Substantivism

Substantivism is a position, first proposed by Karl Polanyi in his work The Great Transformation (1944), which argues that the term 'economics' has two meanings. The formal meaning, used by today's neoclassical economists, refers to economics as the logic of rational action and decision-making, as rational choice between the alternative uses of limited (scarce) means, as 'economising,' 'maximizing,' or 'optimizing.'