The concept of “Polanyi’s momentµ should be applied not only to point out some
general analogy between today’s economic and social crisis and the one which occurred
between the two World Wars and provoked the breakdown of European liberal
society. In fact, Polanyi’s work allows us to hypothesize a much deeper continuity
between the two crises, where both represent different stages of the same interregnum,
the same process of institutional metamorphosis. It hereby helps us to decode the
deep structures and the lines of evolution of the whole process. This article argues
that the key to such institutional metamorphosis is to be sought in the increasing
automatism of modern institutional mechanisms. While such increasing automatism
is usually portrayed as technical progress, Polanyi uncovers its ambivalent significance
and potential destructiveness for social life.