Karl Polanyi Quotes

• There was nothing natural about laissez-faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course. Just as cotton manufactures were created by the help of protective tariffs, export bounties, and indirect wage subsidies, laissez-faire was enforced by the state.

  Karl Polanyi

  Subsidies, Cotton, Tariffs

  Karl Polanyi (1957). “The Great Transformation”, Beacon Pr

  29 Copy quote

• To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment....would result in the demolition of society.

  Karl Polanyi

  Fate, Society, Directors

  36 Copy quote

• Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness.

  Karl Polanyi

  Men, Self, Ideas

  Karl Polanyi (1957). “The Great Transformation”, Beacon Pr

  23 Copy quote

• Enclosures have been appropriately called a revolution of the rich against the poor.

  Karl Polanyi

  Revolution, Rich, Poor

  14 Copy quote

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