ABSTRACT
Polanyi is considered the most important reference person when it comes to describing the processes of the economy's embeddedness and disembeddedness in society. Polanyi points out those market economies are based on preconditions of embeddedness and that seen historically; a purely market-based organization of the economy is a rare and very recent phenomenon. Polanyi instead refers to three principles that constituted the archaic and premodern economy: householding, redistribution, and reciprocity. The separability of ownership and attribution of economic results to individuals are the foundations for a utilitarian-capitalist imaginary: this can be confused or even broken if one strengthens an anthropology of giving that builds on Mauss's ideas of non-agonistic giving or sharing. Marx uses the concept of primitive accumulation to describe the process by which primarily land and labor became commodities. Marx also observes this, when he highlights that labor can only be made available to the buyer intermittently, only its consumption or possession is transferred.
