The correct person, Robert Kuttner, has reviewed, in the NYRB, the latest and perhaps most comprehensive biography of Karl Polyani. Kuttner's "The Economic Illusion," written in the 1980s, did a marvelous job of introducing readers such as me to Polyani's macroeconomic and sociological insights.
We are moving ever closer to outright American fascism, and only social democracy can save us. We must begin to vote with our best hopes, not our worst fears.
PS: Kuttner is too hard on Polyani about the Soviet Union and satellites. An otherwise brilliant writer, Kuttner misses the details of moments, and is taking out of context of those moments, of Polyani's comments at the time of particular events. There is truth, for example, in Polyani's point that Conservative British Prime Minister Chamberlain's failure to grasp that Stalin and Hitler were moving toward a deal, and Chamberlain's insistence he could fight fascism at home, while allowing it spread abroad, played a role in that notorious Stalin-Hitler pact of 1939. There is also truth in Polyani's point that the initial post-WWII era in Eastern Europe, outside of Poland, was one where coalition governments did exist in places such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia, etc. There is much internal memoranda and other evidence that the Cold War did much to crush those coalition governments, and that the US rooted for that crushing so that propaganda for a Pax Americana could be further developed. And there were plenty of US policymakers, starting with the Dulles brothers and sadly my saintly George Kennan, who never took seriously the distinction between out and out Communists and those who were Social Democrats in the government in each of those nations during the period of 1945-1948. Polyani was no Stalinist in any way, but was almost always a subtle and astute analyst of international trends and affairs.
