By all accounts Karl Polanyi was quiet, thoughtful, reflective – probably a fairly typical man of his intellectual station in 1920s ‘Red Vienna’ where he matured, having moved from Hungary after the First World War.
“Karl Polanyi was a radical,” says Matthew. “But what shade of red he was is an interesting question. He was certainly no lover of the Soviet takeover of Hungary in 1919 and this was one of the reasons that he ended up in Vienna. He made at least one or two flirtations with Marxism, at least according to his biographers. The ‘moral Marx’ of the Paris Manuscripts seemed to influence him and his notions of how workers become alienated within the market economy.”