Radical functionalism: The life and work of Karl Polanyi

Abstract

In concluding, let us restate the main theoretical arguments concerning Austria-Hungary and Malinowski-Polanyi. There are many more aspects of this latter contrast which I have not dwelt on, including those of temper and personality. My concern was to show that it is not enough to trace ideas back to their origin in an undifferentiated Central Europe, for we need to be quite clear about the context in which those ideas were initially taken on board. Mach was an appropriate philosopher for the ordered bureaucracy of Austria, and he embodies the individual-centered and fundamentally conservative message, which I see articulated later in very different (and non-positivist) styles by Popper, Hayek, Schumpeter, etc. This was the message accepted in its fundamentals by Malinowski in Cracow. The Hungarian half of the Empire had quite different traditions, and one might even say that political dilemmas in this half of the Empire were so pressing that they had no time for philosophy. By the time Polanyi was growing up in Budapest, nationalist fervor was at its height, and a nineteenth century heritage of liberal, even radical thought, was under pressure from the extreme right. Polanyi's Jewish family background probably pushed him towards the Left in his early years, though it in no way interfered with this Hungarian patriotism. When he read Mach, he accepted the “individualist” and positivist aspects of the message, but he could never endorse the conservative respect for tradition that underpinned Malinowski's functionalism. This is what makes his position so interesting, and he maintained it throughout his career. In this light, Polanyi's economic anthropology is an authentic cultural product of Central Europe. Malinowski, to the extent that he took on board the basic social theory of Austrian liberal conservatism, “sold out” to the West, and to an ideological tradition which has an alternative home in another country on the periphery of industrial capitalism: Enlightenment Scotland. Austria-Hungary also produced intellectuals who “sold out” in the other direction, and abandoned all notion of intellectual autonomy for the individual by capitulating to the total discipline of the revolutionary Party. This tradition is that of Russia and Lenin, and the best known Central European intellectual recruit was Lukacs, perhaps because he studied idealists in Germany rather than the positivists in Vienna. Karl Polanyi was unable to give unswerving loyalty either to the capitalist ideology of the West, or to the ideology of the new “tributary mode of production” in the East. The middle position, which I believe he occupied throughout his life, is one that will never satisfy ideologues, and it is hard to infuse it with the same intellectual elegance. Still, just as his historical researches showed the real possibilities for combining modes of economic integration, and his life experiences showed the folly of concentration on only one, so Hungarians have learned from history that they are best off with the sort of mixed economy they have today. His popularity in Hungary is therefore unsurprising, and one may hope that the practical message of his anthropology will not be permanently forgotten in the West.