ABSTRACT
Contrary to the nationally and locally bound ‘embeddedness’ concepts favoured by Polanyi and many economic sociologists, this book has tried to elaborate the nature of modern capitalism as a universal social system that continues and even surpasses the traditions constituted by the world’s great religions. Global capitalism emerged as a result of the overwhelming social and political success of the liberal market narrative. Besides the material and social progress which it undoubtedly generated, it produced also unintended, socially antagonising, and ecologically destructive outcomes, whose careful empirical reconstruction is a key task of the social sciences. As the book tried to show, the disembedding of markets has self-destructive consequences, as it undermines locally and nationally based non-market institutions, which market actors rely on. Capitalist development, thus, is prone to a variety of vicious circles, which evolve in the territorial expansion of markets as well as in the fields of entrepreneurship and innovation. The present-day crisis of capitalism seems to be characterised by a coincidence of both types of vicious circles. Is there a way out of the self-destructive dynamics of the liberal utopia? Beyond conventional socio-liberal policies promoting social equality and diversity, we need to have a new focus on private property rights – but not in the sense of warming up to orthodox Marxist criticisms of private property as such. What appears promising, rather, are policies designed to integrate property rights into the human and the material conditions of production.
