The numerous short sketches navigate across many Polanyi themes. The volume covers a wide spectrum of themes, from the reasons for the renewed interest in Polanyi today to the revisiting of fundamental concepts in Polanyi’s writings, from the compatibility and differences between Polanyi and key 20th century theorists such as von Mises, Hayek and Keynes to the impact of Polanyi’s life and engagement in Red Vienna on his thought and lifelong commitment to democratic socialism, and the contemporary relevance of his early writings on freedom and democracy. Biographical essays introduce readers to Polanyi’s early life in Austria and Hungary and the social, political and cultural upheavals of the times. A rare contribution on Karl Polanyi’s relationship to his brother Michael and an engaging interview with his daughter Kari Polanyi deepen our understanding of the formative influences that shaped Polanyi’s thinking throughout his life.
Essays in this volume also explore the resonance of Polanyi’s concepts and analysis to critical issues such as the commodification of care, the emancipatory and destructive impact of technology in the digital age, the search for alternatives rooted in solidarity and community and their capacity to counter a market-driven global agenda. Essays on the rise of right-wing populism as a powerful counter-movement to neoliberalism and the growing threat to freedom recall Polanyi’s writings on fascism as a countermovement to market liberalism.
This volume is published as we face the gravest crisis of our times. The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the weakness and destructive power of capitalism. As thousands perish from the virus, as the global economy lurches on the edge of collapse, as government spending soars in unimaginable magnitude and as a desperately awaited vaccine must emerge as a global public good, Polanyi-influenced debate assumes an urgency. The publication of this volume of essays in English translation comes at a time of deep societal disruption that no one could have predicted. How societies will respond to this global crisis requires a reset of priorities. The challenges of the pandemic summon a global response, a global countermovement to restore our habitation, in Polanyi’s words. Any attempt to resume business as usual is futile. Nothing is usual anymore. Polanyi’s vision for economic democracy and freedom in a complex society is realisable if the many countermovements around the world insist, through their collective actions, that nothing less is acceptable.
I wish to extend my congratulations to the editors of this important volume. And I wish to commend Falter for publishing this as a supplement to a weekly newspaper and bringing these ideas to a large public and now to English-speaking readers. Polanyi was a scholar, a journalist, a public educator and an academic in the later years of his life. He was a public intellectual. His years as a journalist began in Vienna. It is more than fitting that Falter is publishing this exceptional collection dedicated to the life and works of Karl Polanyi.
References
Polanyi, Karl (1944/2001): The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press.
Polányi, Károly (1986): Fasizmus, Demokrácia, ipari Társadalom. Budapest: Gondolat.
FOREWORD OF THE GERMAN EDITION
ARMIN THURNHER
No one would deny that we are currently witnessing a great transformation. Globalisation, digitalisation, neoliberalisation, climate change – who isn’t tired of hearing these buzzwords? One dramatic effect of the current sea change is expressed by the helplessness of traditional left-wing politics. In a time that would provide unprecedented opportunities for political intervention the left is no longer certain who it should refer to, who its historical role models should be. Consequently, with some delay, the work of Karl Polanyi has once again entered the spotlight.
On 8 May 2018, the International Karl Polanyi Society was founded in Vienna. At the founding conference, which took place in the Chamber of Labour, numerous substantial lectures were delivered on the subject, some of which were documented and compiled in a supplement to the Vienna newspaper Falter, entitled ‘Transformation of Capitalism? Karl Polanyi, the Rediscovery of an Economist’ (‘Transformation des Kapitalismus? Karl Polanyi, Wiederentdeckung eines Ökonomen’). The conference location was no coincidence, as Polanyi considered the accomplishments of Red Vienna to be one of the high points of western civilisation.
The initiative for the present volume, which is based on that supplement, came from the President and vice-President of the International Karl Polanyi Society, Andreas Novy and Brigitte Aulenbacher, who developed the concept together with Markus Marterbauer, Michael Mesch and Reinhold Russinger from the Vienna Chamber of Labour, and the author of this text. Through their contacts, they greatly contributed to the fact that the A-list of Polanyi researchers became involved in this book. And that economist Kari Polanyi Levitt, the daughter of Karl Polanyi’s and custodian of his estate and honorary president of the International Karl Polanyi Society, also features in this volume in the form of a lengthy interview about her father.
New texts include the introduction to Polanyi’s work. Some contributions were revised, others substantially expanded, such as that by Michael Mesch about the biographical milieus in Karl Polanyi’s life. The book’s intention is to help initiate a renewed engagement – including in the German-speaking world – with a thinker who has come to be regarded as a centennial figure in the Anglo-Saxon world.
Karl Polanyi offers no political directions, but analyses. He is widely referenced in the debates across the Anglo-Saxon left. In these politically precarious times, in which so-called political advisors set the tone and social media teams dominate public discourse, Karl Polanyi’s work provides a more substantial kind of food for thought. In this sense, this book seeks to take our thinking and our debates a step further.
The book reflects on the renaissance of Polanyi’s works. What makes Polanyi’s ideas so popular in the current situation, even going as far as to earn him the title ‘personality of our century’? Well, this is most likely down to the fact that the era he analysed, the rise of the unbridled market society, displays such striking similarities with our own time. But what is this ‘market society’? And do the counter-movements we are now seeing among those groups in society that fit the description of ‘völkisch (i.e. ethno-nationalist) populists’ not coincide with the patterns Polanyi analysed? And what is the relationship between the print media across the Anglo-Saxon world and the renaissance of Karl Polanyi?
It reconstructs his life and works. Who would be better placed to tell us about Karl Polanyi’s life than his daughter Kari Polanyi Levitt? In order to improve our understanding of Karl Polanyi, the person, we need to find out more about the people who were close to him: his wife Ilona Duczyńska, his brother Michael and of course his daughter Kari. Polanyi was born in Vienna and grew up in Budapest; the situation for Hungarian Jews was marked by uncertainty, with waves of anti-Semitism occurring from the late 19th century onward. As many others during the 20th century, Polanyi ended up moving from one place to another: Vienna, London and the United States were subsequent stations in his life.
The book presents some import issues of his and our times. As a conservative critic of Polanyi’s magnum opus The Great Transformation once said: great books can also be pernicious books. But how did The Great Transformation come about and what was Polanyi’s motivation for writing it? How are his words all too often misunderstood by those reading them today, despite their best intentions? How does Polanyi’s work relate to the writings of his influential contemporaries Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes? What do Polanyian terms like ‘fictitious commodities’ actually mean? And lastly, how does Polanyi’s analysis help us to understand care, digitalisation and science in an era when everything is subordinated to the market?
Last but not least, it asks: Why Polanyi now? The Great Transformation is regarded as one of the most important books of the 20th century;
