The Case of the Missing Potatoes: Reconsidering Michael Polanyi’s Spontaneous Order

Abstract

ABSTRACT Spontaneous order literature (“Tradition of Spontaneous Order” (1982) by Norman Barry; The Scottish Enlightenment and the Theory of Spontaneous Order (1987) by Ronald Hamowy; "Spontaneous Order" (1989) by Robert Sugden; "The Theory of Spontaneous Order and Cultural Evolution in the Social Theory of F.A. Hayek" (1990) by Peter J. Boettke; Calculation and Coordination: Essays on Socialism and Transitional Political Economy (2001) by Peter J. Boettke; Hayek's Liberalism and Its Origins: His Idea of Spontaneous Order and the Scottish Enlightenment (2001) by Christina Petsoulas; "The Origin and Scope of Hayek’s Idea of Spontaneous Order" (2007) by Louis Hunt; "Spontaneous Order" (2015) by Daniel J. D'Amico; "Spontaneous Economic Order" (2016) by Yong Tao) has long downplayed the ideas of Michael Polanyi. When attempts were being made to change this attitude ("Polanyi on Liberal Neutrality" (1996/97) by C. P. Goodman; "Michael Polanyi and Spontaneous Order, 1941-1951" (1997) by Struan Jacobs), they mostly suggested to replace Hayek with Polanyi as the key figure who recoined the concept for the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, scholars of Austrian economics jumped into the arena of competing priority claims ("Against Polanyi-Centrism: Hayek and the Re-Emergence of “Spontaneous Order”" (2005) by John P. Bladel) and claimed that Hayek, von Mises and Röpke have argued for such an order long before Polanyi’s first writing using this terminology was published in 1948. Only a few accounts attempted to present some kind of balance in this respect (Adam Smith's Political Philosophy: The Invisible Hand and Spontaneous Order (2006) by Craig Smith; The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, Volume 15: The Market and Other Orders (2014) by Bruce Caldwell; "Friedrich Hayek and Michael Polanyi in Correspondence" (2016) by Struan Jacobs and Phil Mullins; The Architecture of Neoliberalism: How Contemporary Architecture Became an Instrument of Control and Compliance (2016) by Douglas Spencer; "Editorial Introduction to ‘Collectivist Planning’ by Michael Polanyi (1940)" (2019) by Geoffrey M. Hodgson). This paper aims to explore the so far untold characteristics of Polanyi’s spontaneous order theory through analysing archival materials and doing so offers a reason for reconsidering what we have to know about the history of spontaneous order theory. And this reconsideration might lead to developing new, more fine-grained and viable theories of spontaneous order, including those that can treat claims of spontaneous order and claims of social justice not as incompatible but as compatible aims in ordering social affairs. This perspective should, no doubt, come in handy in our increasingly polarized societies at the beginning of the twenty-first century.