Karl Polanyi
Hungarian-Canadian · 1886–1964
Hungarian-Canadian economic historian and social scientist, best known for The Great Transformation, his analysis of the rise and consequences of the self-regulating market.
Wikipedia ↗“To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment would result in the demolition of society.”
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“The idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society.”
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“The economic system is, in effect, a mere function of social organization. Laissez-faire was planned; planning was not.”
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“Labor is only another name for a human activity which goes with life itself, which in its turn is not produced for sale but for entirely different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from the rest of life, be stored or mobilized.”
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“Robbed of the protective covering of cultural institutions, human beings would perish from the effects of social exposure; they would die as the victims of acute social dislocation through vice, perversion, crime, and starvation.”
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“The true criticism of market society is not that it was based on economics — in a sense, every society must be — but that its economy was based on self-interest.”
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“Nineteenth-century civilization rested on four institutions. The first was the balance-of-power system. The second was the international gold standard. The third was the self-regulating market. The fourth was the liberal state. Of these institutions the gold standard proved crucial; its fall was the proximate cause of the catastrophe.”
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