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The Great Transformation

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The Great Transformation

Many historians have viewed the economic status of societies as the direct result of human nature Economist such as Adam Smith related this to our unconscious nature to truck, barter and trade. Our inability to survive without the service of others availability, lead to the production of the “economic man” of today. The “extraordinary assumption” that economics has been ingrained in the evolution of human kind has clouded our ability to look at the past economy-less societies that have left behind pyramids and complex systems of trade. Polanyi has emphasized that the movement between a market as a supplementary tool for the ease of exchange and a market society with the interest of materialistic gain. He highlights the difference between the “uncivilized man “ that pertained to the safeguard of his social standings, claims and assets as compared to the economic man that fuels a self-regulating market run by market prices. Polanyi supports his claims by pointing out three economic systems that existed before the rise of market economy economy and allows the reader to take a closer look at historic societies like that of the Trobriand Islanders of Western Melanesia that have depended on a communist economy. Weber, Heilbroner and Rienhart build on Ponlany’s points out the ideologies of this “Great transformation”. Adam Smith paints a picture of an economic man that utilizes “ capitalistic psychology” to further support truck, barter and trade. The importance placed on the value of money and gain, renders such an economy to capitalistic ways of thinking as compared to a communist ideology. The gain for the self pertains to the well being of the individual rather than a community. Weber calls this the “ Protestant Ethics” where an individual falls to the curse of work as “to be avoided wherever it’s rewards exceed what men required for

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