Making history: agency, constraints and realities

Abstract

In the Global South, the restrictive realities with which the Left contends are typically more numerous and onerous than those encountered by European socialists in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For instance, in The Great Transformation , with its European and specifically British focus, Karl Polanyi could take for granted certain societal features and potential remedies that his counterparts in the Global South must treat as problematical. Polanyi could assume effective states able to maintain order and implement complex policies, class-divided but fairly cohesive societies, strong and autonomous organizations of the subaltern classes (especially labor), a lengthy democratic tradition, the rule of law, and national economies that not only would be shielded from volatile capital flows but also yielded sizable fiscal resources for redistribution. Some or all of these conditions do not obtain in the developing world, depending on the country. In addition, Polanyi might retain confidence until his death in 1964 that a form of democratic planning could replace market societies and maximize freedom. But we are much more aware today of the limitations and dangers of central planning. Even modern notions of “participatory” and decentralized planning are probably doomed to failure (except at the local level). But this recognition presents yet another dilemma. On the one hand, markets now appear indispensable in complex, globally integrated economies. On the other hand, markets are cultural as well as economic institutions. The market’s ever deeper penetration of societies breeds an individualistic, consumerist mentality that is inimical to the solidarity principles associated with the Left. Dealing with this contradictory reality involves difficult choices.