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List of contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: A world in transition
Chapter 2: Understanding the crisis
Chapter 3: Identifying root causes
Chapter 4: Mapping a socialist future
Chapter 5: Fictitious commodities: Land
Chapter 6: Fictitious commodities: Labour
Chapter 7: Fictitious commodities: Money
Chapter 8: Towards a new public philosophy
Chapter 9: Beyond market society
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Peadar Kirby is Professor Emeritus of International Politics and Public Policy, University of Limerick, Ireland. He has published widely on Ireland’s model of development, Latin American politics and political economy, globalisation, vulnerability/resilience, and on the low-carbon transition.
Summary
Has politics reached breaking point? Rather than defending liberalism or abandoning it, how can a socially just and ecological alternative be built?
Peadar Kirby investigates the causes of our current multifaceted global crisis by drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi. This book explores Polanyi’s theory that social disruptions result from the attempt to run society according to the rules of the market. Drawing on these ideas, it outlines pathways towards an alternative future that overcome weaknesses in Marxism. Linking the ecological, political and socio-economic crises, Kirby identifies that an alternative socio-ecological model is emerging, consistent with the insights of Polanyi.
Karl Polanyi and the Contemporary Political Crisis is an urgent intervention into key debates on the future of politics, on the low-carbon transition, on automation and on the emerging world order.
Foreword
Drawing on the insights of Karl Polanyi, this book explores the causes and potential socialist solutions to our current global crisis.
Additional text
Kirby’s book must be read by Polanyi scholars, students, activists, journalists and policy makers. In analyzing the roots of contemporary crises, Peadar Kirby brings Karl Polanyi into conversation with critical contemporary thinkers, including Paul Mason, Wolfgang Streeck, Kate Raworth, Ian Gough, among others. Identifying this period as a Polanyi moment of unprecedented transition, for Kirby, Karl Polanyi is the inspiration for a new eco-social paradigm rooted in a diversity of citizen based initiatives around the world that will shape the contours of a new society and rescue humanity from crisis.
