Karl Polanyi Quotes on Knowledge
Karl Polanyi (1886–1964), the Hungarian-American economic historian (and brother of Michael Polanyi) whose The Great Transformation (1944) gave twentieth-century economic thought one of its most influential alternatives to neoclassical orthodoxy, defended the substantivist case that economic activity is constitutively embedded in the broader social, political, and religious institutions of the society within which it occurs. The framework treats the self-regulating market of nineteenth-century liberal doctrine as a utopian project — a deliberately constructed institutional anomaly whose corrosive effects on traditional social bonds inevitably produced the protective counter-movements that Polanyi's analysis traced through the political history of the twentieth century.
Quotes
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“The Essence of Fascism", In J. Lewis, K. Polanyi, D. K. Kitchin (eds), Christianity and the Social Revolution (1935)”
A bare outline of the objective nature of Fascism thus tends to support our interpretation of its philosophy. The Fascist system has to carry on persistently the task begun by the Fascist Movement: the destruction of the democratic parties, organisations, and institutions in society. Fascism must then proceed to attempt to change the nature of human consciousness itself. The pragmatic reasons for -
“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.”
Ch. 1 : The Hundred Years' Peace -
“Ch. 2 : Conservative Twenties, Revolutionary Thirties”
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 bo -
“At the heart of the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century there was an almost miraculous improvement in the tools of production, which was accompanied by a catastrophic dislocation of the lives of the common people.”
Ch. 3 : "Habitation versus Improvement -
“Ch. 3 : "Habitation versus Improvement”
At the heart of the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century there was an almost miraculous improvement in the tools of production, which was accompanied by a catastrophic dislocation of the lives of the common people. -
“Ch. 3 : "Habitation versus Improvement”
Enclosures have appropriately been called a revolution of the rich against the poor. The lords and nobles were upsetting the social order, breaking down ancient law and custom, sometimes by means of violence, often by pressure and intimidation. They were literally robbing the poor of their share in the common, tearing down the houses which, by the hitherto unbreakable force of custom, the poor had