The Kitchen Table

Abstract

It is a Tuesday evening, and there is a letter on the kitchen counter that nobody has opened. Everyone in the house knows roughly what it is. It is from the landlord, or the bank, or the energy company, and it is the second one. The first was opened, read, and put back in its envelope. Nobody said anything about it at dinner. Every chapter of this book so far has been about organisations: a railway, a carmaker, a hospital, a firm and its suppliers. This one is about a household, because a household is where most people first meet the market, and where they first learn whether voice is safe. Karl Polanyi wrote about civilisations, and Albert Hirschman about firms and states, but the three things Polanyi said a market most easily forgets it is holding, people's working lives, the places they live, and the money they run on, arrive in every household as a wage, a rent and a balance. The letter on the counter is one of them.