Karl Polanyi in 1944 on the rise of the German AfD

Karl Polanyi predicted Trumpism in his book 'The Great Transformation' from 1944.

Here some excerpts from the Pdf 'Five Lectures  on  The Present  Age of Transformation - Karl Polanyi' on the occasion that the two German top parties lost big time in yesterday's elections and the Bavarian CSU in parts of Bavaria even bigger. At the same time, the AfD got 13% of the votes. In Saxony the AfD garnered 27% and is the strongest political party. Why is anybody surprised?

"In post-war Europe [i.e. post 1918] the separation of economics and politics developed into a catastrophic internal situation. The captains of industry undermined the authority of democratic institutions, while democratic parliaments continuously interfered with the working of the market mechanism. A state of affairs was reached when a sudden paralysis of both the economic and the political institutions of society was well within the range of the possible. The need for re-integration of society was apparent.  This was the critical state of affairs out of which the fascist  revolutions sprang. The alternative was between an integration of society through political power on a democratic basis, or, if democracy proved too weak, integration on an authoritarian basis in a totalitarian society, at the price of  the sacrifice of democracy."

"a self-regulating market-system is a utopia. No society could stand its devastating effects once it got really going. Hardly had laissez-faire started when the State and voluntary organizations intervened to protect society through factory laws, Trade Union and Church action from the mechanism of the market.”

“If  international  division  of  labour  is  effected  by  competition  and  consequent elimination  of  the  less  efficient,  then  much  will  depend  upon  the  rate  at  which the  change  proceeds  as  well  as  upon  the  dimensions  of  the  units  involved…. if  whole  countrysides,  countries  or  continents  compete,  the  elimination  of  the less  efficient  may  involve  the  ruin  and  destruction  of  whole  communities. Then  the  system,  far  from  being  a  blessing,  becomes  a  deadly  danger  and must  be  checked  at  all  costs….While  a  slowly  increasing  division  of  labour effected  by  the  market  mechanism  would  be  purely  beneficial,  a  fast  rate  of change  might  work  out  as  a  machinery  of  sheer destruction."

"The  more  intense  international  cooperation  was  and  the  more  close  the interdependence  of  the  various  parts  of  the  world  grew,  the  more  essential became  the  only  effective  organizational  unit  of  an  industrial  society  on  the present  level  of  technique: the  nation.  Modern  nationalism  is  a  protective reaction  against  the  dangers  inherent  in  an  interdependent  world”.

"The  rise  of  fascism  on  the  European continent  was  due  to  the  fact  that  the vitally  necessary  reform  of  liberal  capitalism  could  not  be  carried  though under  our  democratic  institutions.  Such  a  reform  was  inevitable  owing  to  the devastating  effects  of  a  separate,  self-regulating economic system on the tissue of society."

Graph via Goofynomics

(Red bars indicate former GDR states)