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The Industrial Revolution was a watershed in the history of mankind. Three forces – technology, economic organization, and science, in this sequence – each from separate and undistinguished parentage, linked up, inconspicuously at first, to form, hardly a hundred years ago, into a social maelstrom that is still engulfing new and new millions of people, in an irresistible rush.

— Karl Polanyi For a New West (1958)

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More quotes by Karl Polanyi

The economic system is, in effect, a mere function of social organization.

The Great Transformation (1944)

What we call land is an element of nature inextricably interwoven with man’s institutions. To isolate it and form a market for it was perhaps the weirdest of all the undertakings of our ancestors.

The Great Transformation (1944)

Such economic solipsism, as it might well be called, was indeed an outstanding feature of the market mentality. Economic action, it was deemed, was "natural" to men and was, therefore, self-explanatory.

The Livelihood of Man (1977)

While laissez-faire economy was the product of deliberate State action, subsequent restrictions on laissez-faire started in a spontaneous way. Laissez-faire was planned; planning was not.

The Great Transformation (1944)

Pauperism had become a portent. But its meaning was still anybody's guess.

The Great Transformation (1944)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Karl Polanyi (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.