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I win, you lose \ud83d\ude41<\/p><\/div>\n
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I lose, you win \ud83d\ude41<\/p><\/div>\n
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Winston Churchill is credited with saying, ‘Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried’. \u00a0I found myself wondering if Polanyi might have said the same, substituting capitalism for democracy.<\/p>\n
This, is in some ways, my primary take away from Karl Polanyi’s\u00a0The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of our Time. \u00a0<\/em>Though written over a half-century ago, the work and it’s conclusion are as relevant now as they were in the immediate aftermath of World War II. \u00a0 \u00a0The book is a powerful critique of the free market and the capitalist principles that have guided the Western world for the last couple centuries.<\/p>\n Polanyi might agree with Churchill’s modified quote, but in large part because we haven’t tried – at least not fully to attempt to live into the alterations to a free market system that he suggests. \u00a0The problems he sees with the free market – and the continued attempts to ‘disembed’ it from governments, he believes – perhaps with a little too much influence from the post-war glow of optimism so prevalent in his time – can all be resolved by leaning into increased control and influence of the government.<\/p>\n Polanyi identifies the issues and shortcomings associated with an unflinching trust or faith in the free market itself. \u00a0One of the biggest shortfalls of the self-regulated free market – in spite of it’s claim that it is good for all – is that it very much operates as a zero sum game. \u00a0There are clear winners and losers in the market and if human labor etc. is just another resource to be allocated and priced\/valued by the market itself, the competition that is created can become incredibly fierce.<\/p>\n In the years after Polanyi wrote this work, our entire world essentially became a competition between those that were faithful to the ideals of the free market as it came to be established within democratic societies and those societies that aligned with a communist ideal and accepted fuller government intervention in the markets.<\/p>\n I think this is an important note as we think about Polanyi’s ideas and their acceptance, especially in the USA, where the democratic idea of freedom became so associated with the economic idea of the unregulated free-market that the very word ‘socialism’ became a sort of political dirty word that was closely associated with the curtailing of freedom and even ‘oppression’ by the government.<\/p>\n One of the most harmful aspects of this free market system is the ability is has, through our competition with others around the corner and around the world, to create barriers and divisions between us. \u00a0We see other people as ‘other’ -meaning not part of us and it makes it easier to accept \u00a0the zero sum game.<\/p>\n Polanyi makes well the point that the first great transformation – that of the liberal free market system coming to fore, precipitated the second – the rise of fascism. \u00a0It seems as though, in our current situation, we are seeing history repeat itself, as an over emphasis on the strength, power and even the moral goodness of the free market system, we are seeing the rise again of fascism and authoritarian regimes. \u00a0The cruel irony is that the systems and controls that Polanyi suggests the government implement to counteract the rise of fascism and the realities that bring that rise, we seem unwilling to even attempt – precisely because they don’t line up with our devotion to the free market.<\/p>\n As those seeking to follow Christ – we are no longer given the luxury of seeing anyone (an individual or a group of people) as ‘other’ from us. \u00a0We are told that ‘there is no longer Greek nor Jew, slave nor free….’ in the body of Christ and we are called to love our neighbor (which according to Jesus is, basically everyone) as we love and care for ourselves.<\/p>\n So beyond looking to simply move beyond the zero sum game that we so often play, and which separates our world into ‘us’ and ‘them’. \u00a0Jesus tells us – as MLK reminds us – see the quote below – that there is no ‘them’, we are all in this together. \u00a0I can’t ‘win’ if it means that you lose. \u00a0In terms of our global relationships we don’t always see these consequences immediately – and in fact, as Polanyi (and others) have pointed out, the real consequences of these wins and losses often take decades to manifest themselves, but the ‘chickens always come home to roost’.<\/p>\n The call of Christ on our hearts and our lives bids us to step away from the competition with each other, the zero sum games we play against each other and to seek and share the true freedom that is found only in and through Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n Winston Churchill is credited with saying, ‘Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried’. \u00a0I found myself wondering if Polanyi might have said the same, substituting capitalism for democracy. This, is in some ways, my primary take away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-11379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-polanyi","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"