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‘MANY GRAZE ON POLANYI’S PASTURE’
The works of Karl Polanyi in German- and English-language media over the past five years.

ARMIN THURNHER

Many texts, including those featuring in this volume, suggest that the financial crisis of 2008 placed Polanyi’s work back in the limelight. There is some truth to such a notion. Yet, how Polanyi’s renaissance came about is rather different in the German- and English-speaking worlds. While in the UK and the United States, the left actually debates Polanyi and important newspapers and magazines with a serious audience address and discuss the man and his work, in Germany and Austria there is some coverage in newspapers, whereas journals and magazines hardly ever mention him at all. Correspondingly, neither Der Spiegel nor magazines such as Profil, Weltwoche or Brand eins mentioned the name Karl Polanyi once over the past five years. There were two mentions in Die Zeit, but no substantial article on the subject. It is exclusively publications specialising in politics, like the Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, that have featured lengthy pieces on Polanyi or ideas based on his work. Some of these were from the Anglo-Saxon world, authored, for example, by Robert Reich or Nancy Fraser, the latter of whom is discussed in more detail in this volume.

Polanyi’s magnum opus, The Great Transformation, appeared in 1944, and it took another 33 years before it was published in German. Only very few people outside of economic expert circles were familiar with the name Polanyi. If nothing else, at least that has changed completely. Today, he is frequently cited en passent, so to speak, as political scientist Ulrich Brand recently did in an interview with the Austrian paper Falter. ‘How far does degrowth have to go?’, was the question, to which Brand responded:

‘To say it with Karl Polanyi: we need to initiate the social-political and intellectual countermovement against a continuing ignorant consumption of natural resources, which are taken for granted, and an imperial lifestyle. That will allow for learning processes which I have already observed among some of my students: they don’t even want to have a car anymore, nor do some of them want to get on a plane anymore. All they want is a good life. This might give us a clearer picture of the outlook: a growing part of society wants this alternative lifestyle.’ (Falter, 1 May 2018).

In 2009, the renowned paper Die Zeit, with its academic middle-class readership, wrote that if one believed the ideas of the ‘forgotten economist (sic) Karl Polanyi’, one had to recognise the fact that ‘industrial civilisation may well lead to the ruin of humankind’ (16 July). Polanyi was only mentioned in one other instance, namely as an admonisher of ‘climate change, economic and financial crises’ (Die Zeit, 15 September 2011). The few weekly papers that did not ignore Polanyi, include the Wirtschaftswoche. ‘Today you have students attending advanced seminars in economics who have not read Adam Smith or Friedrich August von Hayek. They don’t know who Francois Quesnay or Carl Menger were, nor what Albert O. Hirschman or Karl Polanyi stand for.’ (12 October 2018)

Readers of daily newspapers were slightly better off in this respect. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung was indeed correct to write, in 2016: ‘Schumpeter, Galbraith, Hayek and Friedman may have achieved equally high-profile publicity as Keynes or Piketty. However, this is not the case with Karl Polanyi, Tibor Scitovsky, Albert O. Hirschman and Peter L. Berger’ (29 September). And yet, Austrian broadsheet newspapers have surprisingly contributed to the Polanyi renaissance quite considerably. In Die Presse of 15 November 2016, social and economic historian Ernst Langthaler contextualised his detailed article on The Great Transformation with current affairs, namely the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States. ‘What sounds like an op-ed article on Donald Trump’s victory during the US presidential elections was essentially conceived, said and written down more than 70 years ago. In his 1944 book The Great Transformation, Karl Polanyi addressed one of the most pressing questions of his time: the rise of fascism which – together with communism – earned the 20th century the title of the “Age of Extremes” (Eric Hobsbawm), writes Langthaler, without, however, classifying Trump as a fascist. He considers him to be a national populist, whose success can, however, be explained with Polanyi’s category of countermovement.

Der Standard is another paper that sporadically quotes Polanyi, e.g. in an article by Wolfgang Müller-Funk, who called for a European politics in the sense of a ‘European muddling through’ on 13 May 2016. For ‘its collapse would unleash those forces of democratic self-destruction that have already become such a dramatic challenge for Europe. It would lead precisely to the regression and complete marginalisation of the semi-continent described by Karl Polanyi just before the end of World War II.’

Likewise, several Austrian papers reported on the tribute to Kari Polanyi Levitt in the form of a commemorative plaque at her former family home in Vienna, and on this occasion also used the opportunity to expand on Karl Polanyi’s work at the same time. By and large, the reception in Austrian media publications remains non-committal, although there are exceptions every now and then: for example, Der Standard published a comprehensive Polanyi portrait including an interview with Kari Polanyi Levitt by Tanja Traxler on the occasion of the Polanyi Conference in Linz on 18 January 2017. Other reports were published by the Wiener Zeitung, such as an op-ed article by economist Sigrid Stagl on 29 August 2017 calling for ‘new rules for economic activity in the Anthropocene’.

As for German and Swiss daily papers, in a nutshell, Polanyi is either honoured or derisively criticised, depending on the specific political orientation of the respective paper. The conservative Neue Zürcher Zeitung remains surprisingly neutral and frequently quotes Polanyi in its more elaborate essays; for example, urban planners Robert Kaltenbrunner and Olaf Schnur appear quite at home using the term ‘commodification’ – in reference to Polanyi (16 April 2014).

The Süddeutsche Zeitung and taz clearly sympathise with Polanyi. In an article for the Süddeutsche of 18 June 2018, political scientist Claus Leggewie reviews the Polanyi-related works by Gareth Dale and Robert Kuttner. And English literature professor Jeremy Adler writes on the subject of Brexit:

‘The correct diagnosis comes from Hayek's opponent Karl Polanyi. The economic historian regarded the “free market” as a myth because it was in fact based on countless laws: “The laissez-faire was planned”. The one-sided preference of the market undermined democracy. A natural economy is socially embedded. According to Polanyi, Hayek confused the disease with the cure. Fascism stems from “a market economy that does not function”.’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 24 August 2018)

For economic sociologist Jens Beckert, then, The Great Transformation is the most important book he has come across, full stop (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14 June 2016). Unsurprisingly, when quoting Polanyi, the taz expresses agreement with his positions, or rather assumes the reference to him to be entirely natural and self-explanatory (e.g. in the case of author and political scientist Franz Walter on 6 April 2013).

Among the most interesting coverage of Polanyi is that by the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). Although the main thrust of the FAZ and its Sunday edition, the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung (FAS), is that students of Polanyi cling to his theory only out of concern for the general helplessness of the left, it is still a paper in which there is comprehensive, at times even sympathetic engagement with Polanyi.

Here, US economist Shoshana Zuboff states, with reference to Polanyi’s analysis of the market’s destructiveness:

‘Google brings us to the precipice of a new development in the scope of the market economy. A fourth fictional commodity is emerging as a dominant characteristic of market dynamics in the 21st century. “Reality” is about to undergo the same kind of fictional transformation and be reborn as “behavior”. This includes the behavior of creatures, their bodies, and their things. It includes actual behavior and data about behavior.’ (FAZ, 30 April 2014)

Economist Carl Christian von Weizsäcker in turn cites Polanyi in his economics of migration (FAZ, 12 January 2016).

Likewise, economic editor Rainer Hank notes at the end of his Polanyi portrait, rather positively: ‘Many of today’s critics of capitalism graze on Polanyi’s pasture. The critique of “economism” and “capitalism in its pure form”, the admonition to maintain reasonable measure, which resounds on a daily basis from politicians ranging from Sahra Wagenknecht to Volker Kauder, has its origin here. When Chancellor Merkel demands a “democracy that conforms to the market”, today’s friends of Polanyi would, by contrast, demand a “market that conforms to democracy”.’ (FAS, 24 August 2018)

It should be added that the very same editor, with regard to Polanyi’s legacy, distorts his differentiated critique of capitalism, as well as accusing him of ‘anti-capitalist romanticism’ (FAS, 13 January 2013). Yet Hank keeps returning to Polanyi, be it in the context of his review of Dickens (FAS, 16 March 2014), or in a philippic against critics of capitalism who, in his view, are unaware that they are Polanyi’s heirs (FAS, 24 August 2014).

In his FAZ article titled, ‘Why intellectuals don’t like capitalism’, multi-millionaire and historian Rainer Zitelmann enlightens readers about the reason for middle-class publicists’ intuitive mistrust: ‘One of the reasons why many intellectuals lack an understanding of capitalism is its character as spontaneously evolved social order. In contrast to socialism, capitalism is not an intellectual construct that is imposed on reality, but an order that evolved largely spontaneously, rather growing “from the bottom upward” than being decreed from above. Historically, it has evolved like languages have evolved. Languages were not invented, constructed and conceived, but are the result of uncontrolled, spontaneous processes’ (18 May 2018).

It is hardly possible to misunderstand Polanyi and his school of thought any more profoundly, for in the latter’s view, precisely the opposite is true: laissez-faire was planned.

The picture is entirely different when we consider the UK and US. In the UK, the reason for this is simple: Jeremy Corbyn’s economic policy is based on and orientated towards Polanyi. However, this is not the only reason why conservative media like The Economist have covered Polanyi (‘The great transformation: Corbynomics would change Britain – but not in the way most people think’, 17 May 2018); long before Corbyn, political scientist Adrian Pabst had apodictically established in an article in the left-of-centre Guardian that Polanyi, not Keynes, was ‘the only economist to grasp the real limitations of capitalism and socialism’ (9 November 2008). The Guardian states in an editorial: ‘Corbynomics has been framed in such moral (Polanyian, A.T.) terms – and that is a very good thing’ – what is lacking is the courage to produce concrete examples (27 May 2018).

More recently, UK-based economist Ann Pettifor, co-initiator of Jubilee 2000, an organisation demanding debt relief for the poorest countries, gave the German left-leaning daily paper taz an interview in which she explained the current political situation with reference to Polanyi:

‘Trump certainly represents a substantial part of society. He represents the fearful, people who have been unsettled by the economic crisis. The banks were bailed out, while the ordinary population was subjected to austerity and told they had to make sacrifices. Wages today are still lower than they were before the crisis. Ordinary people lost their houses, they see their jobs being threatened by competition from China, and the banks in Washington are doing better than ever before. As Karl Polanyi already explained as early as the 1930s, people will vote for a strong man if they feel that they need to be protected. It is a reaction to an unregulated economy. The strong man promises to build a wall on the border with Mexico and fight against the Chinese. In France, we are witnessing the revolt of a similar segment of disadvantaged citizens (…) The election of an authoritarian leader does not solve the problems of the population, it aggravates them. This is what people will discover. In both the US and Great Britain, pensions have largely been privatised, money is managed by shadow banks who use it for speculation. What exactly is it that they do with pensions? No one knows, there is no transparency. Nor any kind of oversight. Mister Blackrock manages six billion dollars’ worth of such funds. What do we know about Blackrock?’ (taz, 12 January 2019)

In the United States, Polanyi’s position is equally unchallenged. The New York Times cites his work and includes his magnum opus in a list of the most important books written in emigration, alongside those of Hannah Arendt, Theodor W. Adorno and Thomas Mann (1 February 2017); or it quotes from it, as does Pankaj Mishra in an article about Indian prime minister Modi (14 November 2016).

Consumer publications like the New Yorker dedicate 15-page essays to Polanyi’s theses (‘Is Capitalism a Threat to Democracy’ – a review of Robert Kuttner’s book on Polanyi). The influential New York Review of Books published a review by Robert Kuttner of Gareth Dale’s Polanyi biography, titled ‘The Man from Red Vienna’.

The fact that Bernie Sanders’ market-critical ideas were substantiated in reference to Polanyi is almost self-explanatory (‘Polanyi for President’, Dissent Magazine, Spring 2016). Dissent Magazine, situated politically somewhere between communitarian and social democratic, also published several other texts on Polanyi, including, for instance, ‘The Elusive Karl Polanyi’ (Spring 2017), and ‘The Return of Karl Polanyi’ (Spring 2014).

Debates about neoliberalism struggle to avoid reference to Polanyi. In The New Republic, the fiercely embattled and unkempt leftist magazine, English political scientist William Davies proclaims:

‘This ideal of separate political and economic realms has been widely criticized, not only by Marxists on the grounds that it provides a cover for class exploitation (…), but notably also by Karl Polanyi, who argued that it was only ever an illusion. From Polanyi’s perspective, the state is never entirely absent from the economic realm, but is constantly at work in manufacturing and enforcing the economic freedoms that proponents of laissez-faire treat as “natural”.’ (13 July 2017)

Or, as Steven Han succinctly wrote in an article on poverty in the US in the left flagship magazine The Nation: ‘“Laissez-faire was planned”, as Karl Polanyi once put it.’ (18 April 2018)

Young neo-Marxists kicked against the pricks in the magazine Jacobin, calling Polanyi’s proposals a kind of welfare capitalism: while they certainly represented a step forward, they still did not go far enough for true socialists. That said, such irony may be out of place given the current political struggles in both the UK and the US. The magazine more recently issued a critique of Polanyi (Jacob Hamburger, ‘The Unholy Family’, Jacobin 1/2018) based on Melinda Cooper’s book Family Values, denying that he had truly presented an alternative to much-criticised neoliberalism, arguing that the structure of the nuclear family was inherent to both, socialism (or social democracy) and neoliberalism. That said, the main takeaway is that Polanyi’s work is still alive and kicking, it is being referenced and passionately discussed as a guidepost for present-day left politics. This could serve as an example for our own left (not least in its media presence). This book seeks to contribute to this effort.

Annotation 1

This summary takes into consideration neither online media (such as, for example, orf. at, which has given Polanyi ample credit) nor radio stations like Ö1, a broadcaster that has repeatedly engaged with Polanyi, nor TV series (The German-French TV station Arte reported on Polanyi in a six-part documentary on major economists).

Annotation 2

This summary is intended as non-judgemental. It seeks not to point out the correct or incorrect perception of Polanyi’s ideas, but to depict (in an inevitably inconclusive form) the coverage in consumer publications and newspapers in the German- and English-speaking world over the past five years.