Karl Polanyi

“Robert Owen’s was a true insight: market economy if left to evolve according to its own laws would create great and permanent…

— Karl Polanyi

“The root of all evil, the liberal insists, was precisely this interference with the freedom of employment, trade and currencies practiced by…

— Karl Polanyi

There was nothing natural about laissez-faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course.…

— Karl Polanyi

“the selfish gladly consoled themselves with the thought that though it was merciful at least it was not liberal;”

— Karl Polanyi

To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment....would result in…

— Karl Polanyi

Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any…

— Karl Polanyi

Enclosures have been appropriately called a revolution of the rich against the poor.

— Karl Polanyi

“In the half-century 1879–1929, Western societies developed into close-knit units, in which powerful disruptive strains were latent. The more immediate source of…

— Karl Polanyi

“the organization of labor is only another word for the forms of life of the common people, this means that the development…

— Karl Polanyi

“And yet, Burke might have countered, once the masses were fated by the laws of political economy to toil in misery, what…

— Karl Polanyi

“...To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of…

— Karl Polanyi