The Second Time Around? Polanyi and Today's Fascist Tendency

Discusses the relevance of Polanyi’s double movement in light of increasing support for far-right, authoritarian and neo-fascist movements in Europe and North America. The author quotes The Great Transformation on how fascism “was rooted in a market system that refused to function” (21), however, he chooses to center his analysis on an unpublished essay of Polanyi’s entitled “The Fascist Virus”. From this, he extrapolates that fascism operates like a disease within liberal capitalism, becoming lethal when tensions between capitalism and democracy hit crisis levels and unleashing itself into the body politic (20).