Karl Polanyi in Vienna

In this article I discuss Polanyi's intellectual formation in early twentieth-century Budapest and in 1920s Vienna, focusing in particular upon his relationship to Guild Socialist and Marxist theory and to Austrian Social Democracy. It was a period in which Marxism was evolving rapidly, and Polanyi was too. In his twenties, he reacted forcefully against what he saw as the evolutionary and deterministic traits of Marxist philosophy. In his thirties, his relationship to Marxism underwent a 'double movement': his long-held doubts about Marxism crystallised into an forceful critique, swiftly followed by a sympathetic dialogue with the ideas and politics of Austro-Marxism, the 'Rousseauian' commitments of which were not unlike his own. I examine Polanyi's relationship with Marxism in each of these phases, and explore the affinities between Guild Socialism and Austro-Marxism. The final section introduces the distinctly un-Polanyian analysis of Austrian Social Democracy offered by Polanyi's wife, Ilona Duczynska.