57/08

From Karl Polanyi
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Correspondence between Michael and Karl.

Letter to Michael, 13 September 1943

[1-2] Dear Misi - The very feel of life is riffrend with your letters widening the scene of thought and keeping it warn with the touch of friendship. My visiting toby, I am afraid, is linring lommlepemerate arlia sensible. [...] [4] The comparative novelty of individual fear of hunger or an organizing jailor in industry; the Speenhamland origins of classical economics; some more interesting than plausible (the identity of the “material” and the “formal” problems of model economy; in others words: that the misvalued problems of the 1820’s explain the crisis of the 1920’s); many more, I suppose merely plausible, without being specially interesting. He appeared completely at home in the details of 1780-1830 [...] [5] Confe Bentham and Spencer, Fr. Wieser on foreign trade, similarly Haberler and Mises all round.

Letter to Michael, 25 October 1943

[3-7] [7] Th Schumpeter! His book is of little interest. He is an apologia for a life twne of crypto-Marxism, with the silliest reasons imaginable given for his expectancies that capitalism is now gwing to dissolve, and that is H V M ! However, his explanation of the justification of monopolies is excellent, & entirely on my views.

I am engage in clearing up one small corner of the field: how to relativise again the economic concern, and subordinate it to those greater concerns that are looming ahead. We have absolutized the economy and are helpless when called upon to handle it as a mere tool, a secondary concern.

Letter to Michael, 13 October 1943 (2)

[8-9]

Letter to Michael, 3 November 1945

[10-18]

Letter to Michael, 1949

[19]

Letter to Michael, 29 February 1956

[23] Your “M. of M.” is ingenious, precise and, in my view, correct. A conjuncture of the two passions of the modern age: science and morality makes Marxist dialectics auto-reinforcing. However, your formula merely shows why it can be so. In other words, you describe the double aspect of all effective faiths, not the specific effect of the Marxist one. Your problem has been to my knowledge solved by the Princeton (theologian Jewish), Taubes, author of Abendländische Eschatologie.

Letter without date (1)

[44-47]

Letter without date (2)

Letter without date (3)

Letter without date (4)