Polanyi’s double movement misses the speculative imagination of financialized populism

Evidence

A focus on speculative communities brings this juncture into sharp relief. Polanyian debates on populism often center on the (top-down) role of government in the reordering of the relationship between economy and polity, underlining how the state finds itself inexorably embedded in the system of neoliberal and financialized governance. … However, the rise of speculative communities implicates publics in this system in new ways, shaping relational political subjectivities through an alliance of strange bedfellows—for instance, between the denizens of Silicon Valley and blue-collar workers in the American rust belt or between France’s rural middle classes and the urban poor, under the banner of the Gilets Jaunes. … Crucially, the distinction between the spheres of economy and politics implied in the double movement’s disembedding logic evades these complex entanglements of financialized populism. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 269

Polanyian debates on populism often center on the (top-down) role of government in the reordering of the relationship between economy and polity, underlining how the state finds itself inexorably embedded in the system of neoliberal and financialized governance. However, the rise of speculative communities implicates publics in this system in new ways, shaping relational political subjectivities through an alliance of strange bedfellows—for instance, between the denizens of Silicon Valley and blue-collar workers in the American rust belt or between France’s rural middle classes and the urban poor, under the banner of the Gilets Jaunes. Crucially, the distinction between the spheres of economy and politics implied in the double movement’s disembedding logic evades these complex entanglements of financialized populism. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 269

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the book’s specific divergence from Polanyian analysis: speculative communities implicate publics horizontally across class lines rather than through a state-centered double movement.
• XREF: Directly engages the chapter framing — assesses Polanyi; relates to the reader’s goal of testing whether counter-speculation reclaim or concedes. — connects to: Political populists and financiers both profit from political uncertainty. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 379; Financialization and national populism form a false binary, not opposing forces — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 390
• SEED: Angle: Silicon Valley + rust-belt and rural + Gilets Jaunes as evidence that Polanyi’s neat society-vs-market line has been superseded by finance as coalition glue.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 269