Gray/Demos/Polanyi

J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. rosserjb at jmu.edu
Wed Mar 10 12:40:15 PST 1999


Doug,

Well, I don't know about Demos or any of that. Polanyi was a kind of crypto-Marxist actually. A Hungarian whose brother, Michael, was a big rightwinger and much loved by the Austrians, he was forced out of Columbia University in the 1950s by McCarthyism and ended up in Canada. _The Great Transformation_ is a magnificent book. But, like many, I have no doubt that it can be used for all kinds of purposes. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Tuesday, March 09, 1999 11:55 PM Subject: Gray/Demos/Polanyi


>A copy of John Gray's False Dawn, just published by the New Press, arrived
>in the mail today. Does anyone know the rap on him? He seems a slightly
>higher brow version of Soros (whom he quotes, thanks, and is blurbed by),
>with vague calls for restraints on The Market, more enamored of "culture"
>and "place" and "tradition" and "indigenous values" than Soros, very
>anti-Marxist (part of the whole Enlightenment delusion), full of references
>to Demos and the Social Market Foundation and Polanyi. I'm beginning to
>worry that this Polanyi thing has gone too far. Can anyone fill me in on
>all this?
>
>Doug
>



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