beacon Press
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 28, 2001
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ 2nd
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 360 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 080705643X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0807056431
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.03 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 out of 5 stars 414 ratings

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4.6 out of 5 stars
414 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book well-written and fascinating, praising its inspiring analysis of economic history. Moreover, the book is considered a classic and influential economics classic, with one customer noting it provides an epiphany to readers. Additionally, they appreciate its accessibility and value for money.

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27 customers mention "Readability"21 positive6 negative

Customers find the book well written and fascinating, describing it as one of the most important books they have read.

"A must read." Read more

"...Polanyi's writing style is clear, direct, and simple and, unlike deeply nomenclature-intense economics write-ups, this book is rather an easy read...." Read more

"Well, I was going to review this wonderful work. However, Robert Moore's review is so spot on that there is really no need to take up more space...." Read more

"...It's a classic text that is as relevant today as it was when it was published in 1944, explaining the destructive force of neoliberal economic..." Read more

20 customers mention "Insight"20 positive0 negative

Customers praise the book's analysis of economic history and consider it an influential classic, with one customer noting how it helps understand modern markets.

"...I did stick it out and am glad I did. There are many insights as to how we have arrived at today and the book is still relevant even though it was..." Read more

"...Interesting work, but in the end one wonders why we should care at all." Read more

"This is one of those books that can provide an epiphany to the reader -- but not very many American readers have even heard of it, unfortunately...." Read more

"...It opens up the perspective to seeing culture, economics, politics, and technology in an integrated way with an emphasis on social choesion as a..." Read more

4 customers mention "Era"4 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's era, describing it as a classic and original work, with one customer noting it provides a cute analysis of six hundred years.

"Eloquent, acute analysis of six hundred years of Western socioeconomic history shows how our world got this way. Fascinating read...." Read more

"Great classic. I am an economist with some training in sociology...." Read more

"Karl Polanyi'a book is one of the most original and influential economics classics, along with those of Smith, Marx, and Keynes...." Read more

"I give it five stars because the book looks like new. It was definitely worthy to buy it second-hand instead of purchasing a new brand edition...." Read more

3 customers mention "Accessibility"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the book accessible once they start reading it, with one customer noting it is a complex work.

"...Polanyi's writing style is clear, direct, and simple and, unlike deeply nomenclature-intense economics write-ups, this book is rather an easy read...." Read more

"...students of history or political science, but it is accessible once you start...." Read more

"Excellent, complex work beond the comprehension of most politicians unfortunately," Read more

3 customers mention "Value for money"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the book worth the money, with one mentioning it's worth buying second-hand.

"...Thick but worth it." Read more

"...It was definitely worthy to buy it second-hand instead of purchasing a new brand edition. The only difference has been the price." Read more

"...explanation of modern economic history; I have found it to be of immense value - definately worth reading!" Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Kitty Bryant
    5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring analysis of economic history
    Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2023
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    Polanyi presents economic history through an analysis of the "utopian" catastrophy of the self-regulating market economy.
    Polanyi argues that the free market economy treats the most essential elements of human society - labor, nature, and money - as if they should be exploited like commodities. When liberalism (free marketeerism) rules, then the economy dictates what is possible in human society, and these rules are intolerable because they create conditions under which humans are impoverished and disempowered.
    In his final chapter he lays out the battle ground between liberalism and its alternatives, which when he was writing (1945) were socialism and fascism. Fascism refuses the dictates of economic liberalism but substitutes in its place the dictates of a state that denies individual freedom. Socialism, alternatively, holds the only promise of true freedom for the individual where economic and political rules are developed and enforced democratically for the protection of society.

    While this is not an easy read because it demands a background in history, he is a fluent and persuasive writer.
    7 people found this helpful
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  • James Lockley
    5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding the Market vs Government influence
    Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2025
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    A must read.
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  • Kindle Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Not light reading but worth it
    Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2025
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    Much of this book was heavy reading for me, mainly due my not being familiar with the background development and history of various economic theory and associated laws over 500 or so years of British history. I did stick it out and am glad I did. There are many insights as to how we have arrived at today and the book is still relevant even though it was written in 1942. I found the last few chapters and the comments in Sources to offer the most explanations to fit modern times especially with regard to the rise of fascism. Thick but worth it.
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  • S Sims
    4.0 out of 5 stars another way of thinking about economics
    Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2014
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    This book purports to give a theoretical account of how people have to think and act before a market economy is possible. Don't think this book will give you accurate history, because that's really not the point. This isn't so much a story of history or facts as it is a story of philosophies and psychologies.
    While Polanyi gives a fascinating account of the rise of market-oriented societies, he's a bit vague on the direction he wants the future to go in. I got the distinct impression that his preferences for a highly-centralized state would leave very little to individual human life. But then again, he didn't think individual human life really existed before 1834, so it'll rather be like going back to our own state of nature. Except it will be industrial, which means society will be complex, which means that each individual will have to be completely subordinated to "society." This isn't Aristotle, it's barely Rousseau...it's more like Hegel or perhaps (pace Polanyi) Marx.
    Interesting work, but in the end one wonders why we should care at all.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Freh
    5.0 out of 5 stars This 1944 classic recounts the fatal flaws of market liberalism that led to the Great Depression and World Wars I & II
    Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2017
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    The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Karl Polanyi. 1944.

    In 1944, the opposing monumental classics, The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek and The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi, were published. From the right, Hayek argued that market liberalism led to prosperity, political liberty, and prevention of authoritarian governance. From the left, Polanyi argued that the rise of market liberalism during the industrial revolution led to intolerable hardship, inevitable unsustainable countermeasures, and finally collapse into fascism, the Great Depression, and World Wars I and II.

    Since their publication during World War II, these markedly opposed ideas have now been tested by seventy years of history. For the first thirty years after the war, policies reflecting Polanyi’s ideas led to a mixed economy of government policies and regulated markets in the US, northern Europe, and elsewhere that produced robustly increased prosperity broadly shared at all income levels. For the next forty years, ascendency of Hayek’s ideas led to reduction of the role of government with attendant economic instability, rising inequality (with all economic gains going to the rich in the US), and coercive imposition of market liberalism by authoritarian governments with disastrous results throughout Latin America and the former Soviet Union. Given the adverse consequences of resurgent market liberalism, the rebuttal of its ideas in The Great Transformation is as important today as ever.

    In The Great Transformation, Polanyi maintains that before the industrial revolution, markets did not play an important role in human society—they were embedded in society rather than the other way around. Goods and services were generally distributed without the motive for profit by the non-market mechanisms of reciprocity according to social relations, centralized storage with redistribution, and production for one’s own use known as householding. When present, the role of markets was peripheral and subordinate to politics, religion, and social relations.

    The industrial revolution brought about an almost miraculous improvement in the tools of production accompanied by catastrophic dislocations of the lives of the common people, of which poverty was merely the economic aspect. During this time, English thinkers created the theory of market liberalism, which radically reversed the previous subordination of markets to society by removing the role for government so that society was instead subordinated to self-regulating markets (without government interference).

    This change required that human labor, nature, and money be turned into commodities that could be bought and sold without regard to human and social considerations. Efficient functioning of markets also required callous indifference to the social dislocation, poverty, and damage to nature that resulted and even to hunger as a motivating factor for the working class. This change from regulated to self-regulating markets that organized the whole of society on the principle of gain and profit marked a great transformation of the nature of society by the removal of democratic control of markets.

    The goals of this transformation were unrealistically utopian and could never be achieved without annihilating the human and natural substance of society. Even during its installation, laissez-faire proved to be a myth. Government action was mandatory to adjust the supply of money and credit, to enforce provisions for labor and land, and to prevent political disruption. Even with this level of government activity, market liberalism still imposed unsustainable hardships on ordinary people from speculative excess, growing inequality, competition from imports, depressions, unemployment, poverty, and reduced entitlement to assistance.

    By the late 1800s, these impossible pressures of the self-regulating market necessarily led to a countermovement in industrialized nations to protect their societies from the market. This countermovement included protectionism for national markets and competition for colonies to take resources from other societies. In exotic and colonial regions with the absence of protective measures unspeakable suffering resulted. Thus Polanyi characterizes market societies as having two opposing movements, referred to as a “double movement.” These two contradictory movements resulted in simultaneous struggles to expand the scope of the market because of the opportunities for some and to limit the scope of the market because of the adverse consequences for many.

    These internal contradictions led to disruptive stresses and strains that were unsustainable for market societies. In the domestic economy, class conflict resulted from issues like the choice between inflation for stability of workers incomes and employment and deflation for stability of currency for investors. Market liberals from Spencer to Mises held that popular democracy was a danger to capitalism and that workers should not have the right to vote. In the international economy, relentless shocks imposed by the gold standard forced nations to consolidate around heightened national and imperial boundaries. In international politics, intensified political, military, and economic rivalries finally culminated in World War I.

    By this time, the class struggle over market liberalism was at an impasse. For a critical decade, economic liberals supported authoritarian intervention in service of their deflationary policy to protect currency exchange and investment. This merely weakened the democratic forces that might otherwise have averted the fascist catastrophe. During the Great Depression, the gold standard finally collapsed, foreign debts were repudiated, capital markets and world trade dwindled away, and the global political and economic system disintegrated. In a second great transformation of society that followed, the replacements of market society by fascism, socialism, and the New Deal were similar only in discarding laissez-faire principles. The conflict between the market and the elementary requirements of an organized social life had ultimately destroyed society. World Wars I and II merely hastened its destruction.

    In 1944, Polanyi appears to have regarded the utopia of market liberalism as utterly discredited. He expressed the hope that the passing of market economy could become the beginning of an era of unprecedented freedom. He noted that freedom as the absence of power and compulsion as claimed by market liberals is not possible in a complex society. The function of power is to ensure the measure of conformity which is needed for the survival of the group: its ultimate source is opinion.

    Regulation both extends and restricts freedom; only the balance of freedoms lost and won is significant. The comfortable classes enjoy the freedom provided by leisure in security. They resent the suggestion to spread out income, leisure, and security to extend to others the freedom they enjoy. Obviously, those who lack security cannot enjoy the same freedom as the comfortable classes. Those who want more freedom for all need not fear that either power or planning will undermine their freedom. Regulation and control in a complex society strive to give us all the security we need to achieve freedom not only for the few, but for all.
    41 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Kleiophoros
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
    Reviewed in France on March 28, 2016
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    Historical exceptionality of market-driven society. A great book. A classical investigation concerning the relationship between economy, culture, and politics. Anthropologically sound.
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  • 塩屋　宇兵衛
    5.0 out of 5 stars 日本では一瞥だにされなかった名著
    Reviewed in Japan on March 27, 2023
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    ハイエク、ミルトン　フリーマンといったネオリベラルの市場万能主義の経済学者を信奉して、規制撤廃や官から民の流れを主導した学者やジャーナリズムが、口にすることさえなかった学者が著わした本書が再び世界では関心を集めている。浅薄皮相な学者やジャーナリズムが、日本という国の現在の停滞と混迷に大きな力を貸してきたことを思うと､遅きに失している感もあるが、ハイエク等と同時代者であるこの経済学者の深い思索に富む言説に触れることは、今こそ求められていることだと思う。
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  • Mario
    5.0 out of 5 stars One of greatest books ever
    Reviewed in Germany on April 20, 2022
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    In my opinion, this book is the most important book of the 20th century. With historical, empirical and anthropological diligence, Polanyi shows that the "market" is not something which arises naturally or spontaneously but has been created by heavy and brutal as well as planned interventions of the state. On the other hand, social countermovements happened spontaneously to safe nature, men and the economy from the brutal force of free markets. Polanyis conclusions are based on profund historical and empirical analysis.
    With Polanyis insight it is unbelievable what happened since the 1980s in a (Neo)liberal backlash, completely ignoring the implications of the book with respect to nature, men and our society. We now have the empirical evidence, that Polanyi was true and that (1) markets have to embedded into the economy and (2) the economy has to be embedded into society and not the other way around. I would highly recommend this book to everyone, it is more important than ever.
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  • matt fairs
    5.0 out of 5 stars This in an outstanding work on economics and is a ...
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 4, 2015
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    This in an outstanding work on economics and is a must read for anyone interested in how we got to where we are economically speaking. It is written with verve and although a tour de force, is a fairly challenging read. The book delivers incisive commentary on the impact of economic practice on human life, an aspect frequently overlooked in most economic writing and, as it was written many decades ago, may be considered prophetic.
    One person found this helpful
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  • H.H.
    5.0 out of 5 stars Must read
    Reviewed in Spain on September 2, 2013
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    This is a classic book for economists, economic historians and economic anthropologists. But it's also an easy read and very clear and straight forward. I really recommend this book.
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