The Great Financialization

Keynes and Polanyi

Reclaiming Policy Space for Equitable Economic Development

Development and Regionalism

The Life and Work of Karl Polanyi

Edited by Kari Levitt

Reviews.

Karl Polanyi believed that the greatest threat to freedom was a poorly administered economy. His search for economic and political institutions which reconciled society’s need for freedom to develop a moral sense, with the requirements of our complex technological civilization, led him to believe a possibility and necessity of an economics that was more existential and human-centered. He did not underestimate the significance of livelihood to ives; he recognised that an inadequate quantity of the former was detrimental to the quality of the latter. He emphasized nonetheless that beyond sufficent livelihood, preoccupation with the pursuit of even more economic wealth greatly erodes the quality of human existence.

Although the principal concern of this book is in developing that thinking for its significance to the practice of economies and everyday life in democratic societies, it also treats the life of Polanyi from a perspective that conveys an impression of the man, his times, and his place in the evolution of social and economic thought.

Quotes.
“Economics has to return to some very basic questions of use value and exchange value. We have to take into account the real value of human effort and work, and that is very different from its market value. We have to protect nature and our social and cultural heritage. People do not like to be valued and respected only for the income which they can earn, and to be totally disrespected if they are not able to earn income for whatever reason.” From Development and Regionalism Karl Polanyi’s Ideas and the Contemporary World System by Professor Kari Levitt.

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www.blackrosebooks.net
1990*264 pages*photographs
Paperback
ISBN: 0-921689-80-2
US$19.99
Hardcover ISBN: 0-21689-81-0
US$48.99

The Critical Tradition of Caribbean Political Economy

Edited by Kari Levitt and Michael Witter

Reviews.

Colleagues and former students of George Beckford continue critical essays on the plantation paradigm which still has relevance in the Caribbean. The volume not only celebrates the work of Beckford but also proposes an agenda of research in order to reintroduce some of the central themes of the critical tradition to which Beckford made seminal contributions on the socio-economic development of the region.

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www.ianrandlepublishers.com
1996 • 314 pages • 6 x 9 •
ISBN 976-8100-91-5
Paperback • US $15.00

The George Beckford Papers

Selected and Introduced by Kari Levitt

Quotes.

“George Beckford’s work is characterized by a remarkable consistency of purpose and vision…This collection presents the unfolding of George Beckford’s work from agricultural economics to political economy, to the social economy of ‘man space’, to the cultural roots of Caribbean creativity and a vision of one independent, sovereign and self-reliant Caribbean nation…His purpose was to reveal the legacy of dispossession orginating in the slave plantation experience of African people in the New World; to ‘free the mind’ from the internalization of attitudes of inferiority and ‘Afro-Saxon’ mimicry. His vision was the affirmation of the culture of ‘overcoming’ rooted in the Caribbean ‘peasantry’ and the land.”
From the Introduction of The George Beckford Papers Professor Kari Levitt.

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www.uwipress.com
2000
ISBN 976-8125-40-3 Paper
ISBN 976-8125-75-6 Cloth
540pp 6 x 9
US$ 27.00 (s) Paper
US$ 40.00 (s) Cloth

Karl Polanyi in Vienna

Edited by Kari Levitt and Kenneth McRobbie

Reviews.

Karl Polanyi’s belief that the greatest threat to freedom was a poorly administered economy led him to an economics that was more existential and human-centered. Part I of this book develops Polanyi’s thinking for its significance today through a selection of papers on re-reading his major work entitled The Great Transformation. Part II looks at the life and work of Ilona Duczynska (Polanyi’s wife), political activist, writer and translator and important influence over Karl and his work.

Quote.

“It is because basic human needs of security, affection, respect and protection have no place in formal economics that the transformation of the capitalist order requires a new calculus of the value of work, the value of human needs, and the value of nature. When economic decisions have to be made, the underlying value system must be one that accords with the realities of real people living in real socieites, one that acknowledges our very real dependence on the natural environment and its very real limitations.” From Development and Regionalism, Karl Polanyi’s Ideas and the Contemporary World by Professor Kari Polanyi Levitt.

Silent Surrender

Silent Surrender The Multinational Corporation in Canada

Reviews.

First published in 1970, Silent Surrender has educated two generations of Canadians about political economy and corporate rule. Professor Kari Levitt details the historical background of foreign investments in Canada, their acceleration since World War II, and the nature of intrusions by multinational corporations into a sovereign state. Now a Canadian classic, this book was republished in 2003.proscription.

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www.mqup.mcgill.ca
2002* 250pp
Paper ISBN 0773523251
US $27.95
Cloth ISBN 0773523111
US $80.00

Reclaiming Development

Independent Thought and Caribbean Community
Kari Levitt
Reviews.
For over 20 years, the developing world has been adjusting to the agendas of the IMF and the World Bank. In the 1990s Structural Adjustment Programmes were repackaged and marketed as the coming of the golden age of globalisation, promising benefits to countries that adopt neo-liberal policies. Whether by conviction or apparent absence of viable alternatives, Caribbean governments have been quick to implement policies of Deregulation, Liberalisation and Privatisation. In this they have been supported by Caribbean intellectuals who have been equally quick in embracing globalisation and too ready to concede the end of national sovereignty.
In this collection of 15 papers prepared and presented in a variety of fora and spanning a period of 30 years, Kari Levitt argues that it is time to reclaim the right to development and the right of nations to engage in the international economy on their own terms. She advocates an international rules-based order which permits space for member countries to follow different and divergent paths to development according to their own philosophies, institutions, cultures and societal priorities. This collection represents a historic sweep of Caribbean thought and personalities over the past 30 years drawn against the background of the changes in the international political economy. Whether in her collaboration with Lloyd Best on the Plantation Economy model, her analyses of Debt and Adjustment, or her insistence on the right of sovereign nations to pursue their own development path, Kari Levitt remains consistent in her conviction that development, whether of individuals or nations, must be rooted in time and place and cannot be imposed by external proscription.

Quotes.
“There is a crying need for creative thinking and new initiatives to protect the gains of development from devastation by financial hurricanes fed by institutional investors who freely move funds in and out of countries at the tap of a keyboard with no responsibility for the impact of their operations on host countries.”
Reclaiming The Right To Development. Professor Kari Levitt.

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www.ianrandlepublishers.com
2005 • 420 pages • 6 x 9
ISBN 976-637-143-1
Paperback US$25.00