MONICA QUIRICO
Michael Polanyi: la critica della pianificazione (1935-1951)
N. 195
Riassunto — Michael Polanyi (1891-1976), Karl’s brother, after the successes carried off in chemistry, from the middle of the Thirties turned his interest to economics, politics and philosophy. During those years, while totalitarism won the heart of Europe, in Great Britain — Polanyi’s adopted country — a collectivist aptitude emerged. That’s why he devoted his work to the confutation of planning both in totalitarian regimes and in parliamentary ones.
Polanyi believed that centralization in itself was an evil, no matter if a dictatorship or a democratic government run it. The Labour party, in power from 1945 to 1951, even if it didn't change Great Britain into a socialistic country, built up a modern Welfare State and nationalized some key industries. Polanyi hadn’t a longing for laissez faire, but he thought that the issue of economic safety was becoming too important, to the detriment of freedom. In front of the threats to European civilization, he stressed the need to protect the self-government of the "Science Republic", as the key of a free society, where freedom is not conceived in an atomistic meaning, but as attachment to Truth.