anymore. All they want is a good life. This might give us a clearer picture of the outlook: a growing part of society wants this alternative lifestyle.’ (Falter, 1 May 2018).
In 2009, the renowned paper Die Zeit, with its academic middle-class readership, wrote that if one believed the ideas of the ‘forgotten economist (sic) Karl Polanyi’, one had to recognise the fact that ‘industrial civilisation may well lead to the ruin of humankind’ (16 July). Polanyi was only mentioned in one other instance, namely as an admonisher of ‘climate change, economic and financial crises’ (Die Zeit, 15 September 2011). The few weekly papers that did not ignore Polanyi, include the Wirtschaftswoche. ‘Today you have students attending advanced seminars in economics who have not read Adam Smith or Friedrich August von Hayek. They don’t know who Francois Quesnay or Carl Menger were, nor what Albert O. Hirschman or Karl Polanyi stand for.’ (12 October 2018)
Readers of daily newspapers were slightly better off in this respect. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung was indeed correct to write, in 2016: ‘Schumpeter, Galbraith, Hayek and Friedman may have achieved equally high-profile publicity as Keynes or Piketty. However, this is not the case with Karl Polanyi, Tibor Scitovsky, Albert O. Hirschman and Peter L. Berger’ (29 September). And yet, Austrian broadsheet newspapers have surprisingly contributed to the Polanyi renaissance quite considerably. In Die Presse of 15 November 2016, social and economic historian Ernst Langthaler contextualised his detailed article on The Great Transformation with current affairs, namely the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States. ‘What sounds like an op-ed article on Donald Trump’s victory during the US presidential elections was essentially conceived, said and written down more than 70 years ago. In his 1944 book The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi addressed one of the most pressing questions of his time: the rise of fascism which – together with communism – earned the 20th century the title of the “Age of Extremes” (Eric Hobsbawm), writes Langthaler, without, however, classifying Trump as a fascist. He considers him to be a national populist, whose success can, however, be explained with Polanyi’s category of countermovement.
Der Standard is another paper that sporadically quotes Polanyi, e.g. in an article by Wolfgang Müller-Funk, who called for a European politics in the sense of a ‘European muddling through’ on 13 May 2016. For ‘its collapse would unleash those forces of democratic self-destruction that have already become such a dramatic challenge for Europe. It would lead precisely to the regression and complete marginalisation of the semi-continent described by Karl Polanyi just before the end of World War II.’
Likewise, several Austrian papers reported on the tribute to Kari Polanyi Levitt in the form of a commemorative plaque at her former family home in Vienna, and on this occasion also used the opportunity to expand on Karl Polanyi’s work at the same time. By and large, the reception in Austrian media publications remains non-committal, although there are exceptions every now and then: for example, Der Standard published a comprehensive Polanyi portrait including an interview with Kari Polanyi Levitt by Tanja Traxler on the occasion of the Polanyi Conference in Linz on 18 January 2017. Other reports were published by the Wiener Zeitung, such as an op-ed article by economist Sigrid Stagl on 29 August 2017 calling for ‘new rules for economic activity in the Anthropocene’.
As for German and Swiss daily papers, in a nutshell, Polanyi is either honoured or derisively criticised, depending on the specific political orientation of the respective paper. The conservative Neue Zürcher Zeitung remains surprisingly neutral and frequently quotes Polanyi in its more elaborate essays; for example, urban planners Robert Kaltenbrunner and Olaf Schnur appear quite at home using the term ‘commodification’ – in reference to Polanyi (16 April 2014).
The Süddeutsche Zeitung and taz clearly sympathise with Polanyi. In an article for the Süddeutsche of 18 June 2018, political scientist Claus Leggewie reviews the Polanyi-related works by Gareth Dale and Robert Kuttner. And English literature professor Jeremy Adler writes on the subject of Brexit:
‘The correct diagnosis comes from Hayek's opponent Karl Polanyi. The economic historian regarded the “free market” as a myth because it was in fact based on countless laws: “The laissez-faire was planned”. The one-sided preference of the market undermined democracy. A natural economy is socially embedded. According to Polanyi, Hayek confused the disease with the cure. Fascism stems from “a market economy that does not function”.’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 24 August 2018)
For economic sociologist Jens Beckert, then, The Great Transformation is the most important book he has come across, full stop (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14 June 2016). Unsurprisingly, when quoting Polanyi, the taz expresses agreement with his positions, or rather assumes the reference to him to be entirely natural and self-explanatory (e.g. in the case of author and political scientist Franz Walter on 6 April 2013).
Among the most interesting coverage of Polanyi is that by the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). Although the main thrust of the FAZ and its Sunday edition, the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung (FAS), is that students of Polanyi cling to his theory only out of concern for the general helplessness of the left, it is still a paper in which there is comprehensive, at times even sympathetic engagement with Polanyi.
Here, US economist Shoshana Zuboff states, with reference to Polanyi’s analysis of the market’s destructiveness:
‘Google brings us to the precipice of a new development in the scope of the market economy. A fourth fictional commodity is emerging as a dominant characteristic of market dynamics in the 21st century. “Reality” is about to undergo the same kind of fictional transformation and be reborn as “behavior”. This includes the behavior of creatures, their bodies, and their things. It includes actual behavior and data about behavior.’ (FAZ, 30 April 2014)
Economist Carl Christian von Weizsäcker in turn cites Polanyi in his economics of migration (FAZ, 12 January 2016).
Likewise, economic editor Rainer Hank notes at the end of his Polanyi portrait, rather positively: ‘Many of today’s critics of capitalism graze on Polanyi’s pasture. The critique of “economism” and “capitalism in its pure form”, the admonition to maintain reasonable measure, which resounds on a daily basis from politicians ranging from Sahra Wagenknecht to Volker Kauder, has its origin here. When Chancellor Merkel demands a “democracy that conforms to the market”, today’s friends of Polanyi would, by contrast, demand a “market that conforms to democracy”.’ (FAS, 24 August 2018)
It should be added that the very same editor, with regard to Polanyi’s legacy, distorts his differentiated critique of capitalism, as well as accusing him of ‘anti-capitalist romanticism’ (FAS, 13 January 2013). Yet Hank keeps returning to Polanyi, be it in the context of his review of Dickens (FAS, 16 March 2014), or in a philippic against critics of capitalism who, in his view, are unaware that they are Polanyi’s heirs (FAS, 24 August 2014).
In his FAZ article titled, ‘Why intellectuals don’t like capitalism’, multi-millionaire and historian Rainer Zitelmann enlightens readers about the reason for middle-class publicists’ intuitive mistrust: ‘One of the reasons why many intellectuals lack an understanding of capitalism is its character as spontaneously evolved social order. In contrast to socialism, capitalism is not an intellectual construct that is imposed on reality, but an order that evolved largely spontaneously, rather growing “from the bottom upward” than being decreed from above. Historically, it has evolved like languages have evolved. Languages were not invented, constructed and conceived, but are the result of uncontrolled, spontaneous processes’ (18 May 2018).
It is hardly possible to misunderstand Polanyi and his school of thought any more profoundly, for in the latter’s view, precisely the opposite is true: laissez-faire was planned.
The
