Two heterodox economists: Neurath and Karl Polanyi

This paper is based on the idea that between the 1920s and the mid-1930s in Vienna there were two forms of heterodox economic theory: the Austrian economic school headed by Ludwig von Mises and another interesting form of heterodox economics opposed to the Austrian school (above all politically) and pursued by various social thinkers (Otto Neurath, Karl Polanyi, Otto Bauer, Felix Schaffer, Felix Weil, Jacob Marschak). They were engaged in the debate on the possibilities of a planned economy: Austrian socialist economists proposed a sort of ‘third’ way between pure capitalism (whose Viennese stronghold was the Austrian economic school) and orthodox communism à la Kautzsky (deeply rooted in Germany). This paper focuses on the affinities between Neurath and Polanyi’s economic thought: despite some major differences between them, they shared a common philosophical background on which they founded their heterodox economic theory. After a brief historical premise, there is a first part, which deals with the debate on a planned economy and a second part, which deals with the influence of Neurath on the Polanyi’s vision of the faults of the neoclassical economic theory: the concepts of “disembedded economy” and of the so-called “economicistic fallacy”. NEURATH AND POLANYI IN VIENNA Neurath described himself as a ‘social engin