Polanyian anticapitalism frames any departure from tradition as betrayal

Evidence

Angela Mitropoulos offers a particularly scathing critique of this view: “For Polanyians, ‘traditionalism’ is rendered as the only proper anticapitalist strategy because Polanyians systematically re-describe ‘capitalism’ as the erosion of ‘tradition’ (that is, ‘traditional’ concepts of property law and right). By that view, those who do not serve the restoration of ‘tradition’—or the reproduction of ‘the social’ in the face of uncertainty—are implicitly cast as traitors to the cause” (Mitropoulos’s blog entry at https://s0metim3s.com/2019/03/27/streeck-sociology/). — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 518

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School debates about Polanyi and tradition versus critical Utopian thinking, and to whether restoring tradition is genuinely progressive.
• SEED: Angle for essay: does the left’s Polanyian reflex to ‘reembed’ markets amount to a nostalgia that plays into the very populism it condemns?