Endogenous Preferences and Embeddedness: A Reappraisal of Karl Polanyi

摘要

To conclude, one should underline Polanyi's main themes. Although he never spoke of endogenous preferences one can capture in his work a vision of the historical specificity and institutional dependence of human purposes and reasons for behavior. It is undeniable that in Polanyi there is a certain tendency to overlook human volition and to fall into a kind of institutional determinism. Nevertheless Polanyi recognizes the scope for deliberate human action when he defines institutions as "embodiments of human meaning and purposes" (1957, 254). Furthermore, in Polanyi's work there is a very clear awareness of the complexity of the motives for human action and a defense, which is continuously reaffirmed, of the plurality of reasons to act in economic interactions and their relation to the patterns of interaction that are dominant. Nevertheless, there is a lack of a clear and well-systematized account of the possible causal links by which institutions influence human preferences. If one recognizes that it is important to consider preferences as endogenous and complex, then Polanyi's substantive economy can be a good starting point. His substantive economy takes morality into account, in the sense that its foundations lie on the recognition that man is a moral being with duties toward himself and others, with a understanding of what is good and what is bad and that these moral codes, which are somehow dependent on the institutional milieu but which are still open to interpretation and choice by reflexive individuals, exert a powerful influence upon economic affairs. It is also a political economy in the sense that it considers that power and compulsion are constitutive facts of life in society and therefore cannot be ignored by assuming a picture of the individual as an entirely autonomous being, forgetting "the reality of society and its all-powerful influence upon character" (1957, 127). If this is so and if, as Polanyi thought, individual development, "moral freedom and independence of mind" are the ultimate values then political economy is about inquiring into the ways institutions+be they the market or the State―enhance or hinder these values. For him a desirable society, a society with "distinctively human relations of persons" should consciously subordinate economic institutions to these values. How is that done? We do not know, but we suppose that this is the fundamental question for economic theory.