Polanyi rejected sociologically determinist histories of ideas

Evidence

Polanyi wrote personally to Mannheim: “As regards the social analysis of the development of ideas, suffice it to say that I reject all social analysis of history which makes social conditions anything more than opportunities for a development of thought. You seem inclined to consider moral judgments on history as ludicrous, believing apparently that thought is not merely conditioned, but determined by a social or technical situation. I cannot tell you how strongly I reject such a view.” — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 748

Categorization

• XREF: This anti-reductionism connects to the chapter’s argument (fn 29) that sociological anti-reductionism was instrumental to neoliberalism from the start, and to Polanyi’s tacit-knowledge epistemology. — connects to: Historical materialism cannot be assimilated as a spectacle because it denies thought’s autonomy — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 338; Marxist judgment of modernism presupposes a personal agency that historical determinism denies — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 398; Institute critics rejected psychoanalytic ideology readings that ignored material class conditions

Broader Connections

• Historical materialism cannot be assimilated as a spectacle because it denies thought’s autonomy #corroborates (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 338
• Marxist judgment of modernism presupposes a personal agency that historical determinism denies #complicates (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 398