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.