A Portrait-Sketch of Michal Kalecki 
Michal Kalecki died more than ten years ago. 
His collected works are now being edited in Polish, 
two volumes of it having been published so far 
(Michal Kalecki Dziela, I (1979), II (198o), 
Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Ekonomiczne, Warszawa. 
Life 
Born in 1899, Michal Kalecki was the son of a small textile 
manufacturer. His youth was marked by two shocks which pro 
foundly influenced his personality. His parents separated 
and he stayed with his father. He studied civil engineering 
at the Warsaw Polytechnic, and after an interval of service 
as a conscript in the Polish campaign in the Ukraine, at 
the Polytechnical School in Danzig. He had to break off his 
studies, however, shortly before his finals because his father, 
after growing difficulties in his business, was ruined in 1923. 
Misfortunes which might have cramped a weaker nature became in 
him sources of strength. They decided his serious outlook 
on life and society. The deep distrust of life they created was 
shifted in him to the intellectual plane: It turned into 
skepticism and restless questioning.