Magyar szociológiatörténeti füzetek, 2. (Budapest, 1986)
Summary
never participated in political movements" (Levitt). Simple facts refute this thesis: before 1919 Polanyi was one of the organizers and leading publicists of the National Radical Bourgeois Party; the majority of his writings dealt with political-ideological topics in those years. Then after 1919 he participated in the politics of the Hungarian emigration as a publicist supporting the movement with intellectual munition. As Jászi's secretary he had the opportunity to influence the interpretation of daily political issues. The overall tendency of his writings (The Crisis of Our Ideologies - Physical and Intellectual Work - Oration to the Youth of the Galilei Circle - Politics: Believer and Unbeliever - The Essence of Fascism - Our Obsolete Market Mentality - Economy as an Instituted Process) proves that all are permeated by an ideological demand. He himself wrote on his later works in a letter: "My field really belongs to classical economic history. But my interest is not antiquarian in this respect either; it is supposed to serve and widen our interest in the present". According to János Kis and György Márkus: "economic history was no escape for Polanyi from the issues of the present, but a theoretical means for a logical examination of these very issues." The strong ideological basis is only one of the reasons that explains Polanyi's popularity and importance. We can find the most extreme views in this connection: he is either considered as too much "red", or as the representative of "the false idealism of bourgeois 174 \
