Discover the Best Books Written by Karl Polanyi

Karl Paul Polanyi was an Austro-Hungarian economic historian, economic anthropologist, economic sociologist, political economist, historical sociologist, and social philosopher. He is known for his opposition to traditional economic thought and for his book, The Great Transformation, which argued that the emergence of market-based societies in modern Europe was not inevitable but historically contingent. 

Polanyi founded the radical and influential Galileo Circle while at the University of Budapest, a club that would have far-reaching effects on Hungarian intellectual thought. During this time, he was actively engaged with other notable thinkers, such as György Lukács, Oszkár Jászi, and Karl Mannheim. Polanyi graduated from Budapest University in 1912 with a doctorate in Law. In 1914, he helped found the National Citizens' Radical Party of Hungary and served as its secretary.

Polanyi was a cavalry officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army in World War I, in active service on the Russian Front and hospitalized in Budapest. Polanyi supported the republican government of Mihály Károlyi and its Social Democratic regime. The republic was short-lived, however, and when Béla Kun toppled the Karolyi government to create the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Polanyi left for Vienna.

Polanyi is remembered today as the originator of substantive, a cultural approach to economics that emphasized the way economies are embedded in society and culture. This view runs counter to mainstream economics but is popular in anthropology, economic history, economic sociology, and political science.

Polanyi's approach to the ancient economies has been applied to a variety of cases, such as Pre-Columbian America and ancient Mesopotamia. However, its utility in the study of ancient societies, in general, has been questioned. Polanyi's The Great Transformation became a model for historical sociology. His theories eventually became the foundation for the economic democracy movement. His daughter, Canadian economist Kari Polanyi Levitt (born 1923 in Vienna, Austria), is an Emerita Professor of Economics at McGill University, Montreal.