Karl Polanyi (1886–1964) was one of the twentieth century's most original interpreters of the market economy. His penetrating analysis of globalization's disruptions and the Great Depression's underlying causes still serves as an effective counterargument to free market fundamentalism. This biography shows how the major personal and historical events of his life transformed him from a bourgeois radical into a Christian socialist but also informed his ambivalent stance on social democracy, communism, the New Deal, and the shifting intellectual scene of postwar America. The book begins with Polanyi's childhood in the Habsburg Empire and his involvement with the Great War and Hungary's postwar revolution. It connects Polanyi's idealistic radicalism to the political promise and intellectual ferment of Red Vienna and the horror of fascism. The narrative revisits Polanyi's oeuvre in English, German, and Hungarian, includes exhaustive research in five archives, and features interviews with Polanyi's daughter, students, and colleagues, clarifying the contradictory aspects of the thinker's work. These personal accounts also shed light on Polanyi's connections to scholars, Christians, atheists, journalists, hot and cold warriors, and socialists of all stripes. Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left engages with Polanyi's biography as a reflection and condensation of extraordinary times. It highlights the historical ruptures, tensions, and upheavals that the thinker sought to capture and comprehend and, in telling his story, engages with the intellectual and political history of a turbulent epoch.

Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left

Biographies & Memoirs

Dale, Gareth

Historical

Columbia University Press

Popular Protest in East Germany (Routledge Advances in European Politics)

An incisive new study of dissent and protest in the German Democratic Republic, focusing on the upheaval of 1989-1990. The author, an active participant both in the 'Citizens' Movement' and in the street protests of that year, draws upon a vast array of sources including interviews, documents from the archives of the old regime and the Citizens' Movement and his own diary entries, to explore the causes and processes of the East German revolution. The book is at once a lucid and vibrant narrative history and a pioneering contribution to research in this field.

History

Europe

Routledge

"Popular Protest in East Germany is an incisive new study of dissent and protest in the German Democratic Republic, focusing on the upheaval of 1989-1990. Gareth Dale, an active participant both in the 'Citizens Movement' and in the street protests of that year, explores the causes and processes of the East German revolution by: - Drawing upon interviews with participants and functionaries, as well as previously untapped archive material. - Includes detailed studies of the popular uprising of June 1953; industrial relations; youth subcultures; church-linked 'grassroots groups' of the 1980s. - Proposes new interpretations of the 1953 uprising, the 'socio-ethical' movements of the 1980s, and of the divergence between 'citizens movements' and the mass protests in the autumn of 1989. - Includes a rebuttal of the dominant interpretations of 1989 as the consummation of the 'aborted revolution' of 1953. This lucid and vibrant narrative history acts as a pioneering contribution to research in this field. It will be of particular interest to students of German Politics/History, European Politics and International Studies.

Popular Protest In East Germany

The East German revolution of 1989

This book offers a new account of the East German Revolution of 1989 and uncovers hitherto neglected events and phases of this tumultuous period. It draws upon published and unpublished primary sources, including twenty-five interviews with oppositionists, movement participants and state officials, as well as archive materials from the Stasi, police, SED and civic groups. It brings to prominence previously unexplored events, including the 'battle of Dresden station,' the 'December uprising' and the strike wave of January 1990. In addition, as a resident of East Germany in the late 1980s and an active participant in the civic groups and street protests of 1989, Gareth Dale succeeds in bringing an immediacy and vividness to the narrative.

The East German Revolution of 1989

Manchester University Press

This book offers a new account of the East German Revolution of 1989 and uncovers hitherto neglected events and phases of this tumultuous period. It draws upon published and unpublished primary sources, including twenty-five interviews with oppositionists, movement participants and state officials, as well as archive materials from the Stasi, police, SED and civic groups. It brings to prominence previously unexplored events, including the 'battle of Dresden station,' the 'December uprising' and the strike wave of January 1990. In addition, as a resident of East Germany in the late 1980s and an active participant in the civic groups and street protests of 1989, Gareth Dale succeeds in bringing an immediacy and vividness to the narrative. This is the most comprehensive account in English of East Germany's 'peaceful' revolution. As a piece of sustained original research, this book will be an indispensable reference for historians of Germany and Eastern Europe. As an accessible narrative history, written in a fluent style and with an eye for the telling anecdote, it is keyed to the needs of students and lay readers.

Reconstructing Karl Polanyi

Karl Polanyi was one of the most influential political economists of the twentieth-century and is widely regarded as the most gifted of social democrat theorists. In Reconstructing Karl Polanyi, Gareth Dale draws upon primary sources archived in the countries that Polanyi called home—Hungary, Austria, Britain, the United States, and Canada—to provide a sweeping survey of his contribution to the social sciences.   Polanyi’s intellectual and political outlook can best be summarized through paradoxical formulations such as ‘romantic modernist’, ‘liberal socialist’, and ‘cosmopolitan patriot.’ In exploring these paradoxes, Dale excavates and reconstructs Polanyi’s views on a range of topics that have been neglected in the critical literature, including Keynesian economic policy, the evolution and dynamics of Stalin’s Russia, regional integration, and McCarthyism. He reinterprets Polanyi’s philosophy of history, his theory of democracy, and his economic historiography of Ancient Greece and Mesopotamia, and guides readers through Polyani's critical dialogue with Marxism.     While the central threads and motifs of this study are intellectual-historiographical in nature, Dale also critically analyzes the views of Polanyi and his followers on issues of pressing present-day relevance, notably the clash between democracy and capitalism, and the nature and trajectory of European unification.

Professionals & Academics

Pluto Press

Karl Polanyi was one of the most influential political economists of the twentieth-century and is widely regarded as the most gifted of social democrat theorists. In Reconstructing Karl Polanyi, Gareth Dale draws upon primary sources archived in the countries that Polanyi called home—Hungary, Austria, Britain, the United States, and Canada—to provide a sweeping survey of his contribution to the social sciences. Polanyi’s intellectual and political outlook can best be summarized through paradoxical formulations such as ‘romantic modernist’, ‘liberal socialist’, and ‘cosmopolitan patriot.’ In exploring these paradoxes, Dale excavates and reconstructs Polanyi’s views on a range of topics that have been neglected in the critical literature, including Keynesian economic policy, the evolution and dynamics of Stalin’s Russia, regional integration, and McCarthyism. He reinterprets Polanyi’s philosophy of history, his theory of democracy, and his economic historiography of Ancient Greece and Mesopotamia, and guides readers through Polyani's critical dialogue with Marxism. While the central threads and motifs of this study are intellectual-historiographical in nature, Dale also critically analyzes the views of Polanyi and his followers on issues of pressing present-day relevance, notably the clash between democracy and capitalism, and the nature and trajectory of European unification.

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market

Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation is generally acclaimed as being among the most influential works of economic history in the twentieth century, and remains as vital in the current historical conjuncture as it was in his own. In its critique of nineteenth-century "market fundamentalism" it reads as a warning to our own neoliberal age, and is widely touted as a prophetic guidebook for those who aspire to understand the causes and dynamics of global economic turbulence at the end of the 2000s. 
Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market is the first comprehensive introduction to Polanyi's ideas and legacy. It assesses not only the texts for which he is famous – prepared during his spells in American academia – but also his journalistic articles written in his first exile in Vienna, and lectures and pamphlets from his second exile, in Britain. It provides a detailed critical analysis of The Great Transformation, but also surveys Polanyi’s seminal writings in economic anthropology, the economic history of ancient and archaic societies, and political and economic theory. Its primary source base includes interviews with Polanyi's daughter, Kari Polanyi-Levitt, as well as the entire compass of his own published and unpublished writings in English and German. This engaging and accessible introduction to Polanyi's thinking will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences, providing a refreshing perspective on the roots of our current economic crisis.

Business & Money

Economics

Polity

Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market is the first comprehensive introduction to Polanyi’s ideas and legacy. It assesses not only the texts for which he is famous, but also his journalistic articles written in his first exile in Vienna, and lectures and pamphlets from his second exile, in Britain.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dale, Gareth. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Dale, Gareth

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Dale, Gareth. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left

Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left

Popular Protest in East Germany (Routledge Advances in European Politics)

Popular Protest In East Germany

The East German Revolution of 1989

The East German revolution of 1989

Reconstructing Karl Polanyi

Reconstructing Karl Polanyi

Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market

Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market