OCR
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 alloverpowering 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