Karl Polanyi's belief that the greatest threat to freedom was a poorly administered economy led him to an economics that was more existential and human-centered. Part I of this book develops Polanyi's thinking for its significance today through a selection of papers on re-reading his major work entitled "The Great Transformation." Part II looks at the life and work of Ilona Duczynska (Polanyi's wife), political activist, writer and translator and important influence over Karl and his work.

Kenneth McRobbie, a poet and historian who teaches at the University of British Columbia, is the editor of "Humanity, Society and Commitment."

Kari Polanyi Levitt, emeritus professor at McGill University, is the editor of "The Life and Work of Karl Polanyi."

As far right movements, social disintegration and international conflict emerge from the decay of the neoliberal order, Karl Polanyi's warnings against the unbridled domination of markets, is ever more relevant. The essays in Karl Polanyi for the 21st Century extend the boundaries of our understanding of Polanyi's life and work. They will interest Polanyi scholars and all interested in socialism and our future after neoliberalism. One asks whether, following Keynes and Hayek, Polanyi's ideas will shape the twenty-first century. Some clarify, for the meaning of money as a fictitious commodity. Others resolve difficulties in understanding the building blocks of Polanyi's thought: fictitious commodities, the double movement, the United States' exceptional development, the reality of society, and socialism as freedom in a complex society. And yes others explore how Polanyi sheds light on income inequality, world systems theory, comparative political economy. -- .

This important book provides a fascinating insight into the conceptual underpinnings of the theory of plantation economy, initiated by Lloyd Best and Kari Levitt in the 1960s, as a basis for analysing the nature of the Caribbean economy. While acknowledging an intellectual debt to Latin American structuralists Raul Prebisch, Celso Furtado and Osvaldo Sunkel, and also to the work of Dudley Seers and William Demas, the authors develop an original and innovative analytical framework as a counter to more 'universalist' models which failed to take account of the Caribbean reality. Their work identifies the main features of the plantation economy as a hinterland characterised by subordination and dependency on the dominant metropole. Distinguishing between hinterlands of conquest, settlement and exploitation, Best and Levitt analyse the rules that determine this complex relationship with the metropole. Their economic theories are presented against a background of the historical factors that gave rise to the 'structural continuity' of Caribbean economies and which now impede meaningful structural transformation.

Four years into the unfolding of the most serious crisis since the 1930s, Karl Polanyi's prediction of the fateful consequences of unleashing the destructive power of unregulated market capitalism on peoples, nations, and the natural environment has assumed new urgency and relevance. Polanyi's insistence that 'the self-regulating market' must be made subordinate to democracy, otherwise society itself may be put at risk, is as true today as it was when Polanyi wrote. Written from the unique perspective of his daughter, From the Great Transformation to the Great Financialization is an essential contribution to our understanding of the evolution and contemporary significance of Karl Polanyi's work, and should be read against the background of the accelerating accumulation of global finance that created a series of financial crises in Latin America, Russia, Asia, and, eventually, the heartlands of capitalism itself.