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Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie
Published in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie 2/2019

01-06-2019 | Hauptbeiträge

Karl Polanyi’s Search for Freedom in a Complex Society

Authors: Claus Thomasberger, Michael Brie

Published in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie | Issue 2/2019

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Abstract

This article reads Polanyi’s work as a lifelong search that focuses on the possibilities of freedom in a complex society. The implications for Polanyi’s thinking are examined in more detail in two thematic areas: The question of the socialist transformation of society, which was at the heart of Polanyi’s contributions to the debates in Red Vienna with Ludwig Mises and the Austro-Marxists; the idea of the double movement, which is crucial to Polanyi’s analysis of the end of European nineteenth-century civilization.
In contrast to most of the existing interpretations, the article is not limited to an examination of Polanyi’s best-known work, The Great Transformation, but also includes the writings that have become accessible in recent years in the discussion.
previous article Polanyi: Classical Moral Economist or Pioneer Cultural Political Economist?
next article "Conservative 1920s" and Conservative 2010s? Austerity Politics in Interwar Austria and Present-day Greece

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Footnotes
1
In this paper, the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘liberalism’ are used in the original meaning which until today prevails in the European discussions. We are well aware of the fact that in the United States the notions have come to have a rather different meaning.
 
2
The last chapter was at the center of a workshop which the authors of this paper organized three years ago in NY. The papers have been published in: Brie and Thomasberger (2018).
 
3
For a more detailed discussion of the institutional aspects and its connection to Polanyi’s vision of freedom see Cangiani (2018).
 
4
Amartya Sen (1999) introduced the term “capability”, albeit in a different context, to underline the importance of economic, social or political conditions for the realization of substantive freedom.
 
5
For a recent, popularized, seemingly left-leaning version of Mises’ argument, see Corneo (2017).
 
6
For different views concerning Polanyi’s critique of the utopian dimension of liberalism see Somers (2018), Thomasberger (2018).
 
7
Christopher Holmes’ (2018) “postmodern” interpretation of Polanyi confuses cause and effect. In Polanyi’s narrative it is not the distinction between habitation and improvement that “precedes and predates […] the emergence of the institutions of market and state” (Holmes 2018, p. 29), but the other way round: “[T]he rise of the factory towns, the emergence of slums, the long working hours of children, the low wages of certain categories of workers, […] were merely incidental to one basic change, the establishment of market economy” (Polanyi 2001, p. 42).
 
8
Polanyi’s misjudgments concerning the post-war conditions are much less a result of “Polanyi’s false optimism” (Burawoy 2014, p. 38; cf. also Block and Somers 2016, pp. 19, 218) than of the lack of a study of US society. As we know from Abraham Rotstein (1956), Polanyi never realized the planned study “The Great Transformation in America”.
 
9
The question of what a fundamental transformation requires is discussed more in detail in Brie (2018).
 
10
Certainly, Friedman’s view of corporate social responsibility as a “fundamentally subversive doctrine” (Friedman 1982, p. 113) is one-sided and extreme. However, it remains true that in a market economy the manager ultimately is responsible to the company, i. e. in charge of avoiding default.
 
Literature
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Brie, Michael. 2018. Karl Polanyi and the discussions on a renewed socialism. In Karl Polanyi’s vision of a socialist transformation, ed. Michael Brie, Claus Thomasberger, 241–263. Montreal: Black Rose Books.
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Metadata
Title
Karl Polanyi’s Search for Freedom in a Complex Society
Authors
Claus Thomasberger
Michael Brie
Publication date
01-06-2019
Publisher
Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
Published in
Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie / Issue 2/2019
Print ISSN: 1011-0070
Electronic ISSN: 1862-2585
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11614-019-00333-8

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