Polyani

I found the final chapter of our reading, Birth of the Liberal Creed (Continued): Class Interest and Social Change most challenging. Polyani argues that "Not economic exploitation, as often assumed, but the disintegration of the cultural environment of the victim is then the cause of the degradation. The economic process may, naturally, supply the vehicle of the destruction, and almost invariably economic inferiority will make the weaker yield, but the immediate cause of his undoing is not for that reason economic; it lies in the lethal injury to the institutions in which his social existence is embodied." In other words, it's not loss of income but the experience cultural degradation (i.e. man and nature being commoditized) that causes true exploitation. I follow this. I understand that bringing class issues to the forefront tends to distract from serious issues of degradation.

However, it seems like Polyani is polarizing economic losses and social losses. I think this may present a problem. In ignoring the economic losses, one brushes aside issues of class and power completely. I think rather than championing one over the other, a balance of both viewpoints wound be the most advantageous.

"Yet the ultimate cause is set by external forces, and it is for the mechanism of the change only that society relies on internal forces. The "challenge" is to society as whole; the "response" comes through groups, sections and social classes" (160). I'm interested in examining the cause, or the "challenge." What exactly is a cause? How are causes or challenges created? I don't have answers, but I do have a nagging feeling (likely spurred by my reading of Mills last week) that the answers are related to power, i.e. the decisions of a small group of 'Power Elite.' I find this group, although the identification of them may give material to the economic liberals, impossible to ignore.

It is entirely possible that I misread the chapter, but here's my stab.