What do Marx, Hayek, and Polányi tell us about the post-1989 transformations?

Name: What do Marx, Hayek, and Polányi tell us about the post-1989 transformations?
Start: 2024-10-01T18:30:00+02:00
Location: Kavárna Na Boršově

Schedule

Tue Oct 01 2024 at 06:30 pm

UTC+02:00

Location

Kavárna Na Boršově | Prague, PR

For many of its actors, 1989 marked a return from the revolutionary historical "derailment of communism" to a spontaneous market order and an open society. Hayek replaced Marx, the neoliberal turn superseded the socialist revolution. However, the spread of global capitalism, which steamrolled nascent democratic societies and crumbling welfare states, has created a need for critical distance. The grand historical vision of Polányi's Great Transformation as well as Marxist systems theory, among others, offer fruitful perspectives.
This debate takes three extraordinary and influential thinkers as a springboard for thinking through a historically shaped analysis of the fundamental social, economic, political and cultural transformations that countries in Eastern Europe and beyond have experienced in the last thirty-five years. It will ask what Marx, Hayek and Polányi can tell us about the post-1989 transformations, what they cannot explain and where else we might draw inspiration to understand the complex processes our societies have been witness to in the most recent historical period.
Discussants: Philipp Ther, Jannis Panagiotidis, Adéla Gjuričová and Pavel Barša.
Moderated by Veronika Pehe.