In many ways, the current crisis is very similar to that of the 1930s, as we have known since the Great Transformation of Karl Polanyi. Now, as before, the tremendous drive to open and deregulate markets around the world is destroying the lives of billions of people. (...)

Similarly, it is not surprising that many analysts of the current crisis return to the masterpiece of Polanyi. But the current situation is very different from that of the 1930s in terms of a fundamental aspect: despite the similarities, today's response is clearly different. The social struggles surrounding the crisis in the early 20th century, according to Polanyi, resulted in a "dual movement". On the one hand, political parties and commercial interests advocated the deregulation of existing markets and the expansion of commodification; on the other hand, a wide mix of social classes – workers from rural and urban centres, landowners, socialists, conservatives… – seeking to “protect society” from the destruction of the market. As the crisis progressed, the idea of “social protection” won. In the post-war period, political classes joined at least one thing: in terms of work, the environment and money, the “self-regulation” of the market had to be abandoned, otherwise society would be destroyed.

However, there is no such consensus today. Political elites are explicitly or implicitly neoliberal, at least outside China and Latin America. First of all, almost all of them support investors, including those who call themselves Social Democrats, and demand austerity and “reduce the deficit”, even if these policies are dangerous to the economy, the environment and society. Meanwhile, the citizen opposition has not gathered around a solution of solidarity, although there have been live but brief protests such as Occupy's or outraged. After all, we do not have the dual movement that Polanyi was talking about.

What can we do about it? (...) Let's start asking: Why is there no double movement in the 21st century? Why is there no project against hegemony aimed at protecting society and nature? (...) The problem is that we look at what's missing, making it like you don't see who's there. (...) I refer to the extraordinary expansion of the emancipating movements that erupted in the 1960s and beyond: the fight against racism, against imperialism and war, the new left, the second wave of feminism, the liberation of LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Movement], multiculturalism, etc. (...) These movements were very critical of the forms of social protection integrated into the welfare of post-war states. They misused the cultural codes that produced unfair hierarchies and social marginalization.

For example, they said that when the new left bureaucratically distributed social supports, citizens became clients. Anti-imperialist activists against the war criticized the national framework of social protection of the first world, which was built behind the backs of the post-colonial peoples who had been marginalized. Feminists emphasized that the oppressive character of social protection based on “family wage” and the androcentric character of “work” and “tax” was not based on itself but on the domination of men.

In this process, they undone the innocence of the meaning of “protection”. That is why movements were mistrustful of idealizing support and demonizing markets. Its priority was not in any way to defend the “society”, but to overcome domination. However, the emancipating movements were not in favour of economic liberalism. The desire to break with society did not make them supporters of the “economy”.

Therefore, in general, post-war social movements do not adapt to one side or the other of the double movement. Not the defense of commodification or social support, they embraced a third political project, and I call it emancipation. Although it does not appear in the work of Polanyi, this project must occupy a central position when unraveling the grammar of the social struggles of the twenty-first century. I propose to analyze that constellation through a different image: the triple movement.

Unlike the dual movement, this new image is articulated in a tripartite conflict: advocates of commodification, which are added to social protection and advocates of emancipation. The triple movement shows that one project can be allied with the other, against the third project. (...) The three sides are ambivalent by nature. We can see, for example, that, contrary to what Polanyi says, social protection has often had two sides, on the one hand, it faces the destructive effect of the markets in the communities, but on the other, it strengthens its dominance among them. (...) Emancipation is also not exempt from ambivalence, as it generates freedom and tensions in solidarity networks. Emancipation can dismantle the basis of the solidary ethics of social protection and open the way to commodification. (...)

Those of us who are committed to emancipation can decide to break this dangerous relationship with neoliberalism once and for all and to establish a new alliance with the principles of social protection. We can realign the differences in the triple movement and integrate solidarity and social protection with a higher value in our fight against long-term domination. (...) Embracing a broader way of understanding social justice, such a project would honor Polanyi’s ideas and fill their gaps.