57/08

From Karl Polanyi
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Correspondence between Michael and Karl.

To Michael, 13 October 1943

[1] 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. [...]

[2]

Yes, I will certainly come and see you in Manchester. I was very sorry there was no time to talk about your book plan. In my correction my theses allow of very different interpretations as to their relevance to the total context of human life & society.

Ilona’s cure is progressing not badly on the whole.

We were both {filled} with joy and happiness at our wonderful meetings.

Karli

To Michael, 25 October 1943

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.

[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.

To Michael, 13 October 1943 (2)

[8]

To Michael, 3 November 1945

[10]

To Michael, July 1949

[19]

To Michael, 25 February 1952

[20]

To Michael, 23 February 1956

[21]

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.

To Michael, 29 February 1956

[23]

From Michael, 15 October 1956

[24]

To Michael, 21 January 1957

[28]

To Michael, 5 January 1958

[31] A 17 page letter (plus enclosure) mailed beginning of December and addressed to you[r] university address must have got lost – what a pity. I was elaborating on my old discussion with Mises, on the “young Hegel” (G. Lukacs, 1948[1]); the early Marx (“New Reasoner” n°2) and similar topicalities. […] Maybe I have been overfeeding on Hegel these days, which has made unduly partial to Marx.

To Michael, 21 October 1959

[34]

[35] I remember the depths from which they rose: Aa Magyar-Jewish mongrel, not deserving to be fully accepted as morally civilized, bearing the 'stamp'

To Michael, 2 January 1960

[37]

To Michael, 14 January 1961

[38]

To Michael, 4 March 1961

[39]

To Michael, 8 April 1961

[42]

To Michael without date (1)

[44]

To Michael without date (2)

[48]

To Michael without date (3)

[49]

To Michael without date (4)

[51]

Notes and references

  1. Der junge Hegel - Über die Beziehungen von Dialektik und Ökonomie, 1948.