The native form of this personal name is Polnyi Kroly. other notable thinkers, such as Gyrgy Lukcs, Oszkr
This article uses the Western name order.
Jszi, and Karl Mannheim. Polanyi graduated from Budapest University in 1912 with a doctorate in Law. In
Karl Paul Polanyi (Hungarian: Polnyi Kroly [polai 1914, he helped found the Hungarian Radical Party and
served as its secretary.
karoj]; born October 25, 1886, Vienna, AustroHungarian Empire April 23, 1964, Pickering, On- Polanyi was a cavalry ocer the Austro-Hungarian Army
tario)[1] was a Hungarian-American economic historian, in World War I, in active service at the Russian Front and
economic anthropologist, political economist, historical hospitalized in Budapest. Polanyi supported the republisociologist and social philosopher. He is known for his can government of Mihly Krolyi and its Social Demoopposition to traditional economic thought and for his cratic regime. The republic was short-lived, however, and
book, The Great Transformation. Polanyi is remem- when Bla Kun toppled the Karolyi government to create
bered today as the originator of substantivism, a cul- the Hungarian Soviet Republic Polanyi left for Vienna.
tural approach to economics, which emphasized the way
economies are embedded in society and culture. This
view ran counter to mainstream economics but was popular in anthropology, economic history, economic soci- 2 In Vienna
ology and political science.
From 1924 to 1933 he was employed as a senior editor of
the prestigious Der sterreichische Volkswirt ('The Austrian Economist') magazine. It was at this time that he
rst began criticizing the Austrian School of economists,
who he felt created abstract models which lost sight of
the organic, interrelated reality of economic processes.
Polanyi himself was attracted to Fabianism and the works
of G. D. H. Cole. It was also during this period that
Polanyi grew interested in Christian Socialism.
Ilona
Early life
3 In London
EXTERNAL LINKS
8 References
McRobbie, Kenneth, ed. (1994), Humanity, Society and Commitment: On Karl Polanyi, Black Rose
Books Ltd., ISBN 1-895431-84-0
See also
Embeddedness
Works
The Great Transformation (1944)
Universal Capitalism or Regional Planning?, The
London Quarterly of World Aairs, vol. 10 (3)
(1945).
Trade and Markets in the Early Empires (1957,
edited and with contributions by others)
Dahomey and the Slave Trade (1966)
George Dalton (ed), Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economics: Essays of Karl Polanyi (New York:
Doubleday & Company, 1968); collected essays and
selections from his work.
Harry W. Pearson (ed.), The Livelihood of Man
(Academic Press, 1977).
Karl Polanyi, For a New West: Essays, 1919-1958
(Polity Press, 2014). ISBN 9780745684444
Notes
[1] Encyclopdia Britannica (Chicago: Encyclopdia Britannica Inc. 2003) vol 9. p.554
[2] For example, Morris Silver, Redistribution and Markets in the Economy of Ancient Mesopotamia: Updating
Polanyi, Antiguo Oriente 5 (2007): 89-112.
[3] http://www.government-online.net/eva-zeisel-obituary/
9 External links
The Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy The Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy at
Concordia University web site.
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (1944) Review Essay by Anne Mayhew, College of Arts and
Sciences, University of Tennessee
Prole on Karl Polanyi - On the History of Economic Thought Website
Kari Polanyi Levitt
Karl Polanyi (video) from Marginal Revolution University
The free market is an impossible utopia (2014-0718), The Washington Post. A conversation with
Fred Block and Margaret Somers on their book, The
Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyis
Critique (Harvard University Press, 2014). The
book argues that the ideas of Karl Polanyi are crucial
to help understand economic recessions and their aftermath.
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