Questions and Topics We Can Help to Answer
Paper Instructions;

In "Turning the Tables", Block reviews the work of Karl Polyani, a critic of Hayek and others who believe in “the free market” or who believe that the market is the primary force that will motor us toward some kind of utopia.  He argues that the free or self-regulated market argument requires us to believe that “the market” sits outside of society and political power.  Block’s essay focuses on Hayek and other free market acolytes and advocates.  His overall argument is that implementing policies to produce a free market utopia will produce a dystopia – “a society characterized by human misery, squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding”.  The “stark Utopia” of a self-regulating market “could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society”.

To help you understand this argument, briefly explain the three fictitious commodities (review pages 108-113)

a.  Labor as a fictitious commodity.
b.  Nature as a fictitious commodity.
c. Currency as a fictitious commodity.