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Karl Polanyi Quotes

Karl Paul Polanyi was an Austro-Hungarian economic historian, economic anthropologist, economic sociologist, political economist, historical sociologist and social philosopher. He is known for his opposition to traditional economic thought and for his book, The Great Transformation, which argued that the emergence of market-based societies in modern Europe was not inevitable but historically contingent. Polanyi is remembered today as the originator of substantivism, a cultural approach to economics, which emphasized the way economies are embedded in society and culture. This view ran counter to mainstream economics but is popular in anthropology, economic history, economic sociology and political science.

Polanyi's approach to the ancient economies has been applied to a variety of cases, such as Pre-Columbian America and ancient Mesopotamia, although its utility to the study of ancient societies in general has been questioned. Polanyi's The Great Transformation became a model for historical sociology. His theories eventually became the foundation for the economic democracy movement. His daughter, Canadian economist Kari Polanyi Levitt , is Emerita Professor of Economics at McGill University, Montreal. Wikipedia  

✵ 25. October 1886 – 23. April 1964
Karl Polanyi photo

Works

The Great Transformation
Karl Polanyi: 10 quotes2 likes

Famous Karl Polanyi Quotes

“Socialism is, essentially, the tendency inherent in an industrial civilization to transcend the self-regulating market by consciously subordinating it to a democratic society. It is the solution natural to the industrial workers who see no reason why production should not be regulated directly and why markets should be more than a useful but subordinate trait in a free society. From the point of view of the community as a whole, socialism is merely the continuation of that endeavor to make society a distinctively human relationship of persons which in Western Europe was always associated with Christian traditions.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 19 : Popular Government and Market Economy

“The true nature of the international system under which we were living was not realized until it failed. Hardly anyone understood the political function of the international monetary system; the awful suddenness of the transformation thus took the world completely by surprise. And yet the gold standard was the only remaining pillar of the traditional world economy; when it broke, the effect was bound to be instantaneous. To liberal economists the gold standard was a purely economic institution; they refused even to consider it as a part of a social mechanism.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 2 : Conservative Twenties, Revolutionary Thirties

“Market economy implies a self-regulating system of markets; in slightly more technical terms, it is an economy directed by market prices and nothing but market prices.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 4 : Societies and Economic Systems

“Both the personnel and the motives of this singular body invested it with a status the roots of which were securely grounded in the private sphere of strictly commercial interest.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 1 : The Hundred Years' Peace

“Nineteenth-century civilization rested on four institutions. The first was the balance-of-power system which for a century prevented the occurrence of any long and devastating war between the Great Powers. The second was the international gold standard which symbolized a unique organization of world economy. The third was the self-regulating market which produced an unheard-of material welfare. The fourth was the liberal state. Classified in one way, two of these institutions were economic, two political. Classified in another way, two of them were national, two international. Between them they determined the characteristic outlines of the history of our civilization.
Of these institutions the gold standard proved crucial; its fall was the proximate cause of the catastrophe. By the time it failed, most of the other institutions had been sacrificed in a vain effort to save it. But the fount and matrix of the system was the self-regulating market. It was this innovation which gave rise to a specific civilization.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 1 : The Hundred Years' Peace

“The economic system is, in effect, a mere function of social organization.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 4 : Societies and Economic Systems

Karl Polanyi Quotes

“The economy as an instituted process of interaction serving the satisfaction of material wants forms a vital part of every human community. Without an economy in this sense, no society could exist for any length of time.”

Karl Polanyi

Source: The Livelihood of Man (1977), Ch. 2 : The Two Meanings of Economic

“What we call land is an element of nature inextricably interwoven with man’s institutions. To isolate it and form a market for it was perhaps the weirdest of all the undertakings of our ancestors.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

Source: The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 15 : Market and Nature

“Pauperism had become a portent. But its meaning was still anybody's guess.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

Source: The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 9 : Pauperism and Utopia

“The Industrial Revolution was merely the beginning of a revolution as extreme and radical as ever inflamed the minds of sectarians, but the new creed was utterly materialistic and believed that all human problems could be resolved given an unlimited amount of material commodities.”

Karl Polanyi book The Great Transformation

Source: The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 3 : "Habitation versus Improvement"

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