The rise to dominance of marginalist economics coincided with a major increase in the spread of socialist ideas. As many socialist and Marxist thinkers were preocuppied with economic questions this was scarcely a development that could be ignored. Socialists either had to defend Marxist economics against marginalist criticism or show that socialism and marginalism were compatible. This volume explores the varied socialist responses in a number of major European countries including Italy, France, Russia and German speaking countries.

The rise to dominance of marginalist economics coincided with a major increase in the spread of socialist ideas. As many socialist and Marxist thinkers were preocuppied with economic questions this was scarcely a development that could be ignored. Socialists either had to defend Marxist economics against marginalist criticism or show that socialism and marginalism were compatible. This volume explores the varied socialist responses in a number of major European countries including Italy, France, Russia and German speaking countries.

Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is generally acclaimed as being among the most influential works of economic history in the twentieth century, and remains as vital in the current historical conjuncture as it was in his own. In its critique of nineteenth-century ‘market fundamentalism’ it reads as a warning to our own neoliberal age, and is widely touted as a prophetic guidebook for those who aspire to understand the causes and dynamics of global economic turbulence at the end of the 2000s. Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market is the first comprehensive introduction to Polanyi’s ideas and legacy. It assesses not only the texts for which he is famous – prepared during his spells in American academia – but also his journalistic articles written in his first exile in Vienna, and lectures and pamphlets from his second exile, in Britain. It provides a detailed critical analysis of The Great Transformation, but also surveys Polanyi’s seminal writings in economic anthropology, the economic history of ancient and archaic societies, and political and economic theory. Its primary source base includes interviews with Polanyi’s daughter, Kari Polanyi-Levitt, as well as the entire compass of his own published and unpublished writings in English and German. This engaging and accessible introduction to Polanyi’s thinking will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences, providing a refreshing perspective on the roots of our current economic crisis.

The worldwide spread of neoliberalism has transformed economies, polities, and societies everywhere. In conventional accounts, American and Western European economists, such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, sold neoliberalism by popularizing their free-market ideas and radical criticisms of the state. Rather than focusing on the agency of a few prominent, conservative economists, Markets in the Name of Socialism reveals a dialogue among many economists on both sides of the Iron Curtain about democracy, socialism, and markets. These discussions led to the transformations of 1989 and, unintentionally, the rise of neoliberalism. This book takes a truly transnational look at economists' professional outlook over 100 years across the capitalist West and the socialist East. Clearly translating complicated economic ideas and neoliberal theories, it presents a significant reinterpretation of Cold War history, the fall of communism, and the rise of today's dominant economic ideology.

This book carves the beginnings of a new path in the arguably weary discipline of economics. It combines a variety of perspectives – from the history of ideas to epistemology – in order to try to understand what has gone so wrong with economics and articulate a coherent way forward. This is undertaken through a dual path of deconstruction and reconstruction. Mainstream economics is broken down into many of its key component parts and the history of each of these parts is scrutinized closely. When the flaws are thoroughly understood the author then begins the task of reconstruction. What emerges is not a ‘Grand Unified Theory of Everything’, but rather a provisional map outlining a new terrain for economists to explore. The Reformation in Economics is written in a lively and engaging style that aims less at the formalization of dogma and more at the exploration of ideas. This truly groundbreaking work invites readers to rethink their current understanding of economics as a discipline and is particularly relevant for those interested in economic pluralism and alternative economics.