Legal Predistribution, Market Justice, and Dedemocratization: Polanyi and Piketty on Law and Political Economy

Abstract

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.

Toward a Sociology of Contract

“…AsBlock and Somers (2014, 107) observe, "[E]conomic theories and social science models do not represent and generalize already existing entities but rather make markets, economic practices, and indeed entire market societies." SeeSomers (2022) for an elaboration of the performative aspect of neoclassical theories of the market.…”