market civilization is oxymoronic is essentially a stylistic excess renders the above inquiry academic; even without assuming his version of civilization as democratic eco-humanism, Gill's neo-Polanyian critique of neo-liberal capitalism exposes the inherent tensions and contradictions of the neo-liberal model. To summarize Gill's analysis in his own words: "The structure and language of social relations is now more conditioned by the long term commodity logic of capital. Capitalist norms and practices pervade the gestes repetes of everyday life. . . so that it may be apposite to speak of the emergence of what I call a 'market civilization'."(Gill 399) Gill's debt to Polanyi is quite evident. "Ultimately, that is why the control of the economic system by the market is of overwhelming consequence to the whole organization of society: it means no less than the running of society as an adjunct to the market." (Polanyi, 57) But though he draws off of Polanyi's schematic, Gill contributes a subtle understanding of the current state of neo-liberal capitalism as could only be possible from an author publishing during the ascendancy of the neo-liberal order. To understand his analysis, we can work from Gill's perspective of democratic eco-humanism, not as a synonym for civilization as such, but as a benchmark that crystallizes the most problematic tensions of the neo-liberal system. Therefore, we now look to understand Gill's claim about the uncivilized nature of neo-liberalism within his own framework of democratic eco-humanism.Gill locates the essential basis for declaiming the neo-liberal order as uncivilized in the system's miserable record on the egalitarian distribution of resources, its history of environmental degradation and its general willingness to subjugate the needs of the many to the needs of the few. " For the 800 million or so affluent consumers in the OECD, there is a counterpart number starving in the Third World, with on...
