Magyar szociológiatörténeti füzetek, 2. (Budapest, 1986)

Summary

philosophy" (Tamás Szentes). According to one, "he tried to use his scholarly authority for the achievement of peace, and planted into the young some doubt in contempopary Western-European society" (Mihály Károlyi); but according to another, "his views reveal the influence of Anglo-Saxon Fabianism and its lukewarm bath, where he is incapable to differentiate between historical and individual morality" (Mór Korach).

These diverse interpretations resulted in the most strange combination of allies, with liberals, reform-socialists and conservatives on one side, and Stalinists, the New Left and old conservatives on the other.

Polanyi's teachings on socialism are based on the relentless critique of bourgeois ideologies and bourgeois society determined by the demands of the market on the one hand, and on the tolerant critique of existing socialisms on the other hand. "Because I am a radical anticapitalist, a critic of market systems... In this respect, my socialism covers a whole world historical period, centuries: the humanization of industrial civilization, if this is possible at all", he wrote to Zsigmond Kende in 1963. "We can only expect to get answers," he writes elsewhere, "from planned economy, from the presence of workers' democracy in production and from a people consciously supporting the goals of humankind." On the other hand, he sees problems emerging around new issues rather: pluralism, national independence,

the humanization ’ of industrial civilization and

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