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Paper short abstract

This paper analyses Korea’s energy system over the last decade using Veblen-Polanyi’s insights addressing deeper issues of ‘structuration’ in capitalist energy system, arguing a basic income can act as a trigger for self-organisation, but only valid when connected to Veblen-Polanyi’s radical-theory.

Paper long abstract

In contemporary-capitalism, deepening multiple socioeconomic inequalities-polycrises, it is inevitable to make major ‘adaptations’ (‘self-organising changes’). The fundamental-challenge must be institutional: the established-institutions are improper, so a greater-period-of-experimentation like ‘basic-income’ is necessary. This is why we should look at the basics of institutional-theory, particularly of Post-Keyensian (as Marx-and-Keynes) traditions, outside the ruling neoliberal-consensus. Nevertheless, the truly-deeper concern putting this literature vulnerable in challenging it is the weak-connection to radical-theory, particularly of Veblen-Polanyi, on the issue: in this crisis, whether can a basic-income truly act-as-a-trigger to self-organise a new-system of energy-and-community-resilience?, leading to sub-questions: (1) how the capitalist-system-of-energy gets to organisation-structuration in real-world (objectivity); (2) what its ‘truly-deeper-originator’ of crisis is; (3) how (whether) a basic-income (truly) act-as-a-trigger for self-organisation (in philosophical-value ‘justice’ and history); (4) if untruly, what the normative-solutions are, addressing the current political-landscapes of possibilities between reformism-versus-radicalism. This paper, defining ‘self-organisation’ as an ‘institutional-process-of-change-with-struggles to reorganise-reconstitute-restructurate an order-out-of-disorder,’ aims to critically-reflect on the questions with the institutional-matrix of self-organisation structurated by market vs. non-market; pro-capital vs. anti-capital, through an critical application of the deeper-understanding of radical-theory of Veblen-Polanyi into an empirical case-study (with quantitative-data-analysis) on Korea’s energy-system during the last-decade. By doing so, this paper argues: beyond the superficial-issues of market-versus-State, and Keynesianism-versus-neoliberalism, there are deeper-issues ‘structuration’ within capitalist-systems-of-energy in Korea, which most institutional-theories in Post-Keynesian traditions have well-addressed, arguing that a basic-income can act-as-a-trigger to self-organise. However, these are in turn only-valid when truly-connected to radical-theory, particularly of Veblen-Polanyi, connecting ‘basic-income’ with long-term vision, beyond such capitalistic-system.