Legal Predistribution, Market Justice, and Dedemocratization

Polanyi and Piketty on Law and Political Economy

Bibliographic Data

ID5795559
AuthorsMargaret R Somers (0000-0003-4751-6808, Berkeley College, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume3
Issue2
Publication date2022-12-14
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Law and Political Economy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2693-9681 • E-ISSN: 2693-9681
PublisherCalifornia Digital Library (CDL) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5070/lp63259631
OpenAlexW4312212558
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited76

In the face of today's twin crises of inequality and threats to democracy, many are turning to the work of Karl Polanyi and Thomas Piketty. Both have written magisterial volumes on the historical dynamics, social depredations, and risks to democracy endemic to market capitalism. This and a companion article look at each individual thinker and put the two into dialogue, with the goal of generating principles of a new democratic political economy. The dialogue has two axes of inquiry. First, how to explain and deconstruct the social exclusions and dedemocratization institutionalized in the heart of the existing market economy. Second, how to use legal predistributive institutionalism to upend the deep structures of market justice and the outsized legal powers of property and political economic domination. This article addresses these issues by constructing a neo-Polanyian law and political economy and exploring four Polanyi-inspired themes: (1) a bifurcated capitalist order; (2) market justice as capitalism's moral economy; (3) the economy as a predistributive "instituted process" of law and coercion; and (4) market capitalism's anti-democratic infrastructure

Coercion (linguistics · Economic democracy · Embeddedness · Institutionalism · Corruption and Economic Development · Economic Theory and Institutions · Political Philosophy and Ethics