Karl Polanyi, prescient in 1944............

[marmar]

[font size="4"]“...To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society. For the alleged commodity, "labor power" cannot be shoved about, used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar commodity. In disposing of a man's labor power the system would, incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral entity of "man" attached to the tag. Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation. Nature would be reduced to its elements, neighborhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted, military safety jeopardized, the power to produce food and raw materials destroyed...”[/font]

-- from The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

[hootinholler]

1. Nice find! n/t

[malaise]

2. He was a genius

I know his daughter well - the great Kari Levitt


http://www.karipolanyilevitt.com/

[marmar]

3. Thx for that link, malaise.

[WillyT]

4. K & R !!!

[Phlem]

5. Excellent and book marked!

Nice find.

-p