It may be worth while to step back and examine some of the basic premises around which the Austrian debate evolved.

Polanyi’s answers to these questions were of course, diametrically opposite to theirs.

For example, the subsequent title of Polanyi’s Columbia research project of 1957, «The Origins of Economic Institutions», could just as well have been a congenial title for the work being done by von Mises and his colleagues. Yet one might say that the entire corpus of Polanyi’s work in general economic history and in economic anthropology was governed to a major extent by the theoretical challenge presented by the Austrian school. The exposition of his philosophical ideas such as «the reality of society» went far beyond the issues in either economics or economic history. As Lee Congdon remarked, Polanyi «was less interested in joining the Austro-Marxists than he was in meeting the challenge presented by the so-called Austrian school of economics» 3.ĥThere was in fact, much more to Polanyi’s intellectual career than these themes in economics. Polanyi-Levitt, ibid.,p. 82.ĤWe must however bypass the immediate issues of this topic and look to the wider scope of the debate that ensued about the human economy. Congdon, «The Sovereignty of Society: Polanyi in Vienna», in K. Regulated or administered prices were bound to lead to economic confusion and the misallocation of resources he maintained. von Hayek was the important representative of this school in recent decades.ģThe particular topic launched by von Mises in 1920 was whether a socialist economy was at all viable without the direction provided by market prices. von Mises had established and diligently pursued much of the agenda of the debate. This was true not only by virtue of the years of his life and his work in Vienna, but more so because he was drawn into and remained a protagonist in the debate around the fundamental issues first raised by the Austrian economists. 2ĢHowever paradoxical it may seem, it was by virtue of this debate, carried on directly and indirectly over a lifetime, that Polanyi was first and foremost an Austrian, or rather an Austrian «in mirror image». And for some, Vienna may conjure up as well, the debate that K. Polanyi had with these economists in the 1920s. But as important as any of these is the more prosaic legacy of the Austrian economists ranging from C. Von Mises’ article that initiated the debate was «Die Wirtschaftsrechnung im Sozialistischen Gem (.)ġThe mention of the great city of Vienna conjures up the many legacies of music, art and philosophy which it nurtured 1. 1 I am indebted to Gérald Berthoud with whom I have had extensive discussions on these matters.

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