LITMIR.BIZ

      FOREWORD OF THE GERMAN EDITION

       ARMIN THURNHER

      No one would deny that we are currently witnessing a great transformation. Globalisation, digitalisation, neoliberalisation, climate change – who isn’t tired of hearing these buzzwords? One dramatic effect of the current sea change is expressed by the helplessness of traditional left-wing politics. In a time that would provide unprecedented opportunities for political intervention the left is no longer certain who it should refer to, who its historical role models should be. Consequently, with some delay, the work of Karl Polanyi has once again entered the spotlight.

      On 8 May 2018, the International Karl Polanyi Society was founded in Vienna. At the founding conference, which took place in the Chamber of Labour, numerous substantial lectures were delivered on the subject, some of which were documented and compiled in a supplement to the Vienna newspaper Falter, entitled ‘Transformation of Capitalism? Karl Polanyi, the Rediscovery of an Economist’ (‘Transformation des Kapitalismus? Karl Polanyi, Wiederentdeckung eines Ökonomen’). The conference location was no coincidence, as Polanyi considered the accomplishments of Red Vienna to be one of the high points of western civilisation.

      The initiative for the present volume, which is based on that supplement, came from the President and vice-President of the International Karl Polanyi Society, Andreas Novy and Brigitte Aulenbacher, who developed the concept together with Markus Marterbauer, Michael Mesch and Reinhold Russinger from the Vienna Chamber of Labour, and the author of this text. Through their contacts, they greatly contributed to the fact that the A-list of Polanyi researchers became involved in this book. And that economist Kari Polanyi Levitt, the daughter of Karl Polanyi’s and custodian of his estate and honorary president of the International Karl Polanyi Society, also features in this volume in the form of a lengthy interview about her father.

      New texts include the introduction to Polanyi’s work. Some contributions were revised, others substantially expanded, such as that by Michael Mesch about the biographical milieus in Karl Polanyi’s life. The book’s intention is to help initiate a renewed engagement – including in the German-speaking world – with a thinker who has come to be regarded as a centennial figure in the Anglo-Saxon world.

      Karl Polanyi offers no political directions, but analyses. He is widely referenced in the debates across the Anglo-Saxon left. In these politically precarious times, in which so-called political advisors set the tone and social media teams dominate public discourse, Karl Polanyi’s work provides a more substantial kind of food for thought. In this sense, this book seeks to take our thinking and our debates a step further.

      The book reflects on the renaissance of Polanyi’s works. What makes Polanyi’s ideas so popular in the current situation, even going as far as to earn him the title ‘personality of our century’? Well, this is most likely down to the fact that the era he analysed, the rise of the unbridled market society, displays such striking similarities with our own time. But what is this ‘market society’? And do the counter-movements we are now seeing among those groups in society that fit the description of ‘völkisch (i.e. ethno-nationalist) populists’ not coincide with the patterns Polanyi analysed? And what is the relationship between the print media across the Anglo-Saxon world and the renaissance of Karl Polanyi?

      It reconstructs his life and works. Who would be better placed to tell us about Karl Polanyi’s life than his daughter Kari Polanyi Levitt? In order to improve our understanding of Karl Polanyi, the person, we need to find out more about the people who were close to him: his wife Ilona Duczyńska, his brother Michael and of course his daughter Kari. Polanyi was born in Vienna and grew up in Budapest; the situation for Hungarian Jews was marked by uncertainty, with waves of anti-Semitism occurring from the late 19th century onward. As many others during the 20th century, Polanyi ended up moving from one place to another: Vienna, London and the United States were subsequent stations in his life.

      The book presents some import issues of his and our times. As a conservative critic of Polanyi’s magnum opus The Great Transformation once said: great books can also be pernicious books. But how did The Great Transformation come about and what was Polanyi’s motivation for writing it? How are his words all too often misunderstood by those reading them today, despite their best intentions? How does Polanyi’s work relate to the writings of his influential contemporaries Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes? What do Polanyian terms like ‘fictitious commodities’ actually mean? And lastly, how does Polanyi’s analysis help us to understand care, digitalisation and science in an era when everything is subordinated to the market?

      Last but not least, it asks: Why Polanyi now? The Great Transformation is regarded as one of the most important books of the 20th century; at least it has been since the London Times put it on its list of greatest books. That was in 1977, in other words 33 years after the book was first published. In the same year, the first German translation of Polanyi’s magnum opus appeared. We present some annotated excerpts from the book, which provide us with an insight into Karl Polanyi’s thinking, ideas that have been the inspiration for so much research and scholarly debate. A map of the world provides an overview of Polanyi Institutes across the globe. We also include information about how to become a member of the Vienna-based Karl Polanyi Society.