Abstract
A central thesis of Karl Polanyi's The great transformation concerns the tensions between capitalism and democracy: the former embodies the principle of inequality, while democracy represents that of equality. This paper explores the intellectual heritage of this thesis, in the ‘functional theory’ of G.D.H. Cole and Otto Bauer and in the writings of Eduard Bernstein. It scrutinizes Polanyi's relationship with Bernstein's ‘evolutionary socialism’ and charts his ‘double movement’ vis-à-vis Marxist philosophy: in the 1910s he reacted sharply against Marxism's deterministic excesses, but he then, in the 1920s, engaged in sympathetic dialogue with Austro-Marxist thinkers. The latter, like Bernstein, disavowed economic determinism and insisted upon the importance and autonomy of ethics. Yet they simultaneously predicted a law-like expansion of democracy from the political to the economic arena. Analysis of this contradiction provides the basis for a concluding discussion that reconsiders the deterministic threads in Polanyi's oeuvre. Whereas for some Polanyi scholars these attest to his residual attraction to Marxism, I argue that matters are more complex. While Polanyi did repudiate the more rigidly deterministic of currents in Marxist philosophy, those to which he was attracted, notably Bernstein's ‘revision’ and Austro-Marxism, incorporated a deterministic fatalism of their own, in respect of democratization. Herein lies a more convincing explanation of Polanyi's incomplete escape from a deterministic philosophy of history, as exemplified in his masterwork, The great transformation.
Highlights
Karl Polanyi’s contributions have long been influential in a variety of disciplines
All of the works for which he is known, were written late in life, and relatively little is known of his earlier output, either from his youth in Budapest (1907–1919) or from his period of exile in Vienna (1919–1933)
I draw upon Polanyi’s published and unpublished Hungarian and German papers in the Karl Polanyi Archive at Concordia University, interviews with his daughter, Kari Polanyi-Levitt, and correspondence archived in the Michael Polanyi collection at Chicago University
Summary
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/reso. The iron law of democratic socialism: British and Austrian influences on the young Karl Polanyi. Gareth Dale Published online: 20 Nov 2014
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