Author Description

Karl Polanyi (1886-1964), a Hungarian-born thinker, is renowned for his seminal text, The Great Transformation, and his writings on political economy. This is the first work to offer a collection of Polanyi's texts never before published in English. The book presents articles, papers, lectures, speeches, notes, and draft manuscripts, mostly written between 1907 and 1923, with the exception of a few later texts. Organized thematically around religion, ethics, ideology, world politics, and Hungarian politics, the topics include contemporary thinkers, the Galilei Circle (an influential youth organization), the Tisza government, the Aster and the Bolshevik Revolutions, the Councils Republic, the Radical Citizens' Party, Hungarian democracy, the national question, political conviction, fatalism, British socialism, political theory and violence, and more. Each section includes a discussion of the political and intellectual contexts in which the texts were written.