Abstract
As did his many contemporary thinkers Karl Polanyi (1886-1964), in the last chapter of his The Great Transformation under the title of “Freedom in a Complex Society, ” dealt with the problem of freedom. In the keen distinction from the ordinal interpretation that the tendency “from laissez-faire to state intervention” or “from individualism to collectivism” directly led to Fascism, Polanyi described the institutional or historical origins of that crisis in the light of his “double movement” interpretation of the nineteenth century industrial society.
According to him, the problem of freedom in his time arose on two levels: the institutional and the moral or religious. How is the “free society” reorganized? On the institutional level, Polanyi suggested that the improvement of industrial conditions and employment through the support of planning and control were important. On the moral and religious level, a new view of freedom was needed. It was in this regard that Polanyi respected Robert Owen, because Owen not only rejected the identification of freedom with the mere liberation of profit motives or with “individualization”, but favored the reconstruction of humanity and freedom in the form of “society as a whole”.
