ABSTRACT
Earlier societies - and Karl Polanyi has probably done most to prove this point1 - had built-in institutions to avoid mass famine and to assure the survival of their members, even if these institutions could and sometimes did break down, and even if the right to survive hardly ever meant the right of every member of the society to survive equally well. The institutions
in question were not economic. All of them - the reciprocity based on solidarity in tribal societies or rural communities, the central collection and redistribution of goods in early empires, the paternalistic feeling of obligation to provide for all those who were related by some bond to the lord under feudal con ditions, or state regulations setting rates of pay or limiting the prices of vital goods (primarily grain) in many pre-capitalist societies - combined economic and other principles, interests and relations. Motives of honour and prestige, considerations of status, religious, traditional or legal obligations, fears of all kinds of punishments were all interwoven, and together they regulated productive as well as other activities. Again in Polanyi’s words, the economic system proper was enmeshed in the web of all kinds of social relationships. There was no auton omous economy - and therefore there could not be an auton omous or independent institution to counteract the harms caused by the economy.
