Although Karl Polanyi's life was one of virtual nomadism - he never achieved a comfortable academic appointment - this maverick economic historian nonetheless exerted a powerful influence on his ivory tower contemporaries. Polanyi was born in Vienna and raised in Budapest, joining, in his student days, the circle of such luminary radicals such as Georg Lukacs and Karl Mannheim. During World War I, he was imprisoned on the Russian front, and upon release, returned to Vienna as a journalist. He immigrated to Britain in 1933, where he lived hand-to-mouth as a tutor. In 1940, during a lecture tour in the US, Polanyi decided to accept an offer by Bennington College. It was then that he wrote his magnum opus - The Great Transformation (1944).
Polanyi's central thesis is well known among sociologists and economic historians: namely, that capitalism is a historical anomaly because while previous economic arrangments were "embedded" in social relations, in capitalism, the situations was reversed - social relations were defined by economic relations. In Polanyi's view, in the sweep of human history, rules of reciprocity, redistribution and communal obligations were far more frequent than market relations. However, not only did capitalism not exhibit them, its ascendancy actually destroyed them irreversibly. The "great transformation" of the industrial revolution was to completely replace all modes of interaction with the other. …show more content…
Far from a "natural" or "necessary" outcome, Polanyi argued that capitalism evolved from the demands placed by new mercantile and then bourgois classes upon the State to protect their fledgling enterprises and precarious social status. In this way, governments became the handmaiden of capitalism, helping to advance it with the necessary legislation and execution by virtual force of
Polanyi's central thesis is well known among sociologists and economic historians: namely, that capitalism is a historical anomaly because while previous economic arrangments were "embedded" in social relations, in capitalism, the situations was reversed - social relations were defined by economic relations. In Polanyi's view, in the sweep of human history, rules of reciprocity, redistribution and communal obligations were far more frequent than market relations. However, not only did capitalism not exhibit them, its ascendancy actually destroyed them irreversibly. The "great transformation" of the industrial revolution was to completely replace all modes of interaction with the other. …show more content…
Far from a "natural" or "necessary" outcome, Polanyi argued that capitalism evolved from the demands placed by new mercantile and then bourgois classes upon the State to protect their fledgling enterprises and precarious social status. In this way, governments became the handmaiden of capitalism, helping to advance it with the necessary legislation and execution by virtual force of