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46 I THE PHiLosopHYy oF Eco-Porrrics
product: it dwindles or multiplies independently of changes in demand.
‘The value of nature is reflected all the less by prices, since according to
the predominant economic approach, the services of nature are free and
have no economic value of their own. Only the cost of their extraction
needs to be taken into account.
We must also agree with the author of The Great Transformation that
even the human workforce itself is not capable of consistently reasonable
behaviour in economic terms, since it is neither product nor resource.
For instance, it multiplies even if there is no demand for it; in fact, it is
“produced” in the largest quantities precisely where the labour market
needs it the least, though the maintenance in storage of the surplus
supply of humans comes with a huge social cost. And yet its destruction,
however reasonable it may seem from an economic perspective, is for
the moment still rendered extremely tricky by our ethical prejudices.
Polanyi recognises the paradox of industrial societies: the all¬
overpowering free competition of the market would destroy its own
social foundations, if an ever-more extensive and complex system of
bureaucratic regulation were not to emerge in parallel to counter-balance
its operation. This is the modern industrial state. “State or market?” — the
question is meaningless: the market economy’s need for expansion and
the totalitarian aspirations of state power mutually presuppose one
another, even when they happen to be in conflict. For the workforce
and raw materials - i.e., man and nature — are not products. Their
subordination to the logic of the profit-based competitive market
economy is possible only if the state compensates people for the
immeasurable harm caused to them through means outside the markets
(welfare state) or suppresses social protest in the most brutal fashion
(fascist and communist dictatorships) or deprives the subjects of the
ability to think for themselves (electronic mass culture). All three are
tasks of the state.
Nature does not protest but it cannot adapt to the rules of market
economy either. It exposes the absurdity of an economy-centred social
order, but sadly at a terrible cost. Why are modern societies with their
boasts of scientific foresight not capable of reasonable self-correction?
Because economic competition is war and the market is the battlefield.
‘This war is not fought for land, slaves or holy relics but for pure abstract
power itself, which takes form between cost and profit in a formal
quantitative connection: these are the so-called gains. The established
surplus turns from fiction into reality when as investment it can actually
be turned back into the system. Market-society can survive as long as