Karl Polanyi

Karl Paul Polanyi (/poʊˈlænji/; Hungarian: Polányi Károly [ˈpolaːɲi ˈkaːroj]; 25 October 1886 – 23 April 1964) was an Austro-Hungarian economic historian, economic sociologist, and politician, best known for his book The Great Transformation, which questions the conceptual validity of self-regulating markets.

In his writings, Polanyi advances the concept of the Double Movement, which refers to the dialectical process of marketization and push for social protection against that marketization. He argues that market-based societies in modern Europe were not inevitable but historically contingent. Polanyi is remembered best as the originator of substantivism, a cultural version of economics, which emphasizes the way economies are embedded in society and culture. This opinion is 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.

Polanyi was active in politics, and helped found the National Citizens' Radical Party in 1914, serving as its secretary. He fled Hungary for Vienna in 1919 when the right-wing authoritarian regime of Admiral Horthy seized power. He fled Vienna for London in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and fascism was on the ascendancy in Austria. After years of unsuccessfully seeking employment at universities in the United Kingdom, he moved to the United States in 1940 where he joined the faculty at Bennington College and later taught at Columbia University.

Karl Polanyi was born in Vienna and raised in Budapest by a German‑speaking Jewish family assimilating into the secular middle class. His younger brother was Michael Polanyi, a philosopher, and his niece was Eva Zeisel, a world-renowned ceramist. He was born in Vienna, at the time the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, Mihály Pollacsek, was a railway entrepreneur. Mihály never changed the name Pollacsek, and is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Budapest. Mihály died in January 1905, which was an emotional shock to Karl, and he commemorated the anniversary of Mihály's death throughout his life. Karl and Michael Polanyi's mother was Cecília Wohl. The name change to Polanyi was made by Karl and his siblings.

Polanyi was well educated despite the ups and downs of his father's fortune, and he immersed himself in Budapest's active intellectual and artistic scene. Polanyi studied at the Minta Gymnasium.

Polanyi founded the radical and influential Galileo Circle while at the University of Budapest, a club which would have far reaching effects on Hungarian intellectual thought. During this time, he was actively engaged with other notable thinkers, such as György Lukács, Oszkár Jászi, and Karl Mannheim. Polanyi graduated from Budapest University in 1912 with a doctorate in Law. In 1914, he helped found the National Citizens' Radical Party of Hungary and served as its secretary.^{[citation needed]}

Polanyi was a cavalry officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army in World War I, in active service at the Russian Front and hospitalized in Budapest. Polanyi supported the republican government of Mihály Károlyi and its Social Democratic regime. The republic was short-lived, with socialist Béla Kun toppling the Karolyi government to create the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Polanyi left Hungary for Vienna in order to undergo medical treatment. During this time, the Kun government was replaced by the right-wing authoritarian regime of Admiral Horthy. As a consequence, Polanyi left Hungary permanently.