Michael Polanyi's Early Liberal Vision: Society as a Network of Dynamic Orders Reliant on Public Liberty

Abstract

Michael Polanyi articulates a vision of social order in his early nonscientific writing published from the late thirties to the early fifties. This vision draws upon Polanyi's experience as a Hungarian émigré who became a top scientist after World War I in Germany but then later fled to Great Britain where he confronted the Marxist-inspired “planned” science movement in the late thirties and early forties. Polanyi's account of what he calls “liberal” society focuses on establishing a context in which thought can grow. Adapting Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Kohler's ideas about “systems of dynamic order,” Polanyi envisioned society as a network of overlapping, relatively independent subcultural systems of order that preserve and cultivate certain ideas and practices. Such systems of dynamic order are not all alike, and Polanyi generally distinguishes intellectual systems dependent upon tradition and professional opinion from very broad based, preeminently competitive systems like the market. Despite differences among the various orders in society, all are stable specialized social niches or domains of social interaction in which certain niche-specific “public” liberties function. Such liberties are not private freedoms but values and practices that promote the interaction of individuals within the subcultural network. For Polanyi, the variety of material and intellectual goods important in a flourishing society are produced by dynamic orders in which persons exercise the public liberty due them.