Volume 42, Issue 3, July 2016
Anne McCants
Pages 25-34
Measuring Prosperity and Preserving Freedom
An Economics Education with Michael Polanyi
In a time of heightened economic and political insecurity, sustained prosperity is a reasonable public goal. But it is not sufficient on its own as a bulwark against the misguided economics of collectivist regimes, nor can it easily resist what in the past have been their stunning descents into tyranny. Michael Polanyi argued that the collective purpose of the community had to be based on something other than mere class struggle or civil unrest. Raising the bar for the common man to comprehend the logic of the trade cycle, and to appreciate the macro-dynamics of unemployment in the face of curtailed demand, was one small, but highly significant, step towards the prevention of civil war and the promotion of prosperity with justice and freedom. The present is surely as good a time as any to renew Polanyi’s call for an economics education for the common man, and to reassert the moral principles upon which it rests.