BUDAPEST UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND ECONOMICS Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences Doctoral School in History and Philosophy of Science Projecting the Light of Democracy Michael Polanyi's Efforts to Save Liberalism via an Economics Film, 1933-1948 Gábor István Bíró Dissertation Supervisor Dr. Gábor Áron Zemplén BME GTK Department of Philosophy and History of Science 2017 Table of contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. 4 List of Illustrations ................................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 8 Why study Polanyi from an STS approach ........................................................................................8 An Overview of the Polanyi scholarship ...........................................................................................9 Studies on the Polanyian Visual Presentation of Social Matters .................................................. 13 Diagrams, Disciplines and the Deliberate Life of Michael Polanyi ................................................ 17 Structure of the Dissertation ......................................................................................................... 19 I.Building, Bridging and Shifting Boundaries of Economics ................................................................... 20 1.1. Freedom, Social Consciousness, and the Third Way .................................................................. 20 1.1.1. Boundary work against extreme liberalism ......................................................................... 21 1.1.2. Boundary work against socialist planning ........................................................................... 22 1.1.3. Building a joint boundary against extreme liberalism and socialist planning ..................... 23 1.2. Bridging Different Visions: How Polanyi's Economic Film Fostered the Cooperation Between Different Social Worlds...................................................................................................................... 25 1.2.1. Polanyi's vision .................................................................................................................... 25 1.2.2. The Rockefeller Foundation administration's vision ........................................................... 26 1.2.3. The film expert's vision ........................................................................................................ 26 1.2.4. The economics tutor's vision ............................................................................................... 27 1.2.5. The Worker's Educational Association's vision ................................................................... 28 1.2.6. A possible vision of the army............................................................................................... 28 1.2.7. The economists' vision ........................................................................................................ 29 1.2.8. The Rotarian vision .............................................................................................................. 29 1.3. Approaching and Shifting Economics ......................................................................................... 30 1.3.1. Bound for England, bound for economics ........................................................................... 30 1.3.2. Boundaries of visual representation in economics ............................................................. 31 1.3.3. Transforming the language of economics ........................................................................... 32 1.4. Crossing and Rebuilding Economics ........................................................................................... 33 II. Films for Freedom: Polanyi's Sociotechnical Imagining to Save Liberalism and the Society ............ 35 2.1. Making the Economy Visible: Origins of the Polanyian Vision ................................................... 35 2.2. Embedding and Disembedding Attempts .................................................................................. 38 2.3. The Silence of the Tutors, the Negligence of Keynes and an Imagined Resistance ................... 43 2.4. Physical and Disciplinal Barriers: How Polanyi's Vision Struggled for Extension ....................... 46 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................ 49 III. Polanyi's Visual Representation of Economic Matters ..................................................................... 50 3.1. Visual Physical Analogies of Economic Laws in the 1930-40s .................................................... 50 3.2. Shifting Symbols, Fluid-like Motions and Educational Concerns ............................................... 60 3.3. Similarities and Differences of the Neurath and the Polanyi Method ....................................... 75 IV. The Politics of Becoming an Economist: On the Edge of Economic Policy and Economic Theory ... 79 4.1. The Shades of Socialism on Polanyi's Family Life ....................................................................... 79 4.2. On the Relation of Polanyi and his Political Adversaries ............................................................ 80 4.3. Keynes, Hayek, and Polanyi in Between ..................................................................................... 81 4.4. A Hungarian on the Boundaries of British Politics ..................................................................... 81 Summary ............................................................................................................................................... 83 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................... 84 2 Projecting the Light of Democracy Michael Polanyi's Efforts to Save Liberalism via an Economics Film, 1933-1948 by Gábor István Bíró Submitted to the Program in History and Philosophy of Science in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History and Philosophy of Science Abstract This historical micro-analysis examines how visualizing and saving a kind of liberal economics were connected in the sociotechnical visioning of Michael Polanyi during his disciplinal shift from physical chemistry to social sciences in the thirties and forties. The first chapter traces how Polanyi's boundary work for a reformed liberal economics and against "extreme liberalism" and "socialist planning" can be seen as connected to both his attempts to reconfigure communities learning economics, and his boundary shifting towards social sciences. This chapter shows how Polanyi's economic film, Unemployment and Money: The Principles Involved (1940n), connected the social worlds of economists, film experts, economics tutors, managers and others, and how such "bridging" between these social worlds could have helped Polanyi in his campaign developing and disseminating a sociotechnical vision to save liberalism and Western society. The second chapter seeks to show the development of Polanyi's sociotechnical vision of "democracy by enlightenment through the film". The chapter explores how an Individual idea on a specific film struggled in different social worlds to become a sociotechnical imaginary and to affect social policies. The third chapter focuses on the development of Polanyi's visualization of social matters and offers a detailed analysis showing how he rendered liberal economics visible with his film. Polanyi's work is compared with visuals of similar projects aimed to make economic processes visible for non-economists in the 1930-40s. The discussion here shows how Polanyi's illustrations draw on laboratory experience in physical chemistry. The fourth chapter examines the wider political-ideological context of Polanyi's sociotechnical imagining in order to show why it was particularly dangerous to be seen as involved in policy-making as an outsider in the United Kingdom during and right after World War II. 3 Acknowledgements There are many people without whom this dissertation could not have been finished. First, I'd like to thank my advisor, Gabor Aron Zemplen for inspiring me to think in new, difficult directions, for helping me to revise and improve each chapter, and for being a true mentor during these years. He was pushing me hard when I hopelessly get trapped in a narrative or approach without realizing it, and was helping me finding a way out. He was a great supporter of me and my work from the moment I arrived to Budapest University of Technology and Economics (hereafter: BUTE). I feel honored to have been taken under his guidance. I feel privileged to be able do my PhD research at one of the three centres of Polanyi research, BUTE. I was given insightful advice when it was most needed from leading Polanyi-scholars, particularly Marta Feher and Tihamer Margitay who were cultivating and improving Polanyi- scholarship for decades through the Michael Polanyi Liberal