Magyar szociológiatörténeti füzetek, 2. (Budapest, 1986)

Summary

miliar with the works of Comte, Feuerback, Marx, Spencer and Haeckel. For a short period it was Mach who impressed him most.

Besides his orientation in social theories, the young Polanyi expounded his ideas concerning the major political-ideological issues. He examined the relationship of science to politics, the phases of development in capitalism and the role of the state. Several of his writings deal with the historical, philosophical and sociological foundation of bourgeois radicalism. He attempted a differentiation between radicalism and socialism and the definition of the role of the new middle class. He strongly rejected the dictatorship of the proletariat; instead of it he considered a series of social reforms as the possible solution to the crisis.

Years of Orientation and Preparation (1919-1933)

The revolutions in 1918 and 1919, and the succeeding counter-revolution were milestones in Polanyi's ideological development. There was a sudden break in the organic growth characterizing the previous decades in Hungary and historic reality seemed to have exiled the "third way" theories and ideologies of the era into the spheres of utopias. It is understandable, then, that Polanyi arrived in the emigration in a severe intellectual and psychological -crisis, which was strengthened by

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