G. M.

Tams Hungarian Tragedy, European Farce On the 31st of December, 2011, new yearss eve, I stood on the plinth of the Kossuth statue in Parliament Square, Budapest, addressing a crowd of protesters in the dark winter afternoon, by torchlight. There was about an air of desolation and defeat. We came to bury the third Hungarian Republic and hail the fourth in the case it will be born. On the 15th of March, 1988, I stood exactly at the same place; it was a sunny spring day, and it was the first sizable political demonstration since the revolution of 1956, and we called for free elections and a new Constitution. Some of the people who attended were the same. Our faces more lined, our hair whiter, but it seems that we are at the same point where we were twenty-three years ago. At zero. What has happened is not only the crisis and the unspeakable Orbn government. What has happened is the failure of the democratic republic and of the liberal market rgime that underpins it to create a social order which is clearly superior to what it has preceded it. If people would have felt, even a little, that they were freer and more secure or even that they are participating in a political adventure that is noble, generous, daring, deserving of self-sacrifice, they would have endured their afflictions and would have defended their republic against all comers. But this does not seem to be the case. It would appear, on the contrary, that the pre-1989 rgime, however repressive and restrictive, was able to offer greater social security, full employment, raising real wages, improved health, hygiene, cheap or free leisure activities, a richer high culture available to all, a greater equality, no racism, little crime, a visible and steady improvement in most material conditions, except perhaps consumer choice. For this, a high price was paid in hypocrisy, censorship and conformism. Although, because of its historical roots, the system has been dubbed socialist or communist for no good reason, it was a morally and culturally conservative welfare state which, for the first time in these previously backward agrarian societies, has introduced relatively modern living standards from indoor plumbing to literacy and numeracy and what is usually forgotten a liberation from old-world servitude, enforced servility and deference towards the aristocracy and the gentry and towards the representatives of an old-style authoritarian state with its scary gendarmes, bureaucrats and military officers. No more kissing of hands, no more bending from the waist. Instead of a caste society, so-called real socialism has created a class society, and it has replaced mystical nationalism and religion (as legitimising ideologies) with science and technology, explained by a positivist and progressivist philosophy wrongly called Marxism. It was a conspicuously mundane, prosaic and grey society, bereft of transcendence at least after the demise of Stalinism around 1956. People did not love it, but were quite comfortable in it. What was lacking, of course, was political participation which, paradoxically, would have been even more necessary than in liberal market rgimes, as the relative weight of public decisions, such as those concerning planning, was much greater. Self-corrective mechanisms, as already Lenin and Trotsky were perfectly aware of it, had been absent. Constraints, appearing almost like Fate, were presented by physical limits to technological and economic efforts and by the outside world (outside, that is, of the real socialist bloc), so they seemed beyond the reach of ordinary East European citizens. This freedom from politics may account for the curious and peculiar individualism of East Europeans with their considerable indifference towards institutions and their seemingly unshakeable faith in the personal. Many, but by no means all, think that the intrusion of pluralistic politics (and of explicit political ideologies) does not constitute an increase in freedom, but a very poor and

costly way of running public affairs, as it is often nothing else but a democratic faade masking rapacious private interests. At the same time, East Europeans do like basic liberties, especially the right to freedom of expression, as they are the grandsons and granddaughters of a positivistic and agnostic society deeply suspicious of authority, any authority. The popular Western view that the East European lack of (bourgeois) democratic traditions means a penchant for obedience is nonsense. The widespread contempt for liberalism both for representative government (called parliamentary democracy which is a near-oxymoron) and anti-egalitarian market society does not imply an orderly conduct and law-abidingness, neither does it mean a respect for traditional moral ideas regarding sexuality or education or manners. But however rebellious our East European populations might be, the social destruction wrought by the transition to radical market rgimes which resulted, e. g., in Hungary in the loss of nearly half the jobs in existence in 1990 within two years, a disaster from which the country has never recovered has had its unmistakeable consequences. (And when I speak of Eastern Europe, I do always include the most important East European country, Russia and the European ex-Soviet republics.) These consequences, although perhaps sharper than those in the North-West but rather similar to those in other nations in the semi-periphery such as the more industrialised regions of Asia and Latin America, must be obvious and comprehensible to all. These are the consequences of the destruction of the welfare state, of an avowed egalitarian order and of the influence of the workers movement (trade unions and class parties) that created a balance between capital and labour, between Right and Left, between East and West. After the end of les trente glorieuses of the European welfare state (only les vingt glorieuses in Eastern Europe where the savage and austere Stalinist accumulation rgime ended as late as the early 1960s) when the counter-hegemonic forces could not any longer limit profits and force growth and redistribution, especially egalitarian redistribution, new problems surfaced. With the reduction of capital taxes, the liberalisation of international trade and the development of the new technologies, both real wages and the number of jobs entered a downward trajectory, sometimes amounting to free fall. It was precisely at the moment when people previously sustained by the networks of the everenlarged labour market and its concomitant benefits such as the unprecedented social share of education and health services have involuntarily stumbled out of the system when the state with its reduced budgets everywhere should have tried to look after those (the unemployed, the migrants, the children and the old, and others) who by no conceivable efforts of their own would have been able to earn a decent living. With ever more dwindling state resources to respond to the ever more growing need, governments in the socalled developed industrial countries with some partial exceptions, branded left populist, in Latin America had to find new political instruments to keep societies quiet. These instruments are various, of course, but have common elements that can be easily summarised: an ideological onslaught annihilating the achievements of the human rights campaigns of the past, operating a moralising and biologising turn in dealing with social differences and inequalities (described by the neutered term diversity). In all capitalist societies, there are only two, ultimately justified and legitimised sources of income: capital and labour. The rest are deduced from them as impurities in the system, but had been once tolerated through the nebulous and hesitant idea of social rights interpreted in the spirit of welfare-state, social democratic humanism. This deduction has now been denied. People who dont because they cant work are considered of inferior value or, indeed, parasites. Social assistance or state subvention of any kind is

slandered as an abuse, characteristic of lazy migrants, single mothers, the unemployed and unemployable, old-age pensioners, the handicapped, civil servants, students, artists, intellectuals, whatever. According to M. Nicolas Sarkozy, it is only la France qui se lve tt (the France that gets up early) which is deserving of respect, i. e., those who do not have jobs, are semi-criminal lazybums and layabouts. The expulsion of, chiefly coloured, foreigners shows to everybody that people outside the system are essentially that is, racially foreign and morally reprehensible. As there is a deadly fight for those dwindling resources, a deadly competition for social services between claimants a few times more numerous that those who can have a reasonable hope to receive them, the politics of this struggle is expressed in stark terms of moral excellence, biological fitness and intellectual superiority. People who are diligent, young and flexible are those who are accepted by the system. To resist these criteria means to resist the natural order of things. Those who do not wish or are not able to compete will be dealt with by state coercion, if necessary, by police methods. The adversaries of the free market economy are declared utopians, totalitarians, men (and women) of the past, who are endangering our hard-won freedoms. Here enter the new right-wing majority in the Hungarian parliament. It is a well-known fact that this is a twothirds majority with the power to amend the Constitution and even to write a new one. The leader of this majority, the prime minister, Mr Viktor Orbn was a daring, assiduous and effective critic of the neoconservative policies of the previous, utterly unpopular, impotent and corrupt socialist-liberal coalition government. Among other things, he supported the referendum initiated by the trade unions against medical and university fees which they had handsomely won. (He has since reintroduced both without the slightest murmur from the population.) Otherwise he has not made clear any of his plans during the election campaign. Most of the momentous measures passed since had been kept secret previously. The surprise was enormous. His well-known exploits are not easily listed, since the list is too long, and the incredible speed of legislation makes it enormously difficult to keep track. To give you an example of how this goes, on December 23, 2011 (that is, on the last day before the Christmas recess of Parliament) the majority has passed a law amending 219 other laws (it has turned out that there were in fact 307) which has been announced on December 30, entered into vigour on December 31 and, partly, on January 1, 2012 in order to pre-empt the new Constitution valid from the same date and to prevent the Constitutional Court from intervening, as the Court has lost some of its powers according to the new Constitution. There was no discussion. During the holidays, it was only sparsely reported most people have not heard of it to this very day and, hence, not at all criticised. It is now forgotten, although it changes the whole character of the Hungarian state. All rules of lawmaking and Constitution-making have been ignored. The obligatory mediations were simply disregarded by the simple subterfuge according to which Acts of Parliament, normally proposed by the cabinet, are presented by what is called in Britain private members bills not liable to ordinary procedures. How much spontaneous this is, is shown by the case that once a draft bill has been proposed in the name of a non-existent MP, voted nonetheless and now a law of the country. The aim of this legislating fury is quite simple: one, to eternalise the power of the ruling party by appointing high state officials for nine or twelve years, their appointment to be renewed only by a two-thirds majority in the future, an unlikely occurrence, second, to replace elected by appointed bodies controlled by Right and its business confederates. Most local councils even though 93% of these are now controlled by the Right! will be either replaced by government bureaux, or their powers substantially reduced. By various tricks, courts, public prosecution offices, state audit offices, media boards, universities, cultural institutions etc. etc. will be staffed in all eternity by the appointees of the right-wing government. All branches of government are subordinated to the executive. In the new Constitution, there are

no more fundamental rights as they are made conditional on the performance of duties. The article stipulating equal wages for equal work has been struck from the hallowed text. The electoral law is changed in a way that cannot possibly permit a change of government. Strikes and referenda are made all but impossible. Various measures are included in the Constitution so as to preclude any change, such as the scandalously unfair flat tax. It is typical that the European Union and the Western liberal press protest against the limitations imposed on the autonomy of the National Bank, but the protest of the European Federation of Trade Unions against the oppressive labour legislation is hardly mentioned. The most important centre of the secret services is now headed by Mr Orbns personal bodyguard and the rest are populated by dubious figures from the shadowy private security firms close to the Right. There are many, partly no doubt quite justified, anticorruption trials, but exclusively directed against Socialist bosses. Communist parties and their successor organisations, that is, the main opposition party, the Socialists, have been declared in the new Constitution criminal organisations. Public education is transformed into a highly selective, discriminatory system, dominated by the Catholic reaction. Streets named after anti-fascist martyrs (or after the Republic or even after President Roosevelt; but there is a new Ronald Reagan statue) are renamed. The populist measures of the right-wing government include the nationalisation of the private pension funds, special taxes levied on some foreign banks and retail chains such as Tesco and the partial conversion of mortgage debts in foreign currency into Hungarian forints (on the condition that the outstanding debt is paid promptly in full) have provoked the fury of West European financial circles, but sadly have not benefited many people only some in the upper middle class, but at least have slowed down somewhat, for a few months or weeks, the vertiginous rhythm of the usual austerity measures, that is, cuts. And so on and so forth. However dubious the merits of bourgeois democracy, nobody in their right mind can help being apprehensive about this wholesale attack against civic liberties and against the ability of the Hungarian people especially after the infamous media law to express itself and to impose its will in a peaceful fashion. But what is the idea behind all this? This is what is only very cursorily examined in the international press, and the need to understand the motivations of Mr Orbn and his allies should impose itself, since neither he nor his friends are devils. What Mr Orbn has in mind, is a sort of national rebirth. He desires to put an end to the uncertainty, lack of direction, shifting goals and apparent decay of the last twenty years. It is not only a re-establishment of national grandeur that he desires, but also economic success and the reconstruction of the state what he sees, not without reason, as an ineffectual, chaotic, all too complicated institution nobody respects. Part of his thinking is pretty mainstream in character. He has believed the liberal bromide about the need for a strong and large middle class that should be the backbone of the nation, entreprising, bold, frugal and diligent. All the tax reforms, all the subsidies are going to this mainly young middle class to which he himself and his friends belong as his ideal are small entrepreneurs, independent middling bourgeois, patriotic, loyal, religious and respectful of tradition and authority. This is very similar to Mrs Thatchers property-owning democracy, this is why the Right has supported the obtaining of family-owned houses for the middle class, one of the causes of the mortgage crisis in Hungary and everywhere. The Hungarian Right thinks, like European (especially Central European) conservatives at all times that the adversaries of such a middle class are, on the one hand, multinational companies, international institutions and finance capital, and on the other, the proletarians, the poor, the communists, name them as you will plus the unemployable, subhuman rabble. The Hungarian Right are not simple, old-fashioned racists. They are first opposed to subsidies for the poor, to social

assistance to the jobless who are seen as mainly Roma (this is not at all true, by the way), and to any of the non-productive strata of society, called by them the inactive (a term which includes pensioners and there is a rather new, particularly unpleasant and strong hatred against the old). This is why they have turned so radically and, I think, suicidally against the trade unions. In order to impose this new order, the new authoritarian state needs a lot of money which the government is trying to find through cuts, new cuts, other cuts and more cuts. There is no money for the arts, for archeology and conservation, for publishing, for research with the auxiliary benefit of getting rid of the left-leaning or liberal intelligentsia and there is no money for public transport, for the environment, for hospitals and clinics, for universities, for elementary schools, for assistance to the blind, to the hard of hearing, to the lame and to the ill. There is money only for sports, which is conducive to the strengthening of the fighting spirit, the spirit of community, loyalty, self-discipline, manly effort and the like. It is also a classical predilection for action, for deeds instead of mere words (also known as critical thought). The clasas discutidoras (the chattering classes) so hated by Don Juan Donoso Corts and his best disciple, Carl Schmitt, are not very much admired. There is nothing exceptional in this, conservatives have always hated intellectuals (especially conservative intellectuals have done so) and hated caf society and not so long ago had thought that the French Revolution was caused by les socits de pense and the masonic lodges. Mr Orbn speaks of a work-based society and has solemnly announced the end of the welfare state (it does not matter much if you thought that the welfare state ended long ago). In this, too, he is not different from Messrs Cameron, Sarkozy, Barroso, Monti, Rajoy, Harper and Mesdames Merkel and Lagarde who would be horrified if one said that they are not different from Mr Orbn. Only Mr Orbn is bolder and more consequent than they are, also he is less constrained by ceremony and precedent, by pomp and circumstance as much as they are. So Mr Orbn could dare to introduce a radical form of workfare (remember: initiated by Messrs Clinton and Blair) which means that you can get the dole (the unemployment benefit) only if you are prepared to perform any work prescribed to you by the authorities and to do it under the control of the Ministry of the Interior so much beloved by East Europeans, for a meagre pittance, deeply under the living wage. The first experiment in this not-quite-forced-labour has been tried in a village infamous for its, let us say, racial incidents staged by neo-Nazi paramilitary squads, which has also the distinction to have recently elected itself a neo-Nazi mayor. The mostly Roma public workers are labouring under strict police surveillance, constantly harassed and humiliated, under the glare of right-wing media calling them work-shy. Thank God, the incompetent Hungarian state will be unable to organise this on a large scale, but the intention is crystal clear. The paradox of the whole situation is that Mr Orbn is being attacked by the European Union and the government of the United States that, on the whole, are in total agreement with Mr Orbns policies. They are vehemently opposed, though, to his pretensions of independence and his empty rhetoric against the banks. It is remarkable that the Hungarian official propaganda maintains that the Hungarian government is being terrorised by the international Left! It is small wonder that Herr Martin Schulz, the new (social democrat) Speaker of the European Parliament has asked, are Senhor Barroso or M. Jupp leftists? But these people are forgetting the old conviction of the Central European radical Right that finance capital and communism are somehow identical. They are both cosmopolitan, modernist, secularist and republican. However this may be, as far as the Hungarian people is concerned, the three most important factors in our lives right now Mr Orbns government, the EU/IMF/US troika and the domestic opposition are absolutely and adamantly determined to impose cuts, new cuts and more cuts. Seen from this point of view, the condemnation of the Hungarian Right by the Western press, by the Western cabinets and the international

financial and political institutions appears farcical. There is an immense struggle about precious little. I would not say that the death of bourgeois democracy in Hungary is a mere nothing: it is quite terrible. History has taught us not to neglect the differences between various capitalist rgimes. But these differences are of degree rather than of kind, and the authoritarian drive of contemporary bourgeois governments everywhere is not difficult to recognise. The continuous attacks of the Western press some justified, some not have already provoked a strong nationalist backlash in Hungary; EU flags have been burnt by neo-Nazi parliamentarians; people are flabbergasted as their government, however unpopular, is becoming the incarnation of absolute Evil abroad. National indignation (partly justified, I am afraid) will mobilise the Right against democratic and social protest, which is the least we need. It will also encourage the Orbn government to continue its disastrous course towards the Great Nothingness. The Western leaders do not appear as partcularly sagacious or responsible. Here I come to the most important point of this essay: the problem of national sovereignty. If we shall, at least provisionally, accept that capitalism is not likely to die any time soon, then we should inquire whether the imposition of political power from the outside can be beneficial to democracy or not. We have seen that one of the consequences of the crisis had been that in countries such as Italy and Greece bureau- and technocrats had been imposed: unelected officials, former bank managers with no real popular mandate. If Mr Orbn makes the imposition of popular will impossible by his authoritarian, nay, semi-dictatorial measures, so is the intervention of foreign powers. At least, Mr Orbn has been elected. By fraudulent means certainly he has not announced what he intended to do but he was nevertheless elected. There are many ways in which democracy can be subverted. One way is by blackmail. When the Hungarian government is threatened by the withdrawal of funds or similar sanctions, this is changing a countrys politics by force. This should be seen as wrong by, among others, honest liberals. There is only one political actor which is legitimately called upon to decide, and that is the Hungarian electorate itself. Hungarians should welcome shows of solidarity, sympathy and moral support from abroad. We are grateful that our plight does not go unmentioned and unremarked upon in the capitals of the great powers. But it is incumbent upon ourselves to decide the fate of our country. It should be dependent on our will. We are in great peril, true. But if the Hungarian Right is accused to ignore the voice of the populace, no foreign influence should outguess and replace that voice. Thank you very much, but we shall deal with this ourselves. It would be tragic, if the farce in Strasbourg, in Brussels and in Washington DC would unite patriotic Hungarians around one of their worst enemies, Mr Viktor Orbn. That would be his triumph and our bitter and maybe deserved defeat. A proper and authentically democratic opposition in Hungary should be opposed to the catastrophic austerity policies of the European Commission, of the European Central Bank, of the International Monetary Fund and of the American establishment, too, not only to the abysmal Hungarian Right. If such an opposition emerges, you should not worry about Hungary.