Karl Polanyi: The Hungarian writings 9781784997472

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Karl Polanyi The Hungarian writings

Karl Polanyi The Hungarian writings Translated by

Adam Fabry Edited and introduced by

Gareth Dale

Manchester University Press

Original materials © Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy All rights reserved by Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy This English language translation © Manchester University Press 2016 Introduction © Gareth Dale 2016 The authors’ rights have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs  and  Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester m1 7ja www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN  978 1 7849 9425 9 hardback First published 2016

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or  third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate

Typeset in Garamond by Koinonia, Manchester

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction by Gareth Dale

page ix 1

Part I: Religion, metaphysics and ethics Culture – pseudo-culture 41 Preface to Ernst Mach’s The Analysis of Sensations 45 Credo and credulity 49 On the destructive turn 52 Speech on the meaning of conviction 55 A lesson learned 60 The calling of our generation 64 Oration to the youth of the Galilei Circle 74 The resurrection of Jesus 79 Part II: Political ideas and ideologies The crisis of our ideologies The test of socialism Law and violence Civil war Believing and unbelieving politics The constitution of socialist Britain H. G. Wells, the socialist Karl Kautsky and democracy Guild socialism Guild and state The historical background of the social revolutionaries

83 86 92 95 99 108 111 114 118 121 123

vi

Contents Part III: World politics and philosophy of history

The clowns of world peace New era Against fear The question of war and peace in Geneva Uncle Polly The rebirth of democracy Titanic journalism H. G. Wells on salvaging civilisation The defenders of race in Berlin Whites, blacks and browns The emergence of the Crossman opposition

129 138 141 143 146 149 151 155 159 161 163

Part IV: Hungarian politics Radical bourgeois politics Magyar hegemony and the nationalities Bourgeois radicals, socialists and the established opposition The programme and goals of radicalism Radical Party and bourgeois party Manual and intellectual labour The Galilei Circle: a balance sheet Concealed foreign rule and socialist economics

169 171 174 181 191 197 204 209

Part V: Correspondence Letters from Karl Polanyi to: Georg Lukacs, Budapest, 18 August 1908 Georg Lukacs, Budapest, 9 December 1908 Endre Ady, Budapest, 2 February 1909 Maria Lukacs, Dresden, 25 October 1911 Georg Lukacs, 31 January 1912 ‘The goals of Hungarian democracy’, letter to the editor of   A Láthatár, March 1927 Mihály Károlyi, President of the British-Hungarian Council,   London, 6 December 1944 Mihály Károlyi, London, 15 April 1946 Oscar Jaszi, London, 15 May 1946 Endre Havas, 25 October 1946

213 214 215 216 217 219 220 220 224 226

Contents Oscar Jaszi, Pickering, Canada, 27 October 1950 György Heltai, Pickering, Canada, 24 April 1960 György Heltai, 21 May 1960 Istvan Meszaros (from Polanyi and Ilona Duczynska), 30 March 1961 The editors of Új Látóhatár, Pickering, Canada, 24 April 1961 Istvan Meszaros, Pickering, Canada, 24 April 1961 Georg Lukacs, 27 May 1963 Georg Lukacs, 25 January 1964

vii 227 230 231 232 236 237 238 239

Index 240

Acknowledgements

The origins of this volume date to my encounter in 2006 with the archive of the Karl Polanyi Institute at Concordia University, Montréal. In subsequent years I repeated the journey several times, with funding provided by the LippmanMiliband Trust and Brunel University’s Business School and School of Social Sciences. Three grants were provided, by the Nuffield Foundation, the AmielMelburn Trust and Brunel University, to fund the summarising, by Adam Fabry and Kinga Sata, of the main part of Karl Polanyi’s Hungarian writings and then their translation by Adam Fabry. The majority of the texts in this volume are translations of documents contained in the Karl Polanyi archive, and I am grateful to its co-founder and director – respectively, Kari Polanyi-Levitt and Margie Mendell – for granting permission to publish them, and to its administrator, Ana Gomez, for supplying scanned copies of many of the documents. In a­ ddition, I photographed some, with permission, at the Karl Polanyi Archive, and photocopied others – in particular, articles from Bécsi Magyar Újság – at the Austrian National Library during a sojourn in Vienna in autumn 2012. The bulk of the time and effort devoted to the content of this book, however, has been expended by the translator. I could not have hoped for a more competent ally in undertaking this project than Adam Fabry. Not only is he a native speaker of Hungarian and a skilled translator, but he was able to offer perceptive comments on the social and intellectual context that shaped Polanyi’s thought. Given that the direction of translation was from his native Hungarian into his third language, I have altered the English throughout, with the aim of improving fluency while retaining the meaning. If any errors exist, therefore, they are likely to be of my own making. In addition to the Karl Polanyi Archive, I benefited from access to the Michael Polanyi Papers (Regenstein Library, University of Chicago); the Polanyi Family Papers (Országos Széchenyi Könyvtár, Budapest), and the SPSL Archive (Bodleian Library, Oxford University). In references, the archive’s name is abbreviated, with numbers denoting container and folder. For example, KPA-37-8 refers to folder 8 in container 37 at the Karl Polanyi Archive. The

x

Acknowledgements

others are abbreviated as MPP and SPSL. Finally, a note on orthography is required. Names of Hungarians who gained recognition in the Anglosphere appear in anglicised form. For all others, the Hungarian is used.

Introduction Gareth Dale

When Karl Polanyi, in a letter of 1934, gave an account of ‘the inner development’ of his thought, he divided it into two periods. The first was his early life in Hungary, until 1919, the second was the fifteen years that followed, in Viennese exile. ‘Although nearly all my published writing falls into this second period,’ he observed, the literary and pedagogical work accomplished ‘in the first, the Hungarian period, forms the real background of my life and thought.’1 This will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Polanyi’s life. Formed within an extraordinary historical-geographical crucible – fin-de-siècle Budapest – during a period of tumultuous change, he became a central figure in its radical counter-culture, the members of which were to exert an influence upon twentieth-century thought out of all proportion to their number. The focus of this volume is upon his writings from this phase, his early life in Hungary. However, he also engaged intensively in émigré politics in three subsequent periods: the early 1920s in Vienna, the mid-1940s in London, and the late 1950s and early 1960s in Canada. Representative samples of his Hungarian writings from these three periods are also included. So too are examples of his correspondence. Polanyi was a prolific correspondent, and the letters included in this volume represent only a tiny fraction of his output. Those selected are clustered in periods during which he was engaged in political and intellectual projects with his Hungarian compatriots. In this introductory essay I provide a survey of Polanyi’s early life, during which he wrote the bulk of the texts that are included in this volume, followed by a summary overview of his engagement in émigré politics during his spells in Austria, Britain and North America.2 Born in the Habsburg capital, Vienna, Polanyi was raised in the Empire’s second city, Budapest. The late nineteenth century was a time of change, as a semi-feudal absolutism gave way to industrial modernity, with the expansion of capitalist social relations, the systematic deployment of science and technology to the production process, and rapid urbanisation. To use the sociologese of the era, Gemeinschaft was dissolving into Gesellschaft, and intellectual culture in the Habsburg Empire was arguably more polarised than anywhere else

2

Karl Polanyi

along the Gemeinschaft–Gesellschaft axis. There is a sense in which Karl’s own parents, Cecile and Mihály Pollacsek, epitomised the dichotomy – or, perhaps more accurately, that of romantic anti-capitalism and liberal Enlightenment. Cecile inclined to the former. In lifestyle Bohemian and chaotic, her intellectual interests centred upon the philosophical, aesthetic and psychoanalytic. Of Russian descent, she maintained connections to Russian émigré circles, above all through her friend Samuel Klatschko, a socialist and former narodnik who, in his youth, had founded a utopian community in the USA and later provided a Viennese base for exiled revolutionaries – including Leon Trotsky and Karl Radek. Klatschko exerted a lasting influence on both Karl Polanyi and his influential cousin Ervin Szabó (on whom more below). Mediated through Cecile and through Klatschko, Polanyi developed a fascination with Russia, as the land of populism, revolutionary spirit and romantic anti-capitalism. Mihály, by contrast, was a liberal businessman. According to Karl’s wife, Ilona Duczynska (hereafter, Ilona), he ‘lived by his creed of P ­ uritanism, positivism, progress, the scientific outlook, democracy, and the emancipation of women’.3 As Polanyi himself recalls, Mihály, ‘to whose passionate idealism I owe a great debt, was Hungarian, though deeply imbued with western education and culture’.4 An engineer, he had studied railway con­­struction in Edinburgh, after which he returned to Budapest ‘as what he understood to be a practising Scotsman’.5 Whatever that phrase might mean, he certainly regarded Britain as an exemplar, synonymous with modernity.6 For Karl, Britain was the land of his father’s stories, of his English-language education, of Kipling (whose Jungle Book and Stalky and Co. he adored when young), of John Stuart Mill and the Fabians, and of Robert Owen. Altogether, these formed a counterpoint to his ‘Russian’ inspirations. ‘From the outset’, as he put it in a letter to his life-long friend Oscar Jaszi of 27 October 1950 (pp. 227–30), ‘Russian and then Anglo-Saxon ingredients’ were present in his intellectual world: ‘on the one hand, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (but as reflections of the Russian revolution!), and, on the other, my English upbringing, overseen by my deeply Westernised father’. Cecile and Mihály Pollacsek belonged to a distinct layer of Hungarian society. In their son’s words, they were ‘liberal-minded Jews belonging to the upper class of Hungarian society’.7 Jews functioned as the Staatsvolk of the Habsburg Empire. As Jaszi put it, they were a highly ‘efficacious force’ in its ‘unification and cohesion’.8 The Jews of Prague, for example, cleaved loyally to the ­‘imagined imperial community’, as did their counterparts in Budapest, particularly after the 1867 Compromise which promoted the Hungarian elite to joint governor of the realm.9 The Jewish Bildungsbürgertum, in its economic power and dominance within many professions, was a remarkable social group. Jewish economic and professional ascendancy was such that, although comprising scarcely more than a fifth of the capital’s population, some two-thirds of all individuals

Introduction

3

engaged in commerce and fully 90 per cent of those in finance were of Jewish extraction; and in both categories, Jews were disproportionately situated in the middle and upper brackets of the scale. They were over-represented in the legal profession and in political elites – the percentage of the leaderships of all left or left-liberal parties with Jewish parentage was never below 40 and could reach as high as 60 per cent.10 An index of the pace of upward mobility is that in ten years from 1885 the Jewish intake at the University of Budapest quadrupled, and from 1895 Jews comprised almost half of the student body. Cecile and Mihály had come of age during an era in which conditions were becoming steadily more secure for the Jews of Budapest. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century British hegemony at the global level and domestic agricultural prosperity underpinned a pronounced liberal trend in economic policy. In politics, Hungarian liberalism experienced its golden age. Freedoms of press, speech, assembly and religion were granted, and Judaism was put on an equal footing with other religions. Liberals, including Mihály, believed that Hungary was firmly positioned on the highway to modernity headed towards Western Europe, for which the signposts read laissez-faire and free trade, tolerance, civil liberties and steady democratisation. For bourgeois Jews of his generation full equality was not yet in their grasp but life was manifestly more tolerable than it had been for their parents and grandparents. They had little but scorn for those who stuck to an ethnic Jewish identity, seeing it as antithetical to modernity, patriotism and liberalism. Their preference was to assimilate. Typically, Jewish professionals and businesspeople aspired to integrate into the Hungarian nobility, but the conventions were stringent: they demanded the adoption of social styles and mannerisms but also expected, tacitly but firmly, conversion to Christianity.11 A substantial portion of the Jewish business class sought to enter the nobility, which in most cases involved religious conversion and magyarisation of the family name.12 (A well-known case, due to his son’s later fame, was the banker József Löwinger who purchased a title to become József von Lukacs.) Cecile and Mihály assimilated in most respects – she converted to the Protestant faith – but Mihály formally retained membership of the Jewish community and declined to magyarise his name. Whether or not they converted, Jews in Hungary tended not to con­­ sider themselves a national minority and, even for newcomers, assuming the Hungarian national identity was generally straightforward.13 Some evidence for this is anecdotal, but the statistics on linguistic change are also suggestive. The language of urban Jews (and of local administration) in mid-nineteenth century Hungary had been German; it was the native language of 60 per cent of the inhabitants of Buda and 33 per cent of Pest – including the Polanyis.14 By the time Karl entered Gymnasium, however, German speakers had been reduced to a rump, even as the city’s Hungarian-speaking population soared – to 80

4

Karl Polanyi

per cent in 1900 and 90 per cent in 1920. An important factor in this was the adoption of Magyar by Jews. In 1880, 59 per cent of Jews gave it as their mother tongue; by 1910 the figure had leapt to 78 per cent.15 The existence of popular and institutional anti-Semitism notwithstanding, Jewish assimilation in pre-war Hungary could hardly be described as forced. Jewish immigration and economic advancement was positively welcomed by the bureaucratic state which, in the words of the Hungarian historian Andrew Janos, reached out its arms to the bourgeoisie, and was ready to protect it not only as an entrepreneurial class but also as a religious minority. At a time when pogroms raged in Russia and Rumania, and when even in neighboring Austria an irritating anti-Semitism was increasingly accepted as part of political life, in Hungary Jews were extolled by the prime minister as an ‘industrious and constructive segment of the population’ while anti-Semitism was denounced as ‘shameful, barbarous and injurious to the national honor’.16

In spite of the absence of major institutional hurdles to upward mobility and integration in pre-war Hungary the relationship of assimilating Jews to their religious-ethnic heritage and to their national identity was far from straightforward. Assimilation to the dominant culture and belief system required conversion, which meant not only the exclusion of devout traditionalist Jews from the mainstream of public culture but the simultaneous raising of a barrier to the social mobility of the unbelieving or the agnostic. These faced a peculiar dilemma: they could ‘freely’ become members of the liberal or even anti-clerical establishment but only by taking the clerical route, through conversion (and, strictly, baptism).17 Refuse, and one risked pariah status; accept, and the door to parvenu status was opened but at the risk of an identity troubled by the invidious compromise that had been made. Either way, Hungary’s secularised Jewish intelligentsia faced a predicament, which its radical elements sought to resolve by embracing internationalist ideologies such as cosmopolitan liberalism and socialism. They exemplified the oscillation between ‘parvenu and pariah’ that in Hannah Arendt’s terms characterised the Jewish experience in modern Europe. As a result of their critical estrangement from society and insight into the experience of oppression and social exclusion, the characteristic stance of Jewish radicals was that of the ‘conscious pariah’: they spurned the sycophancy of their conservative fellows, and rejected both Zionist separatism and the chauvinism of aristocratic Hungary in favour of a ‘universal humanism’.18 Alongside Arendt’s, theses on the peculiar experience of Central European Jewish intellectuals have been advanced by a number of authors, notably Isaac Deutscher and Mary Gluck. For Deutscher, their situation promoted a ­sensitivity to social change and contradiction, which may explain why such a remarkable number of revolutionaries of modern thought were Jewish.

Introduction

5

Deutscher had in mind the likes of Baruch Spinoza, Heinrich Heine and Rosa Luxemburg but the point would apply equally to Polanyi or Georg Lukacs. The minds of these individuals matured where the most diverse cultural influences crossed and fertilised each other. They lived on the margins or in the nooks and crannies of their respective nations. Each of them was in society and yet not in it, of it and yet not of it. It was this that enabled them to rise in thought above their societies, above their nations, above their times and generations, and to strike out mentally into wide new horizons and far into the future.

Their attention ineluctably drawn to the dynamic elements of reality, they could ‘comprehend more clearly the great movement and the great contradictoriness of nature and society’.19 Likewise, Gluck, in Georg Lukacs and his Generation, 1900–1918, has argued that a segment of Budapest’s Jewish intelligentsia at the turn of the century was peculiarly alive to the sense of fragmentation that characterises modern and, still more, modernising societies, and this impelled a quest for community. The Budapest Jews she surveys attached themselves to wider groupings, such as communism or social democracy, the avant-garde and Bauhaus, and formed imaginary allegiances to communities elsewhere. Is it coincidence that the social theorists among them turned their attention to experiences of detachment (Karl Mannheim’s ‘socially unattached intelligentsia’) or to the dialectic of alienation and community (Lukacs, Polanyi)? The radical elements of Budapest’s Jewish intelligentsia were not consumed by the desire to ingratiate themselves with Hungary’s establishment, by purchasing baronies and the like. Ultimately, their desire was, in the words of György Litván, to ‘create an order in which the whole issue of assimilation was irrelevant’.20 For some, this demanded a political community based on universalist criteria rather than on the tribal particularism of the nation state. Others attempted to navigate a middle course between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Polanyi was of this type. Until he left Hungary in 1919, he recalled a decade or so later, ‘I looked upon myself as an Hungarian, and took part enthusiastically in the intellectual and public life of my country’.21 When a child, his embrace of the Hungarian national identity was ardent – so much so that he assumed the dominant nation’s blindness towards the ‘non-historic’ national minorities over which it reigned. ‘As schoolboys’, he recalls, ‘we had no interest in the vicissitudes of the 49 per cent of the population who were of non-Magyar extraction; many of us had not so much as heard of their existence.’ Upon discovering their existence, his reaction was ‘Blimpian’, in his words. ‘Unable to speak Hungarian?! And yet they claim the right to live in “our” country, to eat “our” bread?’22 This chauvinism, however, was an eccentricity of childhood, and soon yielded to the perspective that he was to retain throughout his adult life, summarised by his daughter, Kari Polanyi-Levitt, as ‘opposition to the chau-

6

Karl Polanyi

vinist nationalism of the ruling circles and the bourgeoisie, but wholehearted enthusiasm for the Hungarian nation’.23 In connection with his desire to assume the Hungarian identity, Polanyi distanced himself from his Jewish heritage: he ‘neither considered himself Jewish nor wished to be considered Jewish’.24 He and his family disdained the commercial ethic of the ‘Jewish bourgeoisie’,25 looked down in particular upon ‘those Jews who came from the ghetto and retained their culture’, and lamented the fact that Jews ‘have a divided loyalty, to their tribe and their country’.26 AntiSemitism had configured the ghetto as synonymous with cultural nationalism and backwardness – with Gemeinschaft, religiosity and tradition. To Polanyi, ‘ghetto Jews’ appeared as mulishly resisting the course of progress; they ought to slough off their atavistic identity. In short, assimilant Jews such as Polanyi internalised an element of the endemic anti-Semitic prejudice against Jews of the ghetto. Ultimately, this did nothing to help their cause. Despite their best efforts to assimilate, to learn Hungarian and to convert to Christianity, they found themselves excluded from full national membership – and increasingly so, as Jew-hatred grew.

Free-floating intellectuals When a child, Karl knew the prosperity that fin-de-siècle Habsburg capitalism could offer but also the unsteadiness of the ground upon which it rested. His father, Mihály, was a railway baron. When in Austria, his company had built lines for the Viennese State Railway Company, and his move to Budapest in the early 1890s had been astute. Railway building was a lead sector in Hungary’s explosive economic boom, and his company was responsible for over a thousand kilometres of the track laid at this time.27 The revenues enabled him to acquire a grand flat on a fashionable city-centre boulevard, as well as a summer residence. A team of tutors and governesses was hired to provide private tuition until the age of ten or twelve, when the children were sent to the best Gymnasium. But they also received a practical lesson in the instability of the capitalist system when, in 1900, Mihály’s business collapsed. Straitened times followed, as the family navigated its descent into the middle class. The abrupt destabilisation of the Polanyi family’s fortunes echoed a wider volatility on the societal level. During the ‘Great Depression’ of 1873–96 the liberal consensus on the benefits of international trade and investment evaporated. As tariffs, cartels and other protectionist measures proliferated, a new form of ‘organised capitalism’ arose, centred upon interventionist economic policy and close cooperation between banks and states. Imperial rivalries intensified, with colonial annexations, an arms race and increasing diplomatic tensions. On the European left, a debate arose in respect of these tendencies. Some, such as the

Introduction

7

‘revisionist’ Marxist Eduard Bernstein, held that the increasing regulation of capitalism would stabilise the business cycle.28 Orthodox Marxists such as Rosa Luxemburg countered that organised capitalism would be far from crisis-free and would tend to intensify class struggle, while the Austrian social democrat Rudolf Hilferding, in his Finance Capital, studied the interconnections between business organisation, capital export and geopolitical competition. The emerging phase of capitalism dominated by giant corporations and cartels and orchestrated by banks, he argued, would encourage export offensives abroad, re-scaling capitalist competition to the global level and exacerbating imperial rivalries. Germany, he predicted in 1910, would soon be at war with Britain and France.29 In one of his earliest essays, ‘The crisis of our ideologies’ (1910) (pp. 83–5), Polanyi took Bernstein’s side in the debate, and forecast a stable age of regulated capitalism. The collectivist society that was coming into being, the same essay also predicted, would render liberalism antiquated. No longer concentrated in the hands of individual owners, capital was becoming ever less personal, management ever more bureaucratic, and in society at large personality was losing its centrality: in future, people would be valued less for their individuality than for their sociality. ‘Liberal individualism’, as he later summarised his thesis, was on its way out, ‘and in the coming phase of Capitalism the upper classes would exchange their individualistic theories for some form of “Socialist” doctrine’ – albeit a socialism of a dogmatic kind, one that, far from serving ‘the cause of the workers’, would be based on a ‘conviction of their natural inferiority’.30 If his prediction of capitalist stability was shortly to be refuted by the general conflagration of 1914–18 and the decades of volatility that followed, Polanyi’s thesis on the demise of liberalism was seminal. The final quarter of the nineteenth century witnessed the early throes of what one historian, leaning on Dangerfield, has called ‘the strange death of Liberal Europe’.31 In the Habsburg Empire the ‘death’ of liberalism took an especially dramatic form. In respect of its Western half, the classic account is Carl Schorske’s Fin-de-siècle Vienna, with its eloquent portrayal of the social blowback that followed upon liberal reforms: During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the program which the liberals had devised against the upper classes occasioned the explosion of the lower. The liberals succeeded in releasing the political energies of the masses, but against themselves rather than against their ancient foes. … A German nationalism articulated against aristocratic cosmopolitans was answered by Slavic patriots clamouring for autonomy. … Laissez faire, devised to free the economy from the fetters of the past, called forth the Marxist revolutionaries of the future. Catholicism, routed from the school and the courthouse as the handmaiden of aristocratic oppression, returned as the ideology of peasant and artisan, for whom liberalism meant capitalism and capitalism meant

8

Karl Polanyi Jew. … Far from rallying the masses against the old ruling class above, then, the liberals unwittingly summoned from the social deeps the forces of a general disintegration. Strong enough to dissolve the old political order, liberalism could not master the social forces which that dissolution released and which generated new centrifugal thrust under liberalism’s tolerant but inflexible aegis.32

The process whereby the old order disintegrated concurrently with the foundering of the accustomed alternative, liberalism, formed the experiential backdrop to Vienna’s modernist moment, that cocktail of explosively creative tensions which gave impetus to experimental and iconoclastic movements in the arts and sciences. The sense of upheaval, of crisis and new beginnings, that characterised fin-de-siècle Vienna was strongly felt in Budapest too. Here, the contradictions of ‘modernisation’ were experienced no less acutely. The late nineteenth century had seen absolutism yield rapidly to liberal capitalism, but in the wake of a Europe-wide agricultural crisis liberal economic policy was reversed and protectionism gained ground. The brunt of a 50 per cent fall in agricultural prices was imposed upon agrarian wage earners with the assistance of a series of labour-repressive measures, including a law of 1878 that imposed humiliating conditions on seasonal labourers by exempting their masters from legal liability for ‘minor acts of violence’.33 This was followed at the end of the century by an Act of Parliament – dubbed by contemporaries the Slave Law – that outlawed industrial action by agricultural labourers, made them criminally liable for breaches of seasonal contracts, and provided that fugitive labourers be returned to their place of work by the gendarmerie. Liberals generally supported these measures, on the grounds that they contributed to the restoration of profit margins. On questions of the political constitution, liberalism was no more progressive. The franchise of the Hungarian parliament was very restricted: for the regions studied by Dániel Szabó the electorate in 1890 represented only 5 per cent of the population, rising to 7 per cent in 1910.34 In effect, proletariat and peasantry were excluded from representation in parliament, as were the minority nationalities (in some cases partially, in others completely). Given the numerical weight of non-Magyars in the Hungarian half of the Dual Monarchy, questions of nationality and democracy became intimately connected, and conservative patriots were able to successfully silence nationalistically minded Hungarian democrats with the warning that universal suffrage would imperil Magyar dominance.35 The Liberal Party, its backbone formed by the archnationalist gentry, opposed democratic reform. By the turn of the century, then, classical liberalism was no longer the buoyant creed that it had been when Mihály and Cecile were coming of age. The historical conditions their children encountered were conspicuously different. The brief, golden age of Hungarian liberalism had reached its end. Whereas in 1870 most

Introduction

9

citizens of Budapest had welcomed economic liberalisation, by 1900, according to historian John Lukacs, ‘more and more people were inclined to think that economic liberalism, capitalism and freedom of enterprise profited some people but not others; that the profits of a minority were accumulating at the expense of a majority’.36 The liberal faith that social progress would arrive courtesy of capitalist development was evaporating. Commodification and marketisation seemed to breed all manner of disagreeable phenomena: the destruction of rural communities, exploitation, moral regression and philistinism. On the political right, middle-class nationalists agitated against immigration and against the oppressed nations’ demands for political equality. Anti-liberal sentiment among peasants alloyed with anti-democratic and anti-socialist reaction among the nobility and petit bourgeoisie, enabling a conservative anti-Semitic coalition to form, fronted from 1895 by the Catholic People’s Party. Although not a successful mass organisation in the manner of Karl Lueger’s Christian Social movement in Austria, the People’s Party did help to rally chauvinist sentiment – to the extent that by 1900 ‘chauvinism’ was in common use as a commendatory term by many a Hungarian politician and journalist – and to refashion antiSemitism from a religious movement directed specifically at practising, nonassimilated Jews into a socio-political movement whose target was determined by ‘ethnicity’.37 The new conservative anti-Semitism was nowhere more visible than at the University of Budapest’s Faculty of Law. Polanyi studied there from 1903 to 1907, and found it to be ‘the stronghold of political reaction’.38 During his student years, polarisation between conservative and radical (predominantly Jewish) students reached fever pitch, and he himself was expelled from university for clashing with members of a rival student organisation. On the political left, in the same period, resistance coalesced around the trade unions and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). They took heart from union- and socialist-led campaigns and revolts elsewhere in Europe, which had clamoured for a widening of the suffrage, and in several cases had brought leftliberal technocratic governments into office. In Hungary, the labour movement pushed questions of welfare to the fore, and led the struggle for democracy – and in so doing helped to ensure the young Karl Polanyi’s life-long identification with labour. The movement, however, did not achieve a democratic breakthrough, as the street protests and industrial action of 1905 in Austria had done. Not only was Hungary’s labour movement weaker, and its organisations more rigid, but the threat to the central state’s territorial claims posed by democratisation in areas with minority nationalities was greater, and this, as mentioned above, caused the liberal bourgeoisie to cling tightly to the coat-tails of the conservative gentry. With the Liberal Party taking a conservative stance on democracy, and the SDP rigid, parliamentarist and weak, a layer of the intelligentsia existed, Michael

10

Karl Polanyi

Löwy has observed, that was to an unusual extent free from attachment to political movements linked to the major socio-economic classes – Mannheim’s freischwebende Intelligenz (the ‘free-floating’ or ‘socially unattached’ intelligentsia).39 This group formed the spine of the movement of ‘bourgeois radicals’, which challenged classical liberalism from within the broadly liberal camp. Whereas classical liberals were free traders, Christians and supporters of only a minimal franchise, there emerged across fin-de-siècle Europe, as Norman Stone has described, a movement of middle-class liberals who adopted a quite different prospectus. They were quite violently anti-aristocratic and they regarded religion as mumbojumbo. They advocated divorce, and wholly secular education; sometimes, they supported the emancipation of women … they wanted the franchise to be extended. They were, on the whole, contemptuous of the past and confident of a progressive future, for which the lumber of past centuries should unhesitatingly be swept aside.40

Many of Budapest’s young bourgeois radicals, including Polanyi, adop­­ted the previous generation’s optimistic faith in liberal social advance, but they were not so confident that progress would be steady and linear. A giddy sense of the challenges and contradictions of progress comes across vividly in Polanyi’s writings of the pre-war period, notably ‘Credo and credulity’ (pp. 49–51), ‘On the destructive turn’ (pp. 52–4), and ‘A lesson learned’ (pp. 60–3). In contrast to their parents’ generation, his encountered darkening trends, not least of anti-Semitism and chauvinism, that bore a warning: the progressive promise of Gesellschaft, of Enlightenment values, could not be taken for granted. Some, notably Lukacs, reacted with revulsion against the materialistic, utilitarian civilisation of their era, convinced as they were that ‘the dubious material gains of progress have been made at the price of stupendous spiritual loss’.41 He and his circle shared with conservatives an intense and melancholic awareness of ‘life as it was, and is not, and should be’.42 Unlike conservatives, however, they made no attempt to recapture the traditions of bygone ages. They seemed to possess a deeper, more tragic sense of separation from the past, and sensed that its forms and conventions were irretrievable and probably inappropriate for modern society. To borrow a phrase from Robert Sayre and Michael Löwy, they may be classified alongside Tönnies as ‘resigned Romantics’. (The German sociologist’s influence was potent, on the young Lukacs and, more e­ nduringly, on Polanyi).43 For Lukacs especially, but Polanyi too, the past became an instrument of criticism against the present, as well as a model of integrity and synthesis for the future. Like the Romantics, they searched in the past – notably Ancient Greece and medieval Europe – for an imaginary of non-alienated cultures ‘when ­individuals supposedly still felt that their inner selves were adequately reflected by the cultural world around them’.44 And like their modernist counterparts

Introduction

11

elsewhere, they were captivated by primitivism and folk cultures. In cultural forms such as folk music and peasant culture they thought to have discovered the sense of personal wholeness and communal rootedness that they felt to be distressingly absent in industrialising modernity.

Faces of the counter-culture Budapest’s counter-culture was a milieu united in antagonism to absolutism and its liberal props. Its various currents converged around a set of overlapping nodes, of which the most notable were the literary review Nyugat (‘West’), Jaszi’s Sociological Society with its journal Huszadik Század (‘Twentieth century’), and Polanyi’s Galilei Circle with its periodical Szabadgondolat (‘Free thought’). Within this milieu, the Polanyi family played a central role – so much so that one scholar has remarked that, when perusing the names on the Polanyi family tree, one can easily conclude that, ‘with only a little exaggeration, and counting friends, acquaintances and love interests, the entire progressive counter-culture of turn-of-the-century Hungary could be attributed to the Polanyi family’.45 Karl’s elder sister Laura was a pioneering socialist feminist, became one of the first women to graduate with a doctorate from the University of Budapest and founded an experimental kindergarten (later immortalised in the memoirs of one child who attended, Arthur Koestler). One of Karl’s brothers, Adolf, was to gain an official position in the 1919 ‘Councils’ Republic’ (on which more below), while another, Michael, would achieve fame as a chemist, philosopher and liberal economist. Karl’s school friends included Leo Popper, son of the cellist and composer David Popper, whose untimely death he describes and mourns in letters to Maria and Georg Lukacs, 1911–12 (pp. 216–18), and among his cousins was Ervin Szabó, the country’s leading Marxist theoretician – whose closest friend, Jaszi, was a former schoolmate of the scholar of jurisprudence and pioneer of economic anthropology, Bódog Somló, who supervised Polanyi’s postgraduate study. Another of Polanyi’s cousins was the artist Irma Seidler, whose brother, Ernö, was a founder member of the Hungarian Communist Party (CP) and a minister during the Councils’ Republic, and whose sister married Emil Lederer, a professor of economics at Heidelberg, referee to Karl Polanyi, mentor to Mannheim and doyen to German academic socialists.46 Irma herself was the early flame of Lukacs, who was a neighbour and close friend of Cecile and Karl, and was – together with members of his Sunday Circle such as Karl Mannheim – a regular at Cecile’s salon. Lukacs’ intellectual relationship with Karl was particularly intense from their teenage years until the Great War. A sense of it is conveyed in Karl’s letters to him from 1908 and 1912 (pp. 213–19). Lukacs represents one of the three poles of attraction within the counterculture to which Polanyi belonged in his teens and twenties. A metaphysical

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idealist, he found in romantic philosophy pointers towards a cultural renaissance, and was fiercely critical of what he saw as the insipid, toxic staples of nineteenth-century liberal philosophy: utilitarianism, materialism and determinism. He drank deeply from vitalist and neo-Kantian philosophy which, in various ways, emphasised the distinction between the methods of the natural and the social sciences, between the objective world studied by science and the subjective reality of individual consciousness and social existence. At a 1910 meeting of the Galilei Circle, Lukacs inveighed against positivism, determinism and liberal individualism, those caustic beliefs that acted to dissolve social bonds and attenuate the intellectual basis for conscious human action. In his perspective, as explicated by Mary Gluck, it was ultimately positivistic science which was responsible for the fragmented, relativistic world view bequeathed by the nineteenth century to the twentieth. Positivism, he felt, approached nature from a position of passive observation rather than active involvement, and encouraged a view of the world geared to register the reality of atomized individuals and dispersed, disconnected movements.47

Lukacs’ enthusiasms, alongside Dostoevsky and the Hungarian poet Endre Ady, were chiefly German and French philosophers and sociologists: Nietzsche, Bergson, Dilthey, Simmel and Weber. But there was also a home-grown theorist, Ervin Szabó, to whom he was deeply indebted.48 Szabó was the second pole of attraction for Polanyi – indeed, Ilona hails him as ‘our spiritual father’.49 A revolutionary syndicalist, he espoused an ascetic, heroic morality, ‘radically opposed to capitalist hedonism and the crude materialism of the bourgeoisie’.50 He was, according to Jaszi, intimately attached to the peasantry and ‘instinctively aware of the morbid and corrupt nature of the big city’.51 Of the programme and practice of the Social Democratic Party he was a savage critic. It was, he snorted, wedded to a stultifying parliamentarism and controlled by union bureaucrats. The theory that sanctioned its behaviour was not Marxist but Lassallean: a determinism that denies the role in history of human ideas and psychology.52 Against such ‘objective sociology’, he would insist – for example, in an address to the Galilei Circle – on the role of conscious human activity, not least in the realm of the ‘soul and feelings’.53 In Syndicalism and Social Democracy (1908), he proposed that the labour movement establish its categorical independence from the bourgeoisie. Freedom, passion and the flourishing of the worker’s human potential are of greater consequence than the construction of mere institutions – even including those of a future socialist state. Arguably, Polanyi was closer to Szabó than to Lukacs, and he was effusive in his praise of Szabó’s writings: they have ‘the power of awakening visions’, they will ‘educate generations’, they demonstrate ‘the revolutionary power of ideas’ and, in particular, the role of popular traditions as a seedbed of revolution.54

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More generally, he kept abreast of the progress of the syndicalist phenomenon around Europe. Another of his cousins, Ödön Pór, was active in syndicalist ­movements in Italy and published, in New Age, an enthusiastic piece on the ‘national guilds’ – cooperatives – of Emilio Romana and Ravenna. Polanyi also followed the course of the Great Unrest (sometimes called the Syndicalist Revolt) in Britain. That country, he remarked in ‘The constitution of socialist Britain’ (pp. 108–10), had become ‘the home of pragmatic radicalism’. He was familiar with the work of G. K. Chesterton and took approving note of his radical proposals for the redistribution of productive property and land. Chesterton was the editor of Eye-Witness and a contributor to New Age, the principal journals of cultural rebellion in Britain at the time. The crux of Chesterton’s interpretation of the Great Unrest was that it was directed against collectivism – including the encroaching ‘servile state’ and statist forms of socialism.55 He was, however, close friends with a prominent statist socialist, and one of Polanyi’s life-long passions and the subject of one of his earliest published essays, the dramatist George Bernard Shaw. Alongside romantic anti-capitalism and dissident Marxism, Fabian socialism (or ‘positivist reformism’) formed the third pole of attraction within the Budapest counter-culture. It was the creed of Shaw, of Polanyi’s other teenage idol, H. G. Wells, and of Jaszi.56 Jaszi, of whom Polanyi was the truest disciple, was very much the ‘anti-aristocratic’ radical in the sense described by Norman Stone above. Radicalism’s mission, he held, was to breathe new life into a liberalism that had become discredited through its association with ‘Manchesterism’ – the advocacy of free trade as a means of entrenching the dominance of the strong, cynically disguised by the vocabulary of liberty.57 In sharp contrast to Szabó, he exhorted radicals to pledge themselves to ‘industrial capital’ in its battle against ‘agrarian feudalism’,58 and to rescue ‘the part of classical liberalism that is still viable today’ – by which he meant tolerance, civil liberties, parliamentary democracy and free trade, but not laissez-faire or even, necessarily, private property in the means of production.59 As sociological inspiration, Jaszi looked above all to the positivism of Herbert Spencer.60 Positivist sociology, he held, would provide the compass for political reform, enabling a passage to be opened towards a ‘new morality, founded on science and human solidarity’.61 Jaszi believed ‘in the power of ideas … in the invincible strength of truth; in the weakness of the debauched “ancien regime”’ and above all ‘in the importance of spreading our noble, simple, and clear principles among our fellow men’.62 Jaszi also found support from his friend Bernstein, who had broken from the mainstream of the German SPD, refusing its philosophy of history and denouncing its economic determinism, lack of separate ethical agenda and theory of crisis, to become a ‘bourgeois radical’ of the Fabian stripe.63 ­Capitalism, in Bernstein’s optic, was not moving towards collapse, and if the

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position of workers was becoming intolerable this was due to the uncertainty of their existence in a volatile habitat and not to any sustained tendency to depress their living standards.64 The enemy was not capitalism or the capitalist state but ‘the small group of private interests which stubbornly refused to see the light of reason and social justice’.65 Accordingly, the method by which to expand working-class influence within society was not class struggle and certainly not revolutionary upheaval but the broadening of the franchise. Together with the Fabians, Achille Loria, Franz Oppenheimer and Eugen Dühring, he inspired the Central European current of liberal socialism, a movement of which Jaszi was Hungary’s most prominent exponent, ably assisted by Polanyi.66 As Polanyi saw it, the ‘central pillar’ of liberal socialism was the proposition that capitalist exploitation results from the monopoly of land ownership by the capitalist class.67 When shorn of monopoly excrescences, free market competition would reduce income inequality; its intrinsic logic is egalitarian.68 As such, it represented the continuation of a current that could be traced back through John Stuart Mill to Adam Smith, centred upon the axiom that the conditions of market exchange cannot be unjust except to the extent that they have been influenced by violence or fraud.

Radical kindling The moral, cultural and political-economic transformations in which Polanyi, Jaszi, Lukacs and company invested their hopes raised the prospect of a Hungary that would be at ease with itself and in which they would feel at home. No longer would society be fractured along lines of education. The franchise would be extended to all, the oppression of the minority nations would be brought to an end, and the gulf between classes would be reduced or eliminated. In a radical or revolutionary Hungary the counter-culture would become the mainstream, and anti-Semitism would melt away. But how were these goals to be realised? How might the intellectual resources of the counter-culture be put to practical effect? In the young Polanyi’s case, his practical activities initially focused upon the Galilei Circle, a freemason-funded organisation of students and young intellectuals. The Galilei Circle, according to Polanyi, was formed in response to rising chauvinism among students. It attracted youth of a particular social stratum, the ‘predominantly Jewish intellectual proletariat’. Its social background ‘was onesided: the children of wealthy families were completely absent’.69 Its mission was to overcome Hungary’s backwardness and inspire national moral regeneration. Its enemies were clericalism, corruption, bureaucracy and the privileged elites who resisted its aims: the establishment of an open liberal (or socialist) society with a modern education system and generously defined and robustly defended

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academic and scientific freedoms.70 Although it aimed to kindle radical flames, and stood for ‘universal suffrage, land reform and equal cultural rights for all racial minorities’, its emphasis was upon ‘the cultural and moral field. It was the first effort, in modern Hungary, to see political activity in ethical terms’.71 Principally a scholarly and pedagogical enterprise (its motto was ‘To learn and to teach’), it kept a distance from politics, narrowly defined. Indeed, its watchword was ‘opposition to politics’, a slogan through which it demarcated itself sharply from ‘the established student movement’.72 Within this remit a number of specific agendas were identified. Polanyi saw research in rural sociology as an important task. The Galileists should follow the Russian student movement that had gone ‘out to the villages’ to meet the people.73 A higher priority was in the pedagogical field: between its foundation in 1908 and its prohibition in 1917 the Circle organised adult education classes that were attended by tens of thousands of working people.74 But if it possessed a single defining task it was to introduce and disseminate cuttingedge scientific, cultural and social-scientific thought to the Budapest intelligentsia. At one of its first meetings a debate was held on the topic ‘What is scientific truth’ – as Polanyi mentions in his letter to Lukacs of 9 December 1908 (pp.  214–15). At another, Polanyi lectured on Ernst Mach’s theory of knowledge. (‘I remember it distinctly’, he describes in a wry, self-deprecating recollection, ‘expecting some spectacular result, a manifestation of a change in the audience, perhaps exaltation, or [some] form of transfiguration. But nothing happened …’75) For Polanyi, Mach exemplified fin-de-siècle philosophy’s abandonment of its tiresome preoccupation with metaphysics, as well as the contemporary shift towards philosophical relativism, and he publicised the Bohemian philosopher’s ideas in a number of essays, including ‘Culture – pseudo-culture’ (pp. 41–4) and ‘Preface to Ernst Mach’s The Analysis of Sensations’ (pp. 45–8). Alongside Mach and Richard Avenarius, and Marxist and other socialist theorists, the Galileists engaged with the ideas of thinkers such as Spencer, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud.76 The keynote speakers were often home grown (e.g. Polanyi and Lukacs) or Austrian (Max Adler), but an imposing assortment of foreigners came too, including Bernstein, Roberto Michels, Wilhelm Ostwald and Werner Sombart. The greatest inspiration and support came from the poet Endre Ady, to whom Polanyi wrote a Letter in 1909 (p. 215) and at whose funeral he delivered an ‘Oration to the youth of the Galilei Circle’ (pp. 74–8). Ady identified with the Galilei students as fellow ‘outcasts’ and as the ‘concrete incarnation in Hungary of that which he discovered, prophesied and loved’. The Bohemian poet, Polanyi was later to reflect, ‘was the only renowned leader of “bourgeois radicalism” to regularly connect with the Galilei Circle, which he would visit each year, solemnly, as if it were a spiritual necessity’.77

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Subsequent to his work for the Galilei Circle, Polanyi moved into the explicitly political realm. He did not see this as his natural habitat. He had no ‘talent’ or ‘interest’ in politics, he once wrote – not without a soupçon of hyperbole – and had ‘never been a politician’.78 Yet in the early 1910s he engaged intensively in the political sphere, producing strategic discussion papers for, and participating in the creation of, a political party. Variously translated as ‘National Citizens Radical Party’ and ‘Radical Bourgeois Party’, for Polanyi the operative term was ‘radical’. In the meaning he gives it, for example in ‘Believing and unbelieving politics’ (pp. 99–107), radicalism expresses a politics of ‘belief ’, of following one’s ideals to their conclusion, in contrast to Marxism (which in Polanyi’s interpretation posits reality as a merely objective process) and to traditional liberalism, a current that had forsaken its idealistic past. He was dismayed that Hungarian liberals, in shameful contrast to their rebellious forebears of 1848, were pusillanimous in the face of clerical conservatism. Why had liberalism lost its vitality, he wondered; why had it foresworn all revolutionary initiative and become a reactionary movement? The answer lay not in material developments – such as the ascendancy of liberalism’s chosen economic system, capitalism, or the threat to private property in the means of production posed by the rise of organised labour – but, he spelled out in his ‘Speech on the meaning of conviction’ (pp.  55–9), in a ‘disastrous idea’ that had gripped the social sciences and radical politics alike. This novel view, he elaborated in ‘A lesson learned’ (pp.  60–3), was ‘political fatalism’, the blind belief in continuous progress, with the relegation of political action to a mere hand servant. Infected with this spirit, liberalism had abandoned any serious fight against the rule of the large landowners and the Church, and although social democracy had at least taken up the campaign to extend the franchise, it too found itself weighed down by immobilising, fatalistic doctrines, suffered from ‘anti-intellectualism’, and had ‘isolated itself from the instinctive revolutionary spirit of the intellectual ­proletariat’.79 By what means could radical Hungary be shaken from its torpor? What was required in order to re-kindle the spirit of 1848? On the intellectual stage the task was clear: to combat fatalism. But what of politics? Here, matters were more complex, and to grasp Polanyi’s views and strategic proposals it is necessary to first comprehend his class analysis of the contemporary Hungarian scene. In his assessment, the Hungarian state, even though it had presided over rapid ­industrialisation and a burgeoning and confident bourgeoisie, remained dominated by landowning interests and the Church and was therefore fundamentally a feudal institution. The upper bourgeoisie was represented by the powerful Liberal Party, and the rapidly expanding manual-industrial working class by the Social Democratic Party, but in the intervening space, he argued in ‘The programme and goals of radicalism’ (pp. 181–90), ‘Radical Party and bourgeois

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party’ (pp. 191–6) and ‘Manual and intellectual labour’ (pp. 197–203), a ‘new middle class’ had come into being, encompassing white collar workers, private and public officials and the intelligentsia (including, inter alia, priests, actors and academics). In this, Polanyi was adopting a theory that had been elaborated in the 1890s by the German Historical Schoolmen Gustav Schmoller, Gerhard von Schultze-Gävernitz and Sombart, and popularised by Bernstein. Polanyi’s analysis, grouping as it does blue- and white-collar workers together with the upper-middle-class practitioners of ‘mental labour’ as a single stratum, is obfuscatory, and no less confusing is his use of diverse, even contradictory, labels to refer to it, including ‘intelligentsia’, ‘intellectual class’, ‘intellectual workers’ and ‘bourgeois’. Be that as it may, the inferences he drew were clear: that the two ‘classes’, although inextricably united in their destiny, were innately different in nature, the manual worker being ‘necessarily materialist’ and concerned above all with economic matters ‘while the intellectual worker is necessarily idealist’. This difference in character and outlook necessitated their separate organisation into bourgeois radical and social democratic parties. In a raft of articles and speeches in the run-up to the Great War, Polanyi advocated a loose but meaningful association between social democracy and bourgeois radicalism, based upon a division of labour with regard to constituency – on one hand, the working class; on the other, radical elements of the bourgeoisie and intelligentsia, together with minority nationalities and the peasantry – and with regard to long-term goals. ‘Bourgeois politics and the struggle against feudalism,’ he asserted in ‘Bourgeois radicals, socialists and the established opposition’ (pp. 174–80), would be carried out by the radicals, ‘while the socialists will represent the labour movement and the struggle against capitalism’. The area of common ground would consist of the immediate goals towards which the practical activities of the two parties would be oriented: the overthrow of feudalism and clericalism and the expansion of the franchise. In conclusion, he asserted, the radical intelligentsia should assume hegemony over the progressive camp, including the working class. This strategy, Polanyi believed, held out tremendous promise for a progressive Hungary. The formation of an intellectual middle-class party that was prepared to ‘besiege the fortress of feudalism out of bourgeois interests and with bourgeois forces’ would arouse the latter from their stupor and hoist the bourgeoisie back on to its emancipatory track. It would at last create a platform within parliament that would be able to provide serious and genuine opposition to the rule of the landowners and the Church, in the process ensuring that the axis of public life would swivel such that ‘the struggle between forces of progress and reaction’ would henceforth take centre stage. For the labour movement organisations, too, the creation of a Radical Party could not but be beneficial, for in place of well-meaning intellectual advisors they would gain a strong middle-

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class ally – to the support of which they should, Polanyi advised in ‘Radical bourgeois politics’ (pp. 169–70), pledge their unconditional a­ llegiance. Polanyi’s strategic thinking was developed in close conference with Jaszi, who appointed him deputy leader of the Radical Bourgeois Party in 1914.80 The core points of its programme were the extension of the franchise, land redistribution, free trade, education reform and federalisation. The last of these, aimed at assuaging the demands for autonomy of the minority nationalities while maintaining the borders of Greater Hungary, was seen by conservatives and anti-Semites as a cosmopolitan plot to undermine ‘Magyardom’, yet if the radicals’ nationalities policy deserves criticism it is, on the contrary, for being insufficiently appreciative of the oppressions inflicted upon the minority nations. Of the two chief arguments that Polanyi deployed in justification of the case for federalism, one was that in its absence the nationalities would be tempted to ally themselves with absolutism against democracy in order to block the formation of a Magyar-dominated state, but the other, although avowedly democratic in inspiration, was brazenly, even arrogantly, nationalistic: an argument from Magyar cultural supremacy, as laid out in ‘Magyar hegemony and the nationalities’ (pp. 171–3). This was an outlook typical of the bourgeois Jewish milieu of the pre-war Habsburg Empire. Although in many respects oppressed and excluded, their trajectory appeared to be towards rapid and successful integration into Hungarian civil society. As such, they found it difficult to comprehend the discrepancy between their aspirations and those of newly mobilising national minorities. The Radical Bourgeois Party did not live up to Polanyi’s hopes. Clearly, the date of its foundation – June 1914 – was inauspicious. But there were deeper reasons too. Although programmatically committed to an alliance with the peasantry and minority nationalities, in practice it was unable to reach beyond its core constituency in the left-liberal intelligentsia. Quite simply, according to Jaszi, it ‘was of too intellectual a type’ to gain mass support.81 In Gluck’s harsher judgement, Jaszi, Polanyi and their colleagues were the epitome of ‘a fastidious intellectual elite who were, on occasion, glad to give lectures for the edification of working-class audiences; were more than ready to theorise about the ­‘proletariat’ as an abstraction’ while remaining essentially ignorant of, and indifferent towards, the concrete, individual manifestations of working-class and peasant life.82 The moment for the radicals to attempt to break out of their niche did arrive, in autumn 1918, in an uprising known as the Chrysanthemum Revolution. Its genesis can be traced to December 1917, when workers’ councils were established in factories and a network of them swiftly spread – with vigorous support from a new generation of Galileists.83 The first half of 1918 witnessed a general strike, scores of wildcat strikes and revolts in the barracks.84 Amid worsening

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social conditions and with defeat in war looming, the political mood, as elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, swung abruptly towards republicanism, social democracy and communism. Jaszi’s memoirs captured the Zeitgeist vividly: The spirit of revolution had penetrated into every sphere of human relations in the course of September and October. Men lost all interest in everyday affairs and were looking fixedly into the future. … An electrician’s apprentice, come to repair the wires, prophesied that we were on the threshold of revolution and appalling events. The maid bringing in the soup told us that she had it from her relatives in the country that the old world would last very little longer now. The young men [sic!] of the Galileo Club pursued their anti-militarist propaganda almost openly, and the imprisonment of a few of them only increased their revolutionary enthusiasm. Soldiers and even officers spoke aloud in public of the collapse of the front. In the tram one heard passionate outbursts against the war, the authorities and the propertied classes.85

In the early autumn, the social democrats joined forces with the Radical Bourgeois Party and Count Michael Károlyi to form the Hungarian National Council (HNC). In October, Károlyi, whose aim was a peaceful and orderly transition to liberal democracy, warned the parliament in Budapest and the Emperor in Vienna that Hungary faced the choice between an HNC-led government and Bolshevism. When neither legislators nor monarch responded to the threat, the social democrats, by far the strongest component of the HNC, sought to entrench their bargaining position by appealing to the workers and soldiers to act. The response exceeded their expectations, and took them utterly by surprise: a wave of street demonstrations, strikes and mutinies hoisted them into power.86 In its initial phase the Chrysanthemum Revolution was characterised by the spirit of unity that typifies the first stages of revolutions in which the working and middling layers of society band together against an autocratic regime. Jaszi’s memoirs record his elation at the concord between classes and between nationalities that prevailed during those spirited days.87 I have little doubt that Polanyi felt the same, and he, like Jaszi, also drew attention to the critical role played by Galileists. He awards the plaudits for the revolt’s success first and foremost to ‘the leaders whose foresight and courage made it possible for a new democratic Hungary to rally round their persons’ and, secondly, to ‘the revolutionary discipline of the Hungarian masses’.88 In ‘The Galilei Circle: a balance sheet’ (pp.  204–8), he credits the ‘fervour and the integrity of the revolution’ and its ‘unblemished brilliance’ to the ‘students’ movement “Galilei”’, which had raised a generation selflessly devoted to ‘the rights and the truth of others’. Nevertheless, the Chrysanthemum episode did not fulfil Polanyi’s expectations, let alone his hopes. If the HNC government experienced a honeymoon period it was not to last for more than a few weeks and its demise was predictable, with Károlyi widely seen as playing Kerensky’s role in Hungary’s faltering recapitulation of

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the Russian revolution.89 Its first step was to autonomously sign an armistice with the Allies, breaking from Vienna in the process, but it immediately found itself in troubled waters. Although committed to gradual reforms within a liberal framework, it had been hoisted to power by mass movements that were pressing for wholesale changes that pointed beyond the limits of parliamentarydemocratic capitalism. In Budapest a potential rival power had arisen in the form of the soldiers’ and workers’ councils. In the countryside, peasants agitated for land redistribution. On the perimeter, national minorities were moving to secede. The initial euphoria notwithstanding, the unity for which Polanyi yearned was hardly to be realised under Károlyi’s provisional government. Instead, social polarisation ensued. On one side, the old ruling classes mobilised against the incoming government. (‘As there had been scarcely any social welfare in the past’, Károlyi’s wife, Catherine, recalls in her memoirs, even the mildest measures ‘could irritate and alarm the ruling classes’.)90 On the other, movements of workers and peasants, their political confidence raised by their central part in the Chrysanthemum Revolution, pressed for further demands: land redistribution, improvements to pay and conditions and socialist economic policies. According to Károlyi, his government did its level best to dampen the demands of the ‘popular classes’ while displaying the utmost magnanimity to the bishops, counts, princes and bank directors. ‘We were’, he reflected with the benefit of hindsight, ‘bitterly to regret this generous attitude’.91 On the whole, Polanyi regarded the HNC government as his own, but he lamented its lack of a ‘clear and feasible political programme’ (a fault for which, as explained in ‘The Galilei Circle: a balance sheet’ (pp. 204–8), he blamed himself, for having neglected to use the Circle to cultivate a revolutionary intelligentsia skilled in the arts of political campaigning and administration). Of the government he demanded ‘more determination … against every breath of the counter-revolution’, the acceleration ‘of the economic construction of socialism’, a retreat from its protectionist economic policies, and an end to its ‘chauvinist attitude in the nationalities question’.92 He supported the HNC in its rivalry with the communists, but in December he initiated a debate on Bolshevism in his journal Szabadgondolat and, at his request, the first to air their views, alongside Jaszi, were the communist Eugene Varga, and Georg Lukacs, who was at the time moving rapidly into the communist camp. His own contributions to the unfolding debate, including ‘The test of socialism’ (pp. 86–91), were astringently critical of Bolshevism, and yet did credit it with being ‘the only serious representative of socialism’. Despite the widespread goodwill that Károlyi’s government had earned by signing the armistice and extending the franchise, few constituencies felt that their demands were being met. Land reform proceeded in dilatory fashion:

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the government divided up a mere handful of large estates, including Károlyi’s own, as compared to scores that were occupied ‘from below’. Citing ‘the general lack of energy of the government and its indifference to the progress of the revolution’, Jaszi resigned his cabinet position in January.93 In February, liberal values were thrown overboard when, following an unsuccessful attempt to expel communists from the trade unions and workers’ councils, the cabinet authorised the rounding up and imprisonment of leaders and cadre of the fledgling CP and banned its newspaper. Polanyi had little sympathy for communism, and spelt out his objections in numerous articles, such as ‘Law and violence’ (pp. 92–4), but the incarceration of the CP’s leading members, he observed in a companion article, ‘Civil war’ (pp. 95–8), was causing people who were otherwise unsympathetic to its cause to suspect that there may be truth and justice in its views. By March 1919, Károlyi’s government found itself under attack from CzechSlovak, Serb and Romanian armies, and was ordered by the French government to withdraw its forces to the borders drawn up by the victorious powers at Versailles. Although Károlyi had supported the Wilsonian peace, the Allies confronted his government with punitive demands, to which it could not realistically accede without first crushing domestic opposition: an impossible task. Mass movements were gaining in strength, with peasants seizing land, workers taking industrial action in support of the imprisoned communists, and a soviet assuming control of the southern provincial capital of Szeged. As Bernstein observed, the government faced a choice between instigating a bloodbath against the ‘tempestuous unrest’ of the left-turning masses or relinquishing power.94 Furthermore, ‘the hold of Bolshevism was greatly strengthened’, reported Jaszi, ‘by the growth throughout the country of counter-revolutionary movements’, a development for which he held the Károlyi government responsible, for it had permitted the chief conspirators among the whites ‘to continue their work undisturbed’.95 In view of the palpable reality of counter-revolutionary movements, which the HNC government failed to confront, ‘revolutionary Hungary stood in fear and trembling; it was generally felt that [the Károlyi] government was no longer able to save the October Revolution; and if a choice had to be made between White and Red … the Red was preferred’.96 With his authority crumbling, Károlyi resigned and handed the reins to the social democrats. Yet they too were in disarray, their support leaching rapidly to the communists, especially among what Jaszi referred to as ‘the great masses of the rag, tag and bobtail’ – peasants, soldiers and workers.97 According to Bernstein, ‘the sympathies not only of the mass of the proletariat but also of substantial segments of the bourgeoisie, including the bourgeois intelligentsia, veered temporarily to the communists’.98 Whole sections of the Social Democratic Party, including its Youth League, went over, and of those that remained,

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an important segment sought rapprochement with – or, more accurately, co-optation of – the CP. In this manoeuvre, international considerations played a decisive role, given the belief in the SDP’s leading ranks that before long the Russian Red Army would break through Romanian lines and reach Hungary’s eastern borders. ‘We must take … from the East what has been denied to us by the West’, declared one SDP leader, in explanation of his party’s ‘left’ turn. The army of the Russian proletariat is approaching rapidly. A bourgeois government … will not be able to cope with these new developments. … the Communist comrades immediately must be released from prison and tomorrow … we shall announce to the entire world that the proletariat of this country has taken the guidance of Hungary and at the same time offered its fraternal alliance to the Soviet Russian government.99

This was an act of desperation, and its effectiveness would depend upon ‘the stupidity, inexperience, and gullibility of the Communist Party leadership’. Yet these were, as John Rees remarks, ‘qualities that Béla Kun and his comrades possessed in abundance’.100 By agreeing to the fusion, and against advice from Moscow, the communists entered government. Although both the new government and Communist Party were led by Kun, his comrades took a minority of the senior positions in both institutions. Kun’s Councils’ Republic implemented innovative policies, especially in the cultural and educational fields.101 It planted in the minds of the mass of the population, according to Jaszi, ‘perhaps the first seeds of faith and hope of liberation’, and ‘shook out of their age-long apathy the unhappy helots of Hungarian society, the agricultural workers’. It was thanks to the Republic, he added, that there lives in the hearts of millions the sense of the rights of the workers and of their superiority to the drones and idlers. … No less important was the service of the Soviet Republic to the idea of internationalism, made vivid and real in the minds of the people by the memory of hard and bloody conflicts.102

A portion of its popularity, in addition, related to the Entente’s intention of reducing Hungary’s territory, with nationalists of all political colours praying that the new regime would imbibe something of Soviet Russia’s spirit in rejecting the impositions of the Great Powers. However, the conditions that the Councils’ Republic faced, including economic collapse, food shortages and ongoing military attacks, were as inclement as those endured by the Bolshevik-led government in Russia, and Hungary’s communists were far less experienced than their Muscovite mentors. In agricultural policy, as Jaszi describes, whereas ‘Lenin recognised, with statesmanlike intuition’, that in a predominantly agricultural country ‘it is out of the question to make a revolution against the will of the peasantry’, such that wholesale land redistribution is unavoidable, his Hungarian comrades sought to press ahead full throttle with collectivisation.103 Equally problematic was their

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policy of rapid industrial nationalisation. Already in mid-April, one Councils’ Republic functionary could crow that ‘we have succeeded within four weeks in socialising more than 1,000 concerns, while the Russians socialised no more than 513 in a whole year’.104 Revolutionary bravado was inversely related to revolutionary legitimacy. Whereas the Bolsheviks had existed since 1903 and had gained a clear majority in the workers’ and soldiers’ councils in 1917, Hungary’s CP had not yet celebrated its first birthday and, although undoubtedly popular in the councils, it had come to power by sleight of hand: a baroque, bureaucratic manoeuvre, a choreographed wedding to a governing party. It was a marriage that Polanyi viewed with ambivalence. Although sharply critical of the new government, and also of the left social democrats for having abandoned Károlyi in favour of an alliance with Bolsheviks, he recognised that no alternative regime could have been installed, and accepted a minor official position.105 The Councils’ Republic was not to survive long. Domestically opposition grew, and support among the peasantry in particular evaporated.106 But the blows that brought it down were delivered by foreign hands. Even before it could celebrate its first month, it was invaded by Western-backed armies from Romania and Czechoslovakia. They pushed Hungary’s Red Army back almost as far as Budapest, where, in a remarkable turnaround, it was reorganised, received an infusion of energy from the working-class neighbourhoods, and marched out once again, recapturing lost ground and pushing deep into Slovakia, where a ‘soviet republic’ was proclaimed.107 In July, Hungarian forces began an offensive into Romania across the Tisza River, hoping to connect with Soviet forces in Ukraine. But, under pressure from Paris to comply with the terms of Versailles, and facing counter-attacks from Romanian forces, they retreated and, after only nineteen weeks in office, Kun’s government resigned.108 Power passed to the social democrats, only to be swiftly usurped by Romanian generals. They, and their French-backed successor, the dictatorship of Miklós Horthy, instituted a reign of terror in which thousands lost their lives – above all communists, socialists and Jews. Fortunately for the Jewish socialist Karl Polanyi, he had by then reached the safety of Vienna.

From exile to exile Budapest’s radical counter-culture appeared close to achieving its dreams during the revolutionary tumult of 1918–19, but as it subsided, the counter-culture was rapidly dispersed. Some of its adherents remained in Horthy’s Hungary while others, including Jaszi, Lukacs and Polanyi, departed. In exile, Jaszi’s political outlook solidified into an orthodox, and zealously anti-Marxist, liberalism. Lukacs, having committed to Bolshevism in 1918, produced ground-breaking political philosophy in Vienna, and later sidled towards a reformist variant of

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orthodox communism. Polanyi, his worldview shaped by the broadly congruent dichotomies of ‘father and mother’, ‘Britain and Russia’, populist socialism and rationalist liberalism, resisted identifying himself with either communism, liberalism or mainstream social democracy but groped instead for a ‘third way’ – a social arrangement in which democracy could be extended into the workplace without necessitating the complete abolition of markets. Whether or not that project was feasible, it provided the core problematique and the impetus behind those creative inquiries into economic history and anthropology that were to establish his reputation in the latter half of the twentieth century. It was in Vienna that this research programme began to assume its recognisable contours. Polanyi lived in Vienna from 1919 to 1933, and for the first few years in particular he retained close connections with the Hungarian exile community. From 1921 to 1923 he worked for the Bécsi Magyar Újság (BMÚ), the foremost publishing organ of Hungarian émigrés and exiles, edited by Jaszi. Its scope was global but its most dedicated task was to monitor Horthy’s reign of terror in Hungary – a regime that it described, already in 1922, as ‘Magyar fascizmus’.109 A sample of Polanyi’s BMÚ pieces are compiled in this volume. In previous years he had published sporadically on matters of international political economy and international relations, e.g. ‘The clowns of world peace’ (pp. 129–37), but as a professional journalist these now became his staple topics, as for example his BMÚ essays ‘The question of war and peace in Geneva’ (pp. 143–5) and ‘Uncle Polly’ (pp. 146–8). But his brief for the BMÚ was broader than political economy. He reported on an imposing range of subject areas, from the Irish civil war to Iraq’s oil industry, from Gandhi to the rise of multinational corporations, and from prison reform to the historical meaning of Christianity, ‘The resurrection of Jesus’ (pp. 78–80).110 In addition, he filed regular reports on the political affairs of an array of European countries, particularly Germany, Britain and its empire, e.g. ‘Whites, blacks and browns’ (pp. 161–2), and Russia, e.g. ‘The historical background of the social revolutionaries (pp. 123–6), as well as numerous book reviews, typically on either economic affairs or socialist goals and strategy, e.g. ‘Karl Kautsky and democracy’ (pp. 114–17). However, probably of greatest interest to readers today is his series of reviews and articles – among which ‘New era’ (pp. 138–40), ‘Titanic journalism’ (pp. 151–4) and ‘The rebirth of democracy’ (pp. 149–50) stand out – in which he sketched his diagnosis of the spiritual-political crisis of the post-war conjuncture. In this enterprise Polanyi was particularly influenced by the thought of H. G. Wells. He had long venerated the Fabian novelist, as can be seen in ‘H.  G.  Wells, the socialist’ (pp. 111–13),111 and was acutely impressed by his The Salvaging of Civilization, which he reviewed for the BMÚ. Modern civilisation, Wells argued, had produced a plenitude of scientific knowledge and this had

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immensely expanded ‘the physical range of human activities’, yet there had been no commensurate ‘adjustment of men’s political ideas to the new conditions’.112 In consequence, society lacked cohesion and resilience.113 In ‘H. G. Wells on salvaging civilisation’ (pp. 155–8), Polanyi highlighted Wells’ anxiety over the challenges that faced his generation, and his proposition that humanity’s technological powers were outpacing the progress of its moral faculties. But in explaining the root cause of the crisis he placed greater emphasis than his Fabian hero upon the rise of market society. Market prices, he argued in ‘Titanic journalism’ (pp. 151–4), had come to ‘rule everything, but nobody ruled them’. In essays such as this, one can witness the first threads of Polanyi’s masterwork, The Great Transformation, being spun. In his BMÚ journalism, Polanyi not only elaborated his diagnosis of the post-war civilisational crisis – which he had first adumbrated in ‘The calling of our generation’ (pp. 64–73) – but also sketched out his prescription. For some years he had identified with guild socialism, and he now introduced it to the Hungarian émigré community by way of BMÚ articles, notably ‘Guild socialism’ (pp. 118–20) and ‘Guild and state’ (pp. 121–2). Guild socialism was the product of an unlikely coalescence of a Fabian faith in parliamentary democracy, syndicalist workers’ self-government and romantic anti-capitalism – a trinity which, if transposed on to the Hungarian counter-culture, maps precisely to Jaszi, Szabó and Lukacs. Initiated during the Great Unrest, it was sometimes referred to as ‘English syndicalism’, where ‘English’ connoted an opposition to abrupt change and a saturation in the culture of liberalism. As its most eminent adherent, Bertrand Russell, put it, whereas the syndicalists accept, from Marx, the doctrine of class struggle and, from anarchism, the immediate abolition of political power, ‘the Guild Socialists, though some persons in this country regard them as extremists, really represent the English love of compromise’.114 For Polanyi, one may speculate, it represented a happy junction between ‘England’ and ‘Russia’, father and mother. Socialism, during Polanyi’s first years in Vienna, seemed to be on the march, and his political thought entered a period of change. In economics, he remained committed to the doctrine and policy of free trade. For example, in the BMÚ he published paeans to the tradition of Smith, Cobden and Bright (‘all that is good and valuable in British politics today is inherited from the free traders’) and impassioned pleas for pan-European tariff reductions – the means by which the continent’s ‘natural division of labour’ could and should be restored.115 At the same time, as noted above, his thoughts on the market economy were becoming more critical.116 He reappraised his commitments of the previous decades, developing a critique of the Galilei Circle for its apolitical intellectualism and of the Radical Bourgeois Party for its failure to reach out to the masses. He tirelessly propagated the guild socialist case, and in his social thought he warmed to soci-

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ology, and even to Marxism. His arrival in Vienna had seen his antipathy to Marxism reach its acme, but he had simultaneously become impatient with the individualistic moralism that had captivated him for some years, the voluntaristic, Tolstoyan advocacy of a moral path through the strait gate to salvation. This outlook, he now argued, failed to properly appreciate the interdependence of individual and society – in his phrase, ‘the reality of society’.117 In the course of this intellectual transformation he attempted to reconcile an ‘idealist’ commitment to action with a recognition of the determining function of social structures – but with little success, either at the level of practical activity or theoretical ­reflection. He would periodically reiterate his lifelong commitment to ‘energetic intervention’ in the political process, but, unlike Ilona, he remained largely aloof from social movement activity, and when events in the mid-1920s afforded Austria’s Social Democratic Workers’ Party the opportunity of ‘energetic intervention’ he did not join his Marxist wife in agitating for it so to do. After the radical upsurge of the early 1920s had begun to subside, Polanyi paid greater critical attention to movements of the political right. In ‘The defenders of race in Berlin’ (pp. 159–60) he scrutinised the early stirrings of European fascism, and in 1927, at the beginning of the authoritarian episode that was shortly to consume Austria, his letter to the editor of A Láthatár (pp.  219–20) conveys a tremor of anxiety at the ‘concrete reality’ of fascism. As the decade reached its close, public life came to be punctuated by paroxysms of anti-Semitism. In 1931 the fascist Heimwehr attempted a ‘march on Vienna’, and a year later Austria’s Nazi Party achieved its electoral breakthrough. For Polanyi, as a socialist working for a left-leaning newspaper, the pressure to leave Austria grew intense. In early 1933 he departed for his next station of exile: London.

‘Re-conquered for Hungary’ During his stay in Britain, Polanyi’s engagement with the Hungarian exile community was limited, but in the latter years of the war, after returning from a spell of research in the USA during which he completed The Great Transformation, he renewed his connections to Hungary’s anti-fascist opposition in London, in particular to Károlyi’s New Democratic Hungary Movement. Its goals were to promote the war effort, to support the fight for Hungary’s liberation from fascist rule and to prepare for its post-war democratic future, with Károlyi as presumptive president. The Hungarian exile community in Britain was far from homogeneous. This was the case within the anti-fascist camp, broadly defined, but also within the smaller bounds of Károlyi’s movement. There were political variances, particularly over attitudes to Soviet communism, divisions along class lines and differences in outlook between ‘old’ immigrants and more recent arrivals. In the US,

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similar cleavages were found. Károlyi’s organisation stateside, the American Federation of Democratic Hungarians (AFDH), was led by some of his earliest US-based supporters – including Jaszi. But in 1943 it split, with the formation of a pro-communist breakaway, the Hungarian-American Democratic Council (HADC). Polanyi did not involve himself in the fracas, but he did make it clear, in a letter to Károlyi of 6 December 1944 (p. 220), that his sympathies essentially lay with Jaszi. In Britain, provisional unity among the various anti-Horthy movements was achieved in the form of a Hungarian Council headed by Károlyi, yet beneath the surface, fractures parallel to those in the US were pervasive. Polanyi maintained, for example in his letter to Jaszi of 15 May 1946 (pp. 224–5), that the Council should take care not to become an ‘appendage of the communists’, and yet, unlike his former mentor, he had become broadly sympathetic to communism. The Council’s internal politics were complicated additionally by the communist movement’s nationalist lurch, which saw communists allying informally with conservative nationalists who were profoundly suspicious of Károlyi’s project in general and of his social democrat supporters in particular – the very constituency that Polanyi was keen to encourage. This, he recalled in the same letter, threatened to make ‘left-wing cooperation impossible’. The most constructive role for his own person, Polanyi believed, would be to provide Károlyi’s movement with in-depth political analysis aimed at facilitating rapprochement among communists, social democrats and anti-Horthy liberals. Given that the latter two constituencies’ suspicions of communism represented an egregious sticking point, the thrust of his written output was oriented to rehabilitating Soviet Russia. In 1945, he held out hope for a worldwide socialist transformation that would include Hungary, under Soviet aegis, and Britain, as indicated in his ‘The emergence of the Crossman opposition’ (pp. 163–6). It was at this moment in the relationship between Károlyi and Polanyi that the Soviet question began seriously to itch. The background was the Soviet Army’s advance towards Hungary and the formation in the Soviet-occupied East of a provisional government – sans Károlyi. In response to the snub, the Count’s attitude to the Soviets cooled, as did his determination to take an active part in Hungarian politics. In discussions at Károlyi’s Hampstead residence, Polanyi, as he recounted in his letter to Károlyi of 15 April 1946 (pp. 220–4), charged his friend with vacillation and a political abstentionism which, although the consequence of a ‘passionate, unbreakable fidelity to his principles’ that may have been admirable in the abstract, prevented effective intervention in the real world. He urged Károlyi that if he were to demonstrate clear support for the Soviet-backed administration in Budapest, this would in the medium term facilitate the formation of a popular left-wing regime, helping to consolidate progressive politics throughout the region.

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Through 1945 and 1946, Polanyi followed Károlyi’s trajectory with concern. This was not, he thought, an appropriate moment to confront the Soviet military administration and the Communist Party. The Russians had ­liberated Hungary, and the communists’ publications, he was pleased to relate to his friend Endre Havas in a letter of 25 October 1946 (pp. 226–7), revealed ‘greater progress with regard to the reception of healthy ideas from the West’ than Westerners managed ‘towards an understanding and fruitful application of the healthy ideas of Marxism’. He attempted to convince Károlyi to defend the regime, but in vain. Before long, Károlyi’s fears concerning Soviet rule in Hungary were confirmed, and the Count retired from the fray. For the next decade, Polanyi had relatively little to do with Hungary, but that changed with the 1956 revolution – which he hailed, in a letter to Istvan Meszaros of 24 April 1961 (pp. 237–8), as one of the ‘most pure’ in world history. He took a very close interest in it, and penned a number of essays, notably ‘Concealed foreign rule and socialist economics’ (pp. 209–10), that sought to explain its origins. Essentially, the problem lay in Moscow’s suzerainty over Hungary, for independence, in Polanyi’s understanding, is indispensable to a functioning socialist society, and where it was lacking, the ‘strains’ within the socialist system would only multiply.118 However, he was careful to distinguish his interpretation from that which held the rising to have been liberal-nationalist, fought under the colours of 1848. What that perspective missed was that at the heart of the movement lay an alliance between, even a fusion of, anti-Stalinist revisionists and Hungarian populists. The 1956 revolt was cruelly crushed. Yet it had, Polanyi believed, illuminated the constituency from which a progressive Hungary would arise, namely, ‘the Populists’ linkage with the now persecuted Party-reformers’.119 Moreover, he hoped, the thousands of intellectuals who fled to the West in its aftermath would bring populist-revisionist ideas with them, to the benefit of the exile community. In this, he was to be sorely disappointed. Hungarian expatriate journals, he complained in a letter to the editors of one of them, Új Látóhatár, 24 April 1961 (pp. 236–7), came to act exclusively on behalf of ‘American interests and ends’. However, in Hungary itself, the uprising had indeed excited revisionist thinking, about which Polanyi was always eager to hear more – as for example in his letters to György Heltai of 1960 (pp. 231–2) and to Lukacs of 25 January 1964 (p.  239). He set out to amplify the voice of Hungarian revisionism and populism in the West, by editing, jointly with Ilona, an anthology of Hungarian poetry, The Plough and the Pen. For purposes of political enlightenment, poetry seemed a peculiarly appropriate medium. A poet, Sándor Petőfi, had been the torchbearer of Hungary’s liberal revolution in the nineteenth century – and it was one of his poems that Polanyi had read forth at his school-leaving c­ elebration decades earlier. For his own ‘reform generation’, Ady had played a similar role.

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Contemporaneously with the preparation of The Plough and the Pen, Polanyi devoted himself to a new project, the journal Co-Existence. It was a venture that required considerable application and diplomacy, as can be seen in Polanyi’s letters to Meszaros of 1961 (pp. 232–8) and to Lukacs of 27 May 1963 (pp.  238–9). He and Ilona contacted friends and acquaintances, seeking help with the journal. Alongside Polanyi himself, the active core of the ­editorial board was envisaged as Joan Robinson, Thomas Hodgkin and Rudolf Schlesinger. Robinson was an economist of the Kalecki-Keynesian stripe; Hodgkin and Schlesinger were former communists. Schlesinger was close to Ilona but not to her husband,120 and his appointment to the position of editorin-chief owed much to her. Other thinkers who were slated to write for the journal included the socialist sinologist Joseph Needham, and the dissident Marxist Ernst Bloch.121 The goals of Co-Existence were threefold: to challenge cold-war propaganda, give a voice to neutralist and socialist values, and work towards the reconciliation of the Western and Soviet spheres. Given the fusion of influences – from paternal West and maternal Russia – that had formed Karl Polanyi’s intellectual and political psyche, it was an appropriate valedictory project.

Notes 1 SPSL-536-1, Karl Polanyi (1934) to Walter Adams, 31 March. 2 Part of this introductory essay draws upon Gareth Dale, ‘Karl Polanyi in Budapest: on his political and intellectual formation’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 50.1 (2009). 3 Ilona Duczynska, ‘I first met Karl Polanyi in 1920…’, in Kenneth McRobbie and Kari Polanyi-Levitt (eds), Karl Polanyi in Vienna: The Contemporary Significance of the Great Transformation (Black Rose Books, 2000), 303–7. 4 SPSL-536-1, Karl Polanyi to Zoe Fairfield (24 March 1934). 5 Duczynska, ‘I first met Karl Polanyi’, 303; Judith Szapor, The Hungarian Pocahontas: The Life and Times of Laura Polanyi Stricker, 1882–1959 (East European Monographs, 2005), 15. 6 Kari Polanyi-Levitt, telephone interview, 8 November 2007. 7 SPSL-536-1, Karl Polanyi to Zoe Fairfield (24 March 1934). 8 Quoted in David Rechter, The Jews of Vienna and the First World War (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001), 26. 9 Derek Sayer, Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History (Princeton University Press, 2013), 123. 10 Andrew Janos, ‘The decline of the oligarchy: bureaucratic and mass politics in the Age of Dualism, 1867–1918’, in Andrew Janos and William Slottman (eds), Revolution in Perspective: Essays on the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 (University of California Press, 1971), 35; Andrew Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 1825–1945 (Princeton University Press, 1982), 176. 11 Janos, Politics of Backwardness, 180–1. 12 Szapor, Hungarian Pocahontas, 17.

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13 Endre Nagy, ‘After brotherhood’s Golden Age: Karl and Michael Polanyi’, in Kenneth McRobbie (ed.), Humanity, Society and Commitment: On Karl Polanyi (Black Rose Books, 1994), 39. 14 György Enyedi and Viktória Szirmai, Budapest: A Central European Capital (Belhaven Press, 1992), 67. 15 Janos, ‘Decline of the oligarchy’, 36–8. 16 Ibid., 36. 17 Janos, Politics of Backwardness, 181. 18 Gabriel Piterberg, The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel (Verso, 2008). 19 Isaac Deutscher, The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays (Oxford University Press, 1968), 27. 20 Quoted in Janos, Politics of Backwardness, 181. 21 SPSL-536-1, Karl Polanyi to Zoe Fairfield (24 March 1934). 22 KPA-18-29, Karl Polanyi, ‘Count Michael Károlyi’, The Slavonic and East European Review, 24.63 (1946): 94. 23 Kari Polanyi-Levitt, telephone interview, November 2007. 24 Kari Polanyi-Levitt, telephone interview, December 2008. 25 To those who were insensitive to nuance, this could appear to ‘stretch almost to antiSemitism’. Kari Polanyi-Levitt, telephone interview, November 2008. 26 Even his dislike of garlic ‘was linked to his rejection of Jewish culture’. Kari Polanyi-Levitt, interview July 2006, and telephone interviews, November 2007 and December 2008. 27 Judith Szapor, ‘An outsider twice over: Cecile Wohl Pollacsek, salonist of fin-de-siècle Budapest’, in A. Pető Szapor, M. Hametz and M. Calloni (eds), Jewish Intellectual Women in Central Europe, 1860–2000: Twelve Biographical Essays (Edwin Mellon, 2012), 37. 28 Helen Callaghan and Martin Höpner, ‘Changing ideas: organized capitalism and the German Left’, West European Politics, 35.3 (2012). 29 Rudolf Hilferding, Finance Capital: A Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development (Routledge, 1981 [1910]). 30 SPSL-536-1, Karl Polanyi to Zoe Fairfield (24 March 1934). In this, his thesis resembles Jan Machajski’s The Intellectual Worker (1905), in which socialism is understood to be a movement of the intelligentsia as a class, one that will supervise a transition to state capitalism. 31 Norman Stone, Europe Transformed, 1878–1919 (Fontana, 1983). 32 Carl Schorske, Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980 [1961]), 117. 33 Janos, Politics of Backwardness, 129–31. 34 As a percentage of the workforce the equivalent figures were 14.8 and 16.7 per cent. See Dániel Szabó, ‘Wahlsystem und Gesellschaftsstruktur in den letzten beiden Jahrzehnten des Dualismus, 1896–1910’, Acta Historica, 35 (1989): 181–204. 35 KPA-18-29, Polanyi, ‘Count Michael Károlyi’, 96. 36 John Lukacs, Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and its Culture (Weidenfeld, 1993), 183. 37 Lukacs, Budapest 1900, 128. 38 KPA-1-43, Karl Polanyi, ‘The autonomy of science and the autonomy of the university’ [‘A tudomány autonomiája és az egyetem autonomiája’], Szabadgondolat, 9.4 (1919).

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39 Michael Löwy, Georg Lukacs: From Romanticism to Bolshevism (New Left Books, 1979),  73. 40 Stone, Europe Transformed, 43. 41 Stephen Spender, quoted in Mary Gluck, Georg Lukacs and his Generation, 1900–1918 (Harvard University Press, 1985), 7. 42 Gluck, Georg Lukacs, 7. 43 Robert Sayre and Michael Löwy, Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity (Duke University Press, 2001), 70–1. 44 Gluck, Georg Lukacs, 7. 45 Szapor, Hungarian Pocahontas, 2. 46 Joseph Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (Allen & Unwin, 1986), 884; Judith Szapor, ‘Laura Polanyi 1882–1957: narratives of a life’ (n.d.), www.kfki.hu/chemonet/ polanyi/9702/szapor.html (last accessed 2 November 2015). 47 Gluck, Georg Lukacs, 140. 48 Georg Lukacs, Record of a Life: An Autobiographical Sketch (Verso, 1983), 39–40. 49 Erzsébet Vezér, ‘An anniversary tribute’, in Kenneth McRobbie and Kari Polanyi-Levitt (eds), Karl Polanyi in Vienna: The Contemporary Significance of the Great Transformation (Black Rose Books, 2000), 283. 50 Löwy, Georg Lukacs, 82. 51 Ibid., 81 52 Ervin Szabó, Socialism and Social Science, edited by György Litván and János Bak (Routledge, 1982), 109. 53 Zoltán Horváth, Die Jahrhundertwende in Ungarn: Geschichte der zweiten Reformgeneration, 1896–1914 (Corvina Verlag, 1966), 498. 54 Karl Polanyi, ‘Revolution and ideology: notes on Ervin Szabó’s posthumous work’ [‘Forradalom és ideológia. Jegyzetek Szabó Ervin hátrahagyott müvéhez’], Bécsi Magyar Újság (18 September 1921); KPA-1-52, Karl Polanyi, ‘The possibilities of Russia’s new politics’ [Az új orosz politika esélyei’], Bécsi Magyar Újság (12 August 1921). 55 Tom Villis, Reaction and the Avant-Garde: The Revolt Against Liberal Demo­cracy in Early Twentieth-Century Britain (Tauris, 2006), 42. 56 Kari Polanyi-Levitt, telephone interview, 6 October 2007. 57 Lee Congdon, ‘The moralist as social thinker: Oszkár Jaszi in Hungary, 1900–1919’, in Walter Laqueur and George Mosse (eds), Historians in Politics (Sage, 1974), 304–5. 58 Horváth, Jahrhundertwende, 293. 59 György Litván, A Twentieth-Century Prophet: Oscar Jaszi, 1875-1957 (Central European University Press, 2006), 164. 60 Cecile Polanyi would chide him, he himself recalled, for his ‘narrow, Spencerian, English positivism’, recommending that he ‘balance it with Nietzsche’s brilliance’. Arpad Kadarkay, Georg Lukacs: Life, Thought and Politics (Blackwell, 1991), 89. 61 David Kettler, Volker Meja and Nico Stehr, Karl Mannheim (Tavistock Publications, 1984), 20; Horváth, Jahrhundertwende, 135. 62 Gluck, Georg Lukacs, 104. 63 Schumpeter, Economic Analysis, 883. 64 The resemblance of the latter claim to arguments in Polanyi’s Great Transformation may not be accidental. 65 Bernstein, as explicated by Carl Schorske, German Social Democracy, 1905–1917: The

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Development of the Great Schism (Harvard University Press, 1983 [1955]),  18. 66 Litván, Oscar Jászi, 72. Polanyi was not personally acquainted with Loria or Dühring, but he did write – from his hospital bed in 1917 – to Oppenheimer, with questions concerning his book on ‘cooperative settlements’ [­ Siedlungsgenossenschaften]. MPP-17-2, Karl Polanyi to Misi (19 January 1920). 67 KPA-4-9, Karl Polanyi, Notes on readings (early 1920s). 68 KPA-2-9, Karl Polanyi, ‘Worauf es heute ankommt. Eine Erwiderung’ (1919). See also Franz Oppenheimer, Theorie der reinen und politischen Ökonomie; Ein Lehr- und Lesebuch für Studierende und Gebildete (Georg Reimer, 1910),  99. 69 KPA-37-8, Karl Polanyi, ‘The Galilei Circle fifty years on’ [‘A Galilei Kör otven év távlatából’] (1958). 70 KPA-29-12, Ilona Duczynska, ‘Karl Polanyi (1886–1964): a family chronicle and a short account of his life’ (n.d.). 71 SPSL-536-1, Karl Polanyi to Zoe Fairfield (24 March 1934). 72 KPA-37-8, Polanyi, ‘The Galilei Circle fifty years on’. 73 Ferenc Múcsi, ‘The start of Karl Polanyi’s career’, in Kari Polanyi-Levitt (ed.), The Life and Work of Karl Polanyi (Black Rose Books, 1990), 27. 74 KPA-30-1, Karl Polanyi, Unpublished notes and biographical information (1940–84). 75 MPP-17-12, Karl Polanyi to Misi (4 March 1961). 76 KPA-29-12, Duczynska, ‘Karl Polanyi’; KPA-30-1, Polanyi, Unpublished notes; KPA-46-6, Ilona Duczynska, Interview with Ilona Duczynska by Dr Isabella Ackerl (1970s). 77 KPA-30-1, Karl Polanyi, quoted by Ilona Duczynska and Zoltán Horváth, ‘Unknown documents relating to the Galilei Circle’ [‘A Galilei Körre vonatkozó ismeretlen dokumentumok’] (n.d.). 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid. See also Múcsi, ‘Karl Polanyi’s career’, 29. 81 Oscar Jaszi, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary (P. S. King & Son, 1924), 75. 82 Gluck, Georg Lukacs, 102. 83 KPA-37-9, Karl Polanyi, ‘Fifty years’ [‘Ötven év’], Irodalmi Újság (1 May 1959); Rudolf Tökés, Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic: The Origins and Role of the Communist Party of Hungary in the Revolutions of 1918–1919 (Praeger, 1967), 39. 84 István Deák, ‘The decline and fall of Habsburg Hungary, 1914–1918’, in Iván Völgyes (ed.), Hungary in Revolution, 1918–19 (University of Nebraska Press, 1971), 28. 85 Jaszi, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 29. 86 Michael Károlyi, Fighting the World: The Struggle for Peace (Kegan Paul, 1924), 443. 87 Jaszi, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 34. 88 KPA-18-29, Polanyi, ‘Count Michael Károlyi’, 97. 89 Congdon, ‘Moralist as social thinker’, 310. 90 Catherine Károlyi, A Life Together: The Memoirs of Catherine Károlyi (George Allen & Unwin, 1966), 195. 91 Michael Károlyi, Memoirs of Michael Károlyi: Faith Without Illusion ( Jonathan Cape, 1956), 127. 92 KPA-1-45, Karl Polanyi, ‘Our parties and the peace’ [‘Pártjaink és a béke’], Szabadgondolat, 8.8 (1918b); György Litván, ‘Karl Polanyi in Hungarian politics’, in Kari PolanyiLevitt (ed.), The Life and Work of Karl Polanyi (Black Rose Books, 1990), 33.

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93 Jaszi, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 84. 94 Eduard Bernstein, ‘Geleitwort’, in Oskar Jaszi, Magyariens Schuld, Ungarns Sühne: Revolution und Gegenrevolution in Ungarn (Verlag für Kulturpolitik, 1923), xi. 95 Jaszi, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 88. 96 Ibid., 88. 97 Ibid., 119. 98 Bernstein, ‘Geleitwort’, xi. 99 John Rees, The Algebra of Revolution (Routledge, 1998), 254–5. 100 Ibid., 254–5. 101 Frank Eckelt, ‘The internal policies of the Hungarian Soviet Republic’, in Iván Völgyes (ed.), Hungary in Revolution, 1918–19 (University of Nebraska Press, 1971). 102 Jaszi, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 151. 103 Ibid., 126. 104 Ibid., 126. 105 Lee Congdon, Exile and Social Thought: Hungarian Intellectuals in Germany and Austria, 1919–1933 (Princeton University Press, 1991), 218. Jaszi’s view was similar. In order ‘to avoid isolation’, he argued, the social-democrat leadership had no choice but ‘to follow its radical masses and, after much soul-searching, they ‘chose Lenin’ in preference to reformist socialism’. Quoted in Tökés, Béla Kun, 135. 106 Polanyi criticised both the social democrats (under Károlyi and Kun alike) and the communists for neglecting ‘the necessity for a radical redistribution of the land’, a mistake for which they paid ‘with the easy victory of the counter-revolution, which could count on a peasantry indifferent to the cause of the workers’. KPA-18-26, Karl Polanyi, ‘Towards a New October Revolution in Hungary’ (1944). 107 KPA-29-12, Duczynska, ‘Karl Polanyi’. 108 Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order, 1916–1931 (Allen Lane, 2014), 410. 109 Front-page headline, Bécsi Magyar Újság (16 September 1922). See for example the editorial of 19 March 1922, ‘To the democratic and anti-militaristic public opinion of the world’, authored by Károlyi and Jaszi, et al. Describing ­Hungary’s recent experience: ‘Terror brigades were formed for the persecution of innocent people. The system of torture was introduced, and even the raping of women was resorted to as a method of obtaining obedience. Mass murders and pogroms were organised. Hundreds of people were exterminated, without any judicial procedure. Democratic and republican politicians were drowned in the Danube. Journalists known for their outspokenness, incorruptibility and honesty have been kept in prison for years. In internment camps thousands of innocent people have been condemned to slow death. … Police brutality has annulled all freedom of assembly, press and strike’. 110 On multinational corporations, see Karl Polanyi, ‘The captains of German industry: towards global trusts’ [‘A német iparbárók kivándorlása: világtrösztök felé’], Bécsi Magyar Újság (30 November 1923). 111 See also KPA-1-52, Karl Polanyi, ‘The new Machiavelli, Kipps and Tono-Bungay’ [‘Az Uj Machiavelli, Kipps es Tono-Bungay’] (n.d.). 112 H. G. Wells, The Salvaging of Civilization (Cassell, 1921). 113 Ibid., 102. 114 Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism (Cornwall Press, 1918), 124.

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115 Karl Polanyi, ‘Free trade!’ [‘Szabadkereskedelmet!’], Bécsi Magyar Újság (2 November 1922). 116 Karl Polanyi, ‘Does Europe have enough bread?’ [‘Van-e elég kenyere Európának?’], Bécsi Magyar Újság (11 May 1923). 117 Duczynska, ‘I first met Karl Polanyi’, 310. 118 KPA-50-1, Karl Polanyi to Carter Goodrich (12 February 1957); KPA-37-1, Karl Polanyi, ‘A Hungarian lesson’ (1957). 119 KPA-51-1, Ilona and Karl Polanyi to Harry Campbell (29 October 1959). 120 Perhaps Schlesinger’s political temper was coarser than Polanyi felt comfortable with. Moreover, his personal habits, Kari Polanyi-Levitt recalls, ‘would turn my stomach. He would slurp his soup as he drank it from the bowl!’ His etiquette, or lack of it, she adds, must have violated her father’s sense of decorum, for Polanyi, in keeping with his bourgeois upbringing, was ‘fanatical about manners.’ Kari Polanyi-Levitt, interview, 13 December 2008 and by telephone, 6 April 2009. 121 KPA-51-5, Karl Polanyi to Meszaros (5 January 1961).

References Archival collections Society for the Protection of Science and Learning Archive, Bodleian Library, Oxford University (SPSL) 536-1, Karl Polanyi file, Letter from Karl Polanyi to Zoe Fairfield (24 March 1934). 536-1, Karl Polanyi file, Letter from Karl Polanyi to Walter Adams (31 March 1934).

Michael Polanyi Papers, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago (MPP) 17-12, Letter from Karl to Misi (4 March 1961). 17-2, Letter from Karl Polanyi to Misi (19 January 1920).

Karl Polanyi Papers, Karl Polanyi Institute, Concordia University, Montréal (KPA)

1-43, Karl Polanyi, ‘A tudomány autonomiája és az egyetem autonomiája’ [The autonomy of science and the autonomy of the university], Szabadgondolat, 9.4 (1919). 1-45, Karl Polanyi, ‘Pártjaink és a béke’ [Our parties and the peace], Szabadgondolat, 8.8 (1919). 1-52, Karl Polanyi, ‘Az Uj Machiavelli, Kipps es Tono-Bungay’ [The new Machiavelli, Kipps and Tono-Bungay], Bécsi Magyar Újság (n.d.). 1-52, Karl Polanyi, ‘Az új orosz politika esélyei’ [The possibilities of Russia’s new politics], Bécsi Magyar Újság (12 August, 1921). 2-9, Karl Polanyi, Draft article, ‘Worauf es heute ankommt. Eine Erwiderung’ [The crucial issue today: a response] (1919). 4-9, Karl Polanyi, Notes on readings (early 1920s). 18-26, Karl Polanyi, ‘Towards a New October Revolution in Hungary’ (1944). 18-29, Karl Polanyi, ‘Count Michael Károlyi,’ The Slavonic and East European Review, 24.63 (1946) 29-12, Ilona Duczynska, ‘Karl Polanyi, 1886–1964: a family chronicle and a short account of his life’ (n.d.).

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30-1, Karl Polanyi, Unpublished notes and biographical information (1940–84) (including CV, and interviews). 30-1, Ilona Duczynska and Zoltán Horváth, ‘Unknown documents relating to the Galilei Circle’ [A Galilei Körre vonatkozó ismeretlen dokumentumok] (n.d.). 37-1, Karl Polanyi, ‘A Hungarian lesson’ (1957). 37-8, Karl Polanyi, ‘A Galilei Kör otven év távlatából’ [The Galilei Circle fifty years on] (1958). 37-9, Karl Polanyi, ‘Ötven év’ [Fifty years], Irodalmi Újság (1 May 1959). 46-6, Ilona Duczynska, Interview with Ilona Duczynska by Dr Isabella Ackerl (1970s). 50-1, Karl Polanyi, Letter to Carter Goodrich (12 February 1957). 51-1, Ilona and Karl Polanyi, Letter to Harry Campbell (29 October 1959). 51-5, Karl Polanyi to Meszaros (5 January 1961).

Published literature Arendt, Hannah, The Jew as Pariah: Jewish Identity and Politics in the Modern Age (Grove Press, 1978). Bernstein, Eduard, ‘Geleitwort’, in Oskar Jaszi, Magyariens Schuld, Ungarns Sühne: Revolution und Gegenrevolution in Ungarn [Magyar guilt, Hungary’s atonement: revolution and counter-revolution in Hungary] (Verlag für Kulturpolitik, 1923). Callaghan, Helen and Martin Höpner, ‘Changing ideas: organized capitalism and the German Left’, West European Politics, 35.3 (2012). Congdon, Lee, ‘The moralist as social thinker: Oszkár Jaszi in Hungary, 1900–1919’, in Walter Laqueur and George Mosse (eds), Historians in Politics (Sage, 1974). Congdon, Lee, Exile and Social Thought: Hungarian Intellectuals in Germany and Austria, 1919–1933 (Princeton University Press, 1991). Gareth Dale, ‘Karl Polanyi in Budapest: on his political and intellectual formation’, Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 50.1 (2009). Deák, István, ‘The decline and fall of Habsburg Hungary, 1914–1918’, in Iván Völgyes (ed.), Hungary in Revolution, 1918–19 (University of Nebraska Press, 1971). Deutscher, Isaac, The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays (Oxford University Press, 1968). Drucker, Peter, Adventures of a Bystander (Transaction, 1999). Duczynska, Ilona, ‘“I first met Karl Polanyi in 1920…”’, in Kenneth McRobbie and Kari Polanyi-Levitt (eds), Karl Polanyi in Vienna: The Contemporary Significance of the Great Transformation (Black Rose Books, 2000). Eckelt, Frank, ‘The internal policies of the Hungarian Soviet Republic’, in Iván Völgyes (ed.), Hungary in Revolution, 1918–19 (University of Nebraska Press, 1971). Enyedi, György and Viktória Szirmai, Budapest: A Central European Capital (Belhaven Press, 1992). Gluck, Mary, Georg Lukacs and his Generation, 1900–1918 (Harvard University Press, 1985). Hilferding, Rudolf, Finance Capital: A Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development (Routledge, 1981 [1910]). Horváth, Zoltán, Die Jahrhundertwende in Ungarn: Geschichte der zweiten Reformgeneration, 1896–1914 [Hungary’s turn of the century: history of the second reform generation, 1896–1914] (Corvina Verlag, 1966). Janos, Andrew, ‘The decline of the oligarchy: bureaucratic and mass politics in the Age

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of Dualism, 1867–1918’, in Andrew Janos and William Slottman (eds), Revolution in Perspective: Essays on the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 (University of California Press, 1971). Janos, Andrew, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 1825–1945 (Princeton University Press, 1982). Jaszi, Oscar, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary (P. S. King & Son, 1924). Kadarkay, Arpad, Georg Lukacs: Life, Thought and Politics (Blackwell, 1991). Károlyi, Catherine, A Life Together: The Memoirs of Catherine Károlyi (George Allen & Unwin, 1966). Károlyi, Michael, Fighting the World: The Struggle for Peace (Kegan Paul, 1924). Károlyi, Michael, Memoirs of Michael Károlyi: Faith Without Illusion ( Jonathan Cape, 1956). Kettler, David, Meja, Volker and Stehr, Nico, Karl Mannheim (Tavistock Publications, 1984). Litván, György, ‘Karl Polanyi in Hungarian politics’, in Kari Polanyi-Levitt (ed.), The Life and Work of Karl Polanyi (Black Rose Books, 1990). Litván, György, A Twentieth-Century Prophet: Oscar Jaszi, 1875–1957 (Central European University Press, 2006). Löwy, Michael, Georg Lukacs: From Romanticism to Bolshevism (New Left Books, 1979). Lukacs, Georg, Record of a Life: An Autobiographical Sketch (Verso, 1983). Lukacs, John, Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and its Culture (Weidenfeld, 1993). Miller, Tyrus (ed.), The Culture of People’s Democracy (Brill, 2013). Múcsi, Ferenc, ‘The start of Karl Polanyi’s career’, in Kari Polanyi-Levitt (ed.), The Life and Work of Karl Polanyi (Black Rose Books, 1990). Nagy, Endre, ‘After brotherhood’s Golden Age: Karl and Michael Polanyi’, in Kenneth McRobbie (ed.), Humanity, Society and Commitment: On Karl Polanyi (Black Rose Books, 1994). Oppenheimer, Franz, Theorie der reinen und politischen Ökonomie; Ein Lehr- und Lesebuch für Studierende und Gebildete [Theory of pure and political economy: a textbook and reader for students and scholars] (Georg Reimer, 1910), 99. Piterberg, Gabriel, The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel (Verso, 2008). Polanyi, Karl, ‘Radikális polgári politika’ [Radical bourgeois politics], Szabadgondolat, 3.11 (1913). Polanyi, Karl, ‘A magyar hegemonia és a nemzetiségek’ [Hungarian hegemony and the nationalities], Szabadgondolat, 4.3 (1914). Polanyi, Karl, ‘Polgári radikálisok, szocialisták és történelmi ellenzék’ [Radical bourgeois, socialists and historic opposition]’, Szabadgondolat, 4.5 (1914). Polanyi, Karl, ‘A szocializmus próbája’ [The test of socialism], Szabadgondolat, 8.10 (1918). Polanyi, Karl, ‘Radikális párt és Polgári párt’ [Radical Party and bourgeois party], Szabadgondolat, 8.9 (1918). Polanyi, Karl, ‘Polgárháború’ [Civil war], Szabadgondolat, 9.6 (1919). Polanyi, Karl, ‘Forradalom és ideológia. Jegyzetek Szabó Ervin hátrahagyott müvéhez’ [Revolution and ideology: notes on Ervin Szabó’s posthumous work], Bécsi Magyar Újság (18 September 1921). Polanyi, Karl, ‘Szabadkereskedelmet!’ [Free trade!], Bécsi Magyar Újság (2 November 1922).

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Polanyi, Karl, ‘Van-e elég kenyere Európának?’ [Does Europe have enough bread?’], Bécsi Magyar Újság (11 May 1923). Polanyi, Karl, ‘A német iparbárók kivándorlása: világtrösztök felé’ [The captains of German industry: towards global trusts], Bécsi Magyar Újság (30 November 1923). Polanyi, Karl, Fasizmus, demokrácia, ipari társadalom (Gondolat Kiadó, 1986). Rees, John, The Algebra of Revolution (Routledge, 1998). Rechter, David, The Jews of Vienna and the First World War (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001). Russell, Bertrand, Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism (Cornwall Press, 1918). Sayer, Derek, Prague, Capital of the Twentieth Century: A Surrealist History (Princeton University Press, 2013) Sayre, Robert and Michael Löwy, Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity (Duke University Press, 2001). Schorske, Carl, Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980 [1961]). Schorske, Carl, German Social Democracy, 1905–1917: The Development of the Great Schism (Harvard University Press, 1983 [1955]). Schumpeter, Joseph, History of Economic Analysis (Allen & Unwin, 1986). Stone, Norman, Europe Transformed, 1878–1919 (Fontana, 1983) . Szabó, Dániel, ‘Wahlsystem und Gesellschaftsstruktur in den letzten beiden Jahrzehnten des Dualismus, 1896–1910’ [Electoral system and social structure in the final two decades of dualism, 1896–1910], Acta Historica, 35 (1989). Szabó, Evin, Syndicalism and Social Democracy (Deutsch, 1908). Szabó, Ervin, Socialism and Social Science, edited by György Litván and János Bak (Routledge, 1982). Szapor, Judit, ‘Laura Polanyi 1882–1957: narratives of a life’ (n.d.), www.kfki.hu/chemonet/ polanyi/9702/szapor.html (last accessed 2 November 2015). Szapor, Judith, The Hungarian Pocahontas: The Life and Times of Laura Polanyi Stricker, 1882–1959 (East European Monographs, 2005). Szapor, Judith, ‘An outsider twice over: Cecile Wohl Pollacsek, salonist of fin-de- siècle Budapest’, in A. Pető Szapor, M. Hametz and M. Calloni (eds), Jewish Intellectual Women in Central Europe, 1860–2000: Twelve Biographical Essays (Edwin Mellon, 2012). Tökés, Rudolf, Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic: The Origins and Role of the Communist Party of Hungary in the Revolutions of 1918–1919 (Praeger, 1967). Tooze, Adam, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order, 1916–1931 (Allen Lane, 2014). Vezér, Erzsébet, ‘An anniversary tribute’, in Kenneth McRobbie and Kari Polanyi-Levitt (eds), Karl Polanyi in Vienna: The Contemporary Significance of the Great Transformation (Black Rose Books, 2000). Villis, Tom, Reaction and the Avant-Garde: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy in Early Twentieth-Century Britain (Tauris, 2006). Wells, H. G., The Salvaging of Civilization (Cassell, 1921).

Part I Religion, metaphysics and ethics

Culture – pseudo-culture1

Ernst Mach. Even when man2 still lived in the depths of caves and in the forest canopy, starving and in permanent fear, his primordial imagination was already crowding his mind with all manner of apparitions. The swirling night-time fog would frighten him, as would the shadows of the clouds scudding silently by. His scarcity-afflicted nature was troubled by the constant agitation occasioned by hunger, and everywhere he suspected bloodthirsty creatures were prowling around. In animals he saw hideous-faced hunters; in the clouds he saw ghosts with concealed thunderbolts; and even in Mother Earth he descried fire-breathing beasts. What this tormented and agitated race of man was experiencing, based upon sense perceptions, distorted through the prism of fear, and admixed with some reasoned knowledge, was: religion. Within the confusion that characterises this alien state of consciousness, prehistoric man was presumably not in possession of a distinct, externalised form of that particular disorderly state of mind that we call religion. Truth and falsehood were united within his spiritual consciousness, and if he could ever have lost his faith in his religion, if, by some miracle a free-thinker had been born into the Stone Age, all his knowledge would have vanished, together with his religiosity. The simplest practical tasks of life would have bewildered him, making him more helpless than his ‘religious’ fellows. Thus religion was not, initially, the crude but beautiful outcome of the distorted visions of ignorant minds in their moments of weakness. On the contrary! Prehistoric man experienced his superstitions as so convincing precisely because the knowledge of how to make fire, cultivate the soil, eat, build a home, make love and many other vital activities were inseparably bound up with his religious beliefs. Ritual and superstition encompassed his everyday life: it is evident, therefore, that such beliefs and practices often incorporate productive and accurate knowledge too. The ruling class, which guarded the secrets of religion, thereby at the same time became the masters of practical and 1 ‘Kultura – álkultura’, Szocializmus Szemle, 5 (1909–10): 238–40. 2 The antiquated use of gendered terms has been retained on the grounds of fidelity to the original text.

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scientific life – and this helps to explain the veneration with which the clergy was always surrounded. However, over the course of its development, humanity has extracted more and more knowledge from the rarefied mists of religion and has moved it into the body of science. The main difference between religion and science is that science is undertaken in tranquil sobriety, while religion is born out of fear, in a state of mind akin to drunkenness. Science is therefore subject to verification, since we are all capable of acting calmly and when we are calm we are relatively equal in our way of thinking, while religion is unverifiable, for not all of us are capable of generating such a peculiar emotional disturbance and even if many of us could, it is unlikely that we would experience it in the same way. If religion had merely been incorrect, a confusing mass of knowledge, it would never have inflicted such great problems upon humankind. It would have faded into obscurity, quickly and painlessly, as the useless always retreats before the useful. Religion’s great danger consists not in the fact that it contains falsehoods, but that it also contains some truths, and therefore it has been difficult to separate from science. As a result, religion became a serious obstacle to progress, for it hindered us from uniting all our accurate knowledge and setting it against the brutality and beauty which lies beyond. Over time, a portion of humankind’s knowledge separated from religion and came to appear in the pure form of simple knowledge. The physics and chemistry of everyday life, and the hygiene and filiations of family life, gradually gave rise to scientific physics and chemistry, medicine and the other natural sciences. Religion came to be prised away from its role as the repository of knowledge related to everyday life. Yet there remains a good deal of knowledge that is more nebulous, and more resistant to control, and which could not so readily be systematised and separated from religion. For example, certain aspects of political and social life, in particular those concerning the rules of interpersonal behaviour which we term morality, required knowledge, and these were generally comprehended within a religious frame. Indeed, if we approach the question without prejudice, we must acknowledge that even today religion manages to communicate certain types of moral understanding correctly, to people that are completely uncultivated and ignorant; for their own and society’s benefit it is teaching them to curb some of their instincts. Equally, however, we should not forget that today science is also able to provide us with advice on how to conduct ourselves – indeed, better and more clearly than can religion. Consequently, this meagre content should not serve as an apology for the soporific and toxic opium that religion continues to disseminate, day after day, among the minds of tens of millions. What religion afforded the less cultivated brain, metaphysics afforded to the troubled minds of educated men. The speculation of philosophers is nothing

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but religion in a cultivated form. And in the same way that certain branches of practical knowledge came to be separated from religion, cosmology, psychology, pedagogy, comparative ethics, law, psychiatry, embryology and numerous other sciences all separated themselves from metaphysics. It is in humanity’s greatest interest that a method be devised by which to distinguish scientific knowledge from that of metaphysics or religion. Metaphysics is even more harmful than religion, for while the difference between science and religion is nowadays clearly distinguishable (and in the case of having to choose between the two, everyone opts for the former without hesitation), metaphysics ­represents a dangerous and deceptive transitional form. It is metaphysics that we have to thank for all those infamous terms whose meaning we cannot explain and which, precisely for this reason, speculative philosophy deems important. To mention only the most famous ones: the idea, the unknown, the ideal, the category, the telos and numerous other perplexing concepts are the reverently guarded treasures of this particular profession. The struggle that previously had to be waged against religion needs now to be fought against metaphysics. Metaphysics is the last fortress of confused reasoning: it is religious science and, at the same time, scientific religion. This long struggle against religion and metaphysics constitutes the history of positivist philosophy. Its greatest warriors included Comte, Feuerbach, Marx, Spencer and Haeckel. Each, in their different ways, attempted to construct a solid foundation for science, ensuring its complete separation from religion and metaphysics. Comte emphasised the importance of experience. Feuerbach placed religion on its head, stating that ‘Man creates his gods in his own image’. Marx’s epoch-making discovery was the recognition that the religious mentality is guided not by truth but by interests. Spencer demonstrated that what religion deemed to be ‘true’ has always varied across space and time. Finally, Haeckel confirmed that every real phenomenon can be described by science, such that for religion and metaphysics only unreal phenomena remain. For reasoning human beings, the spirit of religion was overcome by the devastating blows of argument. But metaphysics, the faithful aide, lived on. Albeit bleeding from a thousand wounds, metaphysics continued to struggle for ideals appropriate to nebulous and agitated states of mind. Ernst Mach, the great physicist from Prague and professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna, is the epoch-making scientist whose clear-headed vision and lucid reasoning has provided a description of science that decisively and powerfully demarcates it from all metaphysics. Mach approached this goal, initially, by writing the history of mechanics and thermodynamics. From this, he determined that metaphysical terms such as ‘telos’, ‘essence’, ‘truth’ and so on, are mystifying, and meaningless for science. Science does not seek a ‘telos’, for it is not scientifically necessary but simply the outcome of a bad habit: the

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tendency to ask further questions while forgetting that such questions can be meaningless. Science does not seek to study the ‘essence’ of a phenomenon, since it does not have one; there are simply as many significances to a phenomenon as my interest can discover. To search for ‘the truth’ is impossible for it is a useless and mystifying concept; even if a claim were ‘true’ for everyone, in all places and throughout time, we would be unable to verify it in our finite lives and, more importantly, it would be completely useless to us. Man is everywhere and at the same time immediate. A closer look also reveals that such searching for ‘truth’ is nothing but a form of child’s play that seeks a ‘meaning’ behind everything and some form of ‘mysterious proof ’ in the depths of all phenomena. Science, in contrast, never asks ‘what is this?’ but only ‘how is this?’ The question ‘what is this?’ seeks out the ‘essence’ of things, and can continue to ask questions even when it knows everything already. Even today, metaphysics believes that we need only find the answers to all our questions, and then our problems would be resolved. But a question, just like an answer, can be false. It is in the questions asked, not in the answers provided, that science differs most starkly from metaphysics. Even religion, when it really pulls itself together (and recently it has shown signs of doing this), may even come up with the same answers as science. But it always asks different questions. The questions asked by science are clear and simple. It always asks questions to which different answers can be provided, whereby one answer excludes the others. Metaphysics typically asks questions in such a way that the answer is ‘self-evident’, which is to say that several answers can be provided that are not mutually exclusive. In other words, it does not matter what we answer. Applying the superior and forceful truth of reasoning, Ernst Mach’s genius has demonstrated the limits of science and metaphysics: the claims of science can be true and false; which they are is a function of their intelligence and their usefulness. The claims of metaphysics, in contrast, can be neither true nor false, because they do not claim anything. Ernst Mach has not only purified the atmosphere of reason by categorically and concretely separating science from the mists of metaphysics, but, by so doing, he has also cleared the horizon for direct action. The same metaphysics that brought forth the self-important and self-aggrandising phraseology of the ‘state’, the ‘individual’ and ‘eternal value’ is being deployed by today’s ruling class against the scientific armour of the proletariat. In the transparent atmosphere of knowledge, the arms of science shall not miss their targets.

Preface to Ernst Mach’s The Analysis of Sensations (1910)

Ernst Mach is the greatest and most important thinker of the turn of the century. Every positive idea in Europe today is related to his work; indeed, a similar school has recently been created in America, under the name of ‘pragmatism’, which testifies to the fecundity of his thought. Mach’s stance is the position of pure practice. Breaking with every tradition, it proclaims usefulness to be the true measure of thought. Related to this is Mach’s basic recognition that every thought is to a greater or lesser degree a practical process, one which, considered in its totality, serves our self-preservation and seeks to achieve the greatest possible productivity. The ultimate yardstick of this practice is always experience, and that which does not come within its bounds should not be considered. He is not interested at all in the ‘questions’ of the old philosophy; at best, they might serve him as examples to show that men can ask meaningless questions without being conscious of their meaninglessness, and that their religious, metaphysical, or philosophical ‘solutions’ are as impractical and confused as the ‘questions’ themselves. In contrast, Mach’s position vis-à-vis reasoning is based upon simple experience and it will, in all probability, remain the only reliable basis for the science of thought. It is difficult to provide a brief account of Mach’s many, divergent trains of thought; but perhaps the following considerations might serve as a useful introduction to his ideas. I. When man and the higher vertebrates think, they are economising on labour and gathering nutrition. Thus, in the course of his self-preservation, man not only works and nourishes himself; he also thinks. Whichever function we repress, sooner or later it will impact detrimentally upon the person’s organism; in any case, it affects the whole. If we think less then we have to work more; if we are deprived of nutrition, then we begin to think – for example, about how to find nutrition. All three functions assume, cause and substitute for each other, and, following death, all three of them cease to exist. Thinking is therefore a phenomenon of life and, from the viewpoint of the pain-evading and pleasureseeking self, it is just as important as consumption and labour. While the health of the human body, in itself, requires a small amount of

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labour, there is no doubt that we can live in good health without thinking at all. But if an individual finds himself in difficulty, then he seeks escape from the situation by working and by thinking. In such situations, it is often down to the individual whether he will think or work more, i.e. how much thinking he will deploy to liberate himself from work, and vice versa. 1) If we think, then we become aware of unpleasant things before they occur, and hence we adapt our behaviour (we act), in order to prevent their occurrence; if our thought informs us that something will not occur, then we adapt our behaviour (act), in order for it to be realised; if, in turn, our thought, while relating to a pleasant act, foresees that something unpleasant will occur, then we stop our action, or continue it in another form, etc. In the first case, we have ‘avoided some form of danger’, in the second, we have ‘worked’, in the third, we have ‘exercised self-restraint’, etc. 2) Of course, we can also act independently of our thought. Self-monitoring, for example, teaches us that our thinking is not always equally calm and attentive. Indeed, we often find so-called emotions and other, still unknown, things intervening between thought and act: in such cases we say that we acted without (or in spite of ) thinking. 3) Indeed, the case might even arise whereby we do not do anything ‘in advance’, i.e. we do not adapt but wait until the event takes place and thus entrust the adaptive response to physical and emotional influences. However, based on experience, the two latter cases not only entail much more trouble, but frequently also lead to the annihilation of the individual, unlike when we adapt ourselves through thought. If we try to carry out something without thinking, or await for the course of events to take place – and this, unfortunately happens to all of us – then we will before long ascertain ourselves how great are the problems that this brings with it. The physiological salience of thinking is thus in our adaptation through actions to our thoughts; however, this adaptation proves to be more appropriate, and more reliable, where the given prediction more accurately follows the facts. Hence, the basic importance and characteristic of thought is summarised by Mach in the thesis that thinking is the process through which our thoughts adapt themselves to the facts. II. We are thinking not only when seeking to avoid danger, informing ourselves quickly and in a reliable manner in respect of the environment, behaving wisely and with prudence, or satisfying our needs, but also when we think about how to use these thoughts in the most appropriate manner, and how to avoid or stop some of the attendant difficulties. This should be understood in the following way: we call thinking those transformations that we install within the organisation of our consciousness in such a way that the new arrangement is more productive than the previous one. This re-configuration usually occurs in tandem with a change to our senses, so that an event appears ‘more familiar’ and ‘more meaningful’ than previously. Accordingly, we only think when we

Preface to Ernst Mach’s The Analysis of Sensations

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become aware of something new (something little known to us), and thinking ceases as soon as it becomes familiar. This latter takes place either by: 1) our becoming aware of that which is unknown by repeatedly making it known, and this, through experience, requires a diminishing level of knowledge, or 2) if we make ourselves aware of familiar things, enabling us to ‘interpret’ them, i.e. this itself no longer requires any consciousness. In both cases, the desired level of knowledge has been reduced, precisely because the things familiar to us require little consciousness, while the most familiar and common require so little that we often do not even see them. In the first case, we normally speak of habit and learning while in the second case we speak of solving and answering. In both cases, thinking leads us from an unpleasant situation to a pleasant one. In most cases involving thinking (the first example), in particular in those that are most important from a practical viewpoint, the classification of consciousness is easiest, most meaningful and familiar when it is congruent with experience. However, since many – as a matter of fact, an unlimited number of – practical tasks arise as a result, man’s knowledge is finite. From this, practical and theoretical inconveniences arise that we usually seek to pre-empt or halt by thinking. If we have thereby, in a number of fields of experience, created a classification of consciousness that brings a sense of complete consciousness, then this might constitute the simplest classification of consciousness within that person. Nevertheless, the total quantity of our consciousness is not thereby organised in the most efficient manner. Based on experience, the diversity of the dispersal of knowledge is most excruciating in exactly those cases, when the individual allocations are in the greatest accordance with each other: the fewer details we know within a given field, the easier it is for us to achieve a general picture of it; the more phenomena of which we are aware, the more difficult it is to find a generally acceptable solution. If we could have an unlimited amount of consciousness at our disposal, i.e. with no restrictions on what we could recall and imagine, then there could not be fixed formations of thought (concepts, etc.) and we would not need to know anything about thinking itself. But, as we have stated, the quantity of our consciousness is finite and in the case of long-term use even that disappears. Our efforts to increase our knowledge are excruciating and gruelling. If we were unable to organise the knowledge at our disposal in a productive manner, then we would not be able to apply our thoughts. Thus, we are not speaking of the avoidance of intellectual discomfort; the most productive organisation of consciousness is also an important requirement of self-preservation. This aspect of our thinking refers to our own thoughts, and its aim is, on the one hand, that the total quantity of our consciousness be reduced, and, on the other, that it be distributed in the most efficient possible manner. Such thinking, which brings, on the one hand, an end to intellectual inconvenience, and, on the other, a greater usefulness of our practical thoughts, we describe as

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scientific. Its ideal is the creation of a final (stable) organisation of consciousness, such that we can see furthest with the minimal amount of thought. Thus, for Mach, science is characterised by the productive arrangement of consciousness, and we establish this by accommodating our thoughts to one another. III. Hence, all aspects of thinking originate in two endeavours. The first, that the arrangement of consciousness, from the viewpoint of self-preservation, be aligned with its reliable adaptability. Second, that, if possible, we possess little consciousness and it is organised in the most productive way possible. In the pages that follow, Mach examines our ideas concerning the so-called ‘bodily’ and ‘spiritual’ worlds; on the one hand, explaining why they are as they are, and, on the other, elaborating more useful concepts and rules. Although, from the viewpoint of praxis, the old ones are also satisfactory, for they adapt themselves to the facts, they are scientifically inappropriate, in other words false, for these thoughts do not align themselves with one another. The demonstration of this, and the replacement of bad concepts – including our own bad philosophical ideas – with appropriate ones, constitutes the epoch-making importance of this work. As a result, the gaudy daydreams of dualism and metaphysics crumble, and after the rubble has been cleared we can descry the outlines of a secure and appropriate apartment block for human thought, as it is constructed before our eyes.

Credo and credulity3

Religion places a great importance – and from the viewpoint of our exposition this is all that matters – on people believing in the details, volume upon volume of them, concerning the character and habits of spiritual figures and of the supernatural realm. At heart, perhaps, its teachings centre upon the claim that he who does not believe in these is irreligious and will, already during his life but especially after his death, receive a very different treatment than those who believe in these fantastic and fundamentally implausible things. Science has attacked the superstitions of faith with unbridled vigour and has forced them to retreat across the entire battleground of reason. Yet in the indignation with which awakening humanity rejected religion could be heard not only the complaint of those who had been cheated – whom religion had deprived of the blessings of science and technology – but also the protestations of the humiliated, who are awakening in horror to the fact that the lofty values of morality have been assigned to the guardians of ignorance and superstition. Those wondrous resources of faith and trust from which morality springs and in which all progress is nurtured are treacherously blended by religion together with zealous credulity, thereby poisoning the mainsprings of human growth. The bedazzled and corrupted mind comes to self-consciousness and asks, rebelliously, what it is that gives the usurers of mankind’s animal origins and spiritual misery the courage and capacity to keep humanity, in its upward striving and development, under moral tutelage? Let religion answer: how dare the paupers of the spirit, the gullible, open their hands towards the blessings of faith?! To have faith, and to believe; the Hungarian language creates these two words [‘hinni’ and ‘elhinni’] from one root, and yet they signify two different worlds. My faith is that which forces me to make sacrifices where I am not driven by advantage, it provides me with an incentive for persevering when the hope of success is fading, it is that which compels without force and obliges without command. Whatever I have faith in becomes the standard of my moral judgement; I accept it as correct, and through my faith I discern between good and bad. In contrast, what I believe, I merely take as given, without approval or disapproval. 3 ‘Hit és hiszékenység’, Szabadgondolat, 1.5 (1911): 159–62.

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The instinct of faith is rooted in subsistence, and without it all reason, all awareness of the connectedness of the world, would be in vain, for we would never be able to act effectively. Reliable knowledge is not enough for action. Without goals we cannot act and goals can only be created by our needs. And if the means are manifold, then we also have to choose between them. Although roads on both sides of the Danube lead to Vienna, nonetheless, before we depart, we need to decide which one to take and, once we have decided, we need to stick to our decision. In practice, it is often more important that we decide, than how we decide. If we lacked the capability to trust our decision, to stick with it, then all geometry and geography would be to no avail; we would never arrive in Vienna. It makes no difference whether the decision is over a promenade, a journey, or even an entire career. Perhaps our choice merely concerns an excursion, but perhaps it concerns our homeland, party, or class, and maybe, beyond the perimeter of joy and pain, our road divides at the lands of being and non-being… As the circumstances become more complicated, the scenarios less clear, and the road to be taken ever longer, simple trust turns into conviction, devotion and inspiration: a moral worldview. Whenever our will vacillates, and forgets about the circumstances of the first and original decision, or is hindered by obstructions, then, each time, our action is seized by the power of conviction, which triumphantly guides us through the blind spots of the moral realm. Decisive action, courageous sacrifice, true progress are impossible without faith, and only it can transform the sophisticated systems of science into productive human behaviour and action. As boldly as action emanates from the inert matter of our knowledge, as attentively and conscientiously must its foundations be laid. Only when I know everything that can be known, when I have learned everything that can be learned; then, and only then, can I enjoy the freedom to choose how to act vis-à-vis nature and society, to decide between the possible roads of action, and decide in such a way that I can trust the road that I have taken and walk along it blindly, to the end, through all ordeals, all pain and all doubts … There are those who see morals as unpleasant and annoying, and, since it is not easy to believe everything, hold that in credulity there is even something virtuous. Undoubtedly, credulity also has its own difficulties, just as scepticism does. It is difficult not to be sceptical towards inveterate prejudice, and it is difficult to believe in the miraculous. Hence, we can understand if some of those who are credulous take pleasure in their stance, just as we also understand their complaint that while they believe everything, even the implausible, we only confidently believe in that which is proven to us by facts and arguments; but it is fruitless and utterly incoherent when religious people go far beyond this, and turn their credulity directly and rigidly into the basis of their moral existence. Credulity too can have consequences, only not moral ones. A credulous

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person may be deceived, he may be ridiculed, people may pity him for his i­gnorance or he may be rewarded for his dedication to faith, he may go bankrupt because he is more credulous than his neighbour, he may become a bishop because he is more believing than his rival – but his credulity is never more than a morally indifferent disposition, an inherited or acquired trait or disability, like curly hair, a good voice or the art of ventriloquism. Only on the basis of that knowledge which relates to my environment, and thus necessarily constrains me in my actions, can true faith arise. Whether God created the Earth, or not, my responsibility is unaffected. Whether I believe that the Earth was created in six days, or not, is of complete indifference to life. But let us go further. Every superstition, religion or myth which teaches that the order of nature can be disturbed by unknown forces, every miraclefaith that refuses to acknowledge the rule of consequence in the development of the world, fundamentally challenges morality, because it does not append any definite and necessary consequences to our actions and thereby absolves our behaviour from the burden of these consequences. Faith and morality can only be founded on science, never on religion. Obligation to one’s commitments is the essence of faith. We who believe in the self-determination of man thereby accept a duty. There is no tradition the antiquity of which can absolve us from self-determination; no authority whose loftiness can eliminate the consequences of our behaviour. Behind us lies the bridge, which we have burned, along which one can could have escaped to safe shores, choosing the cowardly but comforting path of refusing responsibility. He who can always account for the goods with which society and nature have blessed him can say, in the great accounting in which he and his conscience are alone: I did not expect, nor did I accept, commands from the Sky, the Past, or Authority, but, straining for truth, I decided for myself what is right and what is wrong. That person placed his belief in human self-government and, as a result, became moral. We who believe in the progress of society are prevented by our credo from blaming creation for bad institutions. We are also responsible for all actions through which we can change the present and the future. Our morality is not a compromise between our credulity and the phantasms of our imagination but is the governable assumption of responsibility for the consequences. Our faith does not allow for any loopholes which postpone the settling of balances to the afterlife. Whether he wants to, or not, the freethinker must bow his head to the rule of causality and assess every consequence of his actions against the law of blood. Those who claim that we freethinkers have no faith clearly hold their own credulity to be a faith, for they do not have any moral needs. They do not know the unconditional and binding strength of true faith. Only man liberated from credulity is mature enough for the world of faith.

On the destructive turn4

The accusation against us is that we are robbing humanity of its ideals, without putting any others in their place. This is a serious accusation, for it is made by people in good faith. They are strangled by bitter thoughts. Humanity, left without any ideals, goes astray, wandering without any compass on the untrodden path of existence. The pillar of fire which guided the wanderers in the desert is fading. The fire on the quiet stove, whose humble world gave light to the dull fate of our human existence, has gone out. And we are the heretics who belittled the ideals by explaining them; we are accused of having abolished the eternal ideal of morality when we aspired to replace the fallible human judgement over good and evil. We have degraded man into an animal, basing his morality upon material interests, and have imagined God himself to be a creation of men. Everyone admits – they continue – that human deeds can achieve greatness in two ways. Someone can become great if he does not act alone but is the humble servant of the infinitude of human relationships within space and time. And someone also becomes great, when he is independent of all human sociality, his deeds are courageous and he stands out above the rest. The former is touching and uplifting, for it fills our isolated existence with a content that makes us feel good. This is the ideal of order. But the latter is also touching. The thought of autonomous and independent action, in an instant, turns our multifarious intentions into a self-enclosed individuality, and this augments our power. All people are aware of the ideal of moral freedom. Yet behold, the destructive turn has destroyed humanity’s faith in the moral order and denied it free will. We repeat, the accusation is serious and we wish to defend ourselves against it in a serious way. We must not satisfy ourselves by appealing to its extraordinary audacity. It is not enough to point to the fact that it was the same destructive turn that created modern technology and gave rise to the empires of prosperity, comfort and health. Let us forget that this destructive turn erected the edifice of the natural sciences, about which the accusers complain that its hubristic head 4 ‘A destruktiv irányról’, Szabadgondolat, 1.6 (1911): 195–7.

On the destructive turn

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is nearly touching the sky. And neither let us appeal to the international organisations of the working class, which today represent the fortresses of universal education, and let us also forget that no movement had existed before now that had attempted to unify the creative powers of the public and society with an effort such as ours. Let us for a minute believe in the legitimacy of that honest suffering, which reproaches us for the fact that destruction also follows in the footprints of labour, and that while it may appear to be negligible, in reality, it leads to the destruction of ideals, such that its moral consequences are major and momentous. Neurotic and obsessive patients often convincingly explain to their doctors that they cannot rid themselves of their disease, since their every thought, every emotion and everything that is dear to them in their spiritual life – what they call their individuality – has coalesced with their disease, and what would their life be without it?! Just as imaginary and illusory is, today, the crisis which assails our souls at the threshold of the new age. It is impossible to make an inventory of the content of consciousness, and if we remove something from it, its volume need not be reduced. The matrix of knowledge to which the sentiments of moral man are connected can only be superseded when a presentiment of its even more expansive coordinates has infiltrated his consciousness and an image of the new order can be discerned. The old dissolves, or perhaps simply fades away, even as the new, convincing and complete worldview emerges. And the brightness, warmth and magnetic power of sensation, which lay withered in the old image, is now stirring up new fires and brilliance within a new system; the magnetic needle is pointing in a new direction. Equally, the ideal of the ‘moral order’ was only revealed to be empty and petty after the recognition of the true order of society. During the age when our knowledge of history was still limited, before the Age of Discoveries, it was still plausible to assume that the conditions of human existence were more or less the same everywhere and that men, therefore, lived in a similar way throughout the world. This fallacy formed the basis of the ‘moral order’. With the exposing of this fallacy, the basis of the moral order collapsed; but, just as there can be no interregnum in the realm of theories, neither can there be a vacancy of the throne in the realm of ethics. We only recognised the relativity of the then fashionable ‘moral order’ when historical materialism had already summarised our knowledge of the ‘moral order’ into a major new synthesis: economy and morality are both the products of social labour, and they merge over the course of development. With this development, those who strive for virtue can envisage a new, compelling order of human existence, broader and more extensive than that of the ‘moral order’. For only they whose actions are integrated into the totality of humanity’s collective existence and who submit their humble wills to the most encompassing goals can achieve true greatness.

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The ‘moral order’ is yielding ground to the ideals of social cooperation, universal progress and development, allowing space for a genuinely higher world order. Homage to those who serve it! It was not we who deprived humanity of the narrow and obsolete ideal of moral freedom, but, rather, it freely rejected it in exchange for a more valuable and meaningful ideal. In the world of religious morality, all answers are predetermined. In the past, tradition, authority and, above all, religion determined what was permitted and what was not. Confession, material position, specific traditions, local authorities and local powers set the boundaries. The only option for the man of will was to decide whether or not he would submit to the ‘moral order’. But once he decided that, both his fate, which for him was predestined, as well as his acceptance of the tutelary authorities and commitment to the ancient traditions, tolerated no vacillation. Ethical concepts or the ‘moral order’ were decreed, ready made. The ‘free will’ that religious morality offers man comes with strict instructions. Wishing for anything else is not allowed. The goal of this free will, as theology itself admits, is to transfer responsibility for all this-worldly evil from the Creator to fallible humans, who have freely chosen evil. We do not recognise dogma, which divides the confessions; we do not acknowledge the sundering of society into a class system. As Oliver Goldsmith once said, ‘Law grinds the poor, and rich men rule the law’. We do not respect the respectable, we do not follow tradition, and we do not believe in the powerful. Beyond good and evil, free will reigns, and we have always proclaimed and demanded the will’s right to its realm of freedom. The will that can merely choose between good and bad is a pauper, for his entire world consists of only a single decision. But he who is challenged by every moment, who is called to a new battle by every new recognition, who does not merely have to choose between good and evil but also has to declare what is good and what is bad, out of the realm of infinite possibilities, and, then, alone, by his own decision, has to withstand all the storms of an agonistic world, only he can utter that immortal phrase: this was my free will. We have saved humanity, staid in its religious morality, from the apathy of a world without ideals by giving it obligations and encouraging it to be brave. We have fended off the destruction that stems from the vacuous and baseless education of religious morality, and we have united a bewildered humanity behind a new, universal working class.5 The destructive turn, with its thousand-fold powers, has rejuvenated nature and society, but its tremendous achievement, which we admire, is that it has once again raised bright and brilliant ideals in the firmament of a declining age. 5 ‘Munkásságba’ can in this context denote either ‘working class’ or ‘project’.

Speech on the meaning of conviction6

Dear celebrating public! On 15 March 1848, a 25-year-old poet and some students and workers declared the revolution in Pest. However, in reality, the revolution was simply a determined and enthusiastic demonstration, which did not reckon either with the potential of the situation or with the real relations of power. Initially, the opposition leader of the lower house, Lajos Kossuth, described the demonstration as the work of an unemployed actor; then, when the joke became earnest, the reaction hurriedly brought bloody arguments to rescue the violated sanity. Stubborn reality overtook the hasty enthusiasm and polished it off with terror. Yet, despite this, we remember them and their political actions today with respect and admiration, because we can sense how events are connected in reality; we are aware, if partially, that the Hungarian revolution did not happen in vain, that the youth of March did not lift the people out of their helpless hesitation – turning them from fools into wise men – in vain, due to the fact that although they themselves were wise, they too could be fools! Today, we celebrate the memory of those students, whose hastiness expressed a prudence beyond all reasoning, and whose example is a greater lesson for posterity than all the works of the scientists who have, since then, offered their advice to humanity. Their foresight appears so remarkable that one wonders if they were even human, and today, the completeness of that eventual success, which crowned its victims, clearly illuminates for us the design of true greatness! We can say of them: their politics were simple, but they acted well! Let us now project history onto the canvas of the present and read what the writing tells us: It says that our political conscience has become more refined, because today we do not lead anyone to campaign for that which cannot be achieved, while our political knowledge has matured, for we have understood the objective preconditions of successful action. We are no longer quacks who seek to cure the fever that plagues society with fake drugs, but instead diagnose the causes of the fever – no matter if this will take a little longer to find! – and, by searching 6 ‘Beszéd a meggyözödésröl’, Szabadgondolat, 3.4 (1913): 27–32.

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for the path to progress in the empty formulae of theories and ideals, we have finally discovered political prestidigitation, and can recognise that we do not need to understand society’s heart but to examine its intestines. Not naively, like the old haruspices, but professionally, as taught by organic sociology. Thus, the time of childish slogans and abracadabra ideologies has come to an end, for we can now, through the aid of science, simply calculate the exchange rate of ideals from statistical tables … And yet, the results do not seem to have proved us right. We demonstrated to the world that it needs to change, but this did not cause it to change. And we cannot use force, for every educated person knows that force cannot be used to make things happen, they can merely be accelerated. As for the fact that some errors slipped into our calculations, that our enemies, on whom we ourselves relied, as so often, yet again turned out to be our enemies, is not the fault of the method, because Hungary’s industrial structure is such that we were forced to take a back seat and entrust them with our interests, while the structure of Hungarian agriculture is such that they were forced to betray us! … Green youth of March: an age that has lost its moorings turns to your simple example and, befitting your memory, acknowledges the truth: we engaged in politics scientifically, but we failed. Indeed it is true: there were few of them, they wanted to achieve great things, and yet they could still act. We are many, we are opportunistic in our goals, and yet, we are not capable of winning, or even of putting up a fight! Yet, the sun was not shining more brightly in the sky back then, people were not more selfless back then, and two times two equalled four back then too. Why is it, then, that our exasperation remains merely a pious rage and not a blazing enthusiasm, why does all pain strangle us and why do all grievances paralyse us, why does the thought of liberation not pulse from our brain to our heart, and why does the burning joy of the heart not leap onto the stage of action! Why, why are we not capable of acting, as they did?! Because, dear celebrating public, we are governed by misconceptions. We do not feel correctly, we do not act correctly. We have been misled, the compass of our instincts has become disoriented and our solid reality has been shaken. A fixation is blocking the living breath of our ideas; a ghost has turned the bravest into cowards. Our entire politics has been cursed by a damnable mistake. ‘But is it possible that the guiding idea of an entire group of people, an entire generation, is a mere mistake’ – the objection will be heard – ‘and if such an idea existed, could it really cause lasting damage or difficulties? Could a thought that was obliged to undergo the test of practice on a daily basis, and not be capable of passing this test, maintain its hold even for a brief period of time?’ ‘And’ – our philosophers will continue their questioning – ‘are not all ideas of an era just a fact like any other, something that exists and can be ascertained; can we then

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pass judgement as to whether they are right or wrong?’ ‘Are our dominant ideas not mere projections of our oppressed desires, and is it therefore not a mistake to believe that the ideals which appear to guide us actually exist and are effective?’ Behold, on a grey day sixty-five years ago, the youth of March, standing drenched and freezing in the rain, carried out a magnificent act through the simple heat of their souls, while today we are meditating on whether it is not by some mistake that the sun shines in the sky?! The human world turns between the poles of what is right and what is wrong, and what everyone understands is not allowed to be explained. For the patient, it is enough that he is cured. It is unnecessary for him to know from what and why. And even if he were to find out why we describe one condition as an illness and another as health when both, from a more elevated viewpoint, seem to be essentially the same, then such a patient is either not ill or he is like some madman who has made his peace with his suffering and is simply looking for an excuse to be able to carry on. In truth: the new, erroneous and damning idea – which, however, represents the alpha and omega of our entire politics, pervading and infusing every inch of it – is modern fatalism. ‘Society changes and develops by itself – so to say – and the role of politics is to facilitate this development’. Thus intones this oracle, of which – I dare to claim – there has been no more harmful and at the same time more meaningless example in the entire history of ideas. Its propositions are Delphic; they cannot be refuted by examples simply because they are too vague and ambiguous, and they cannot be convincingly disproved theoretically because they are founded upon flawed metaphysical concepts. It has resulted in politics once again becoming an arcane science, as it was in the time of the old theocracies, scientia occulta, whose arcana could be read in the texts of Sybilla.7 Like humble courtiers, with our ears glued to the wall and our eyes to the keyhole we spied upon the intentions that underlay the events, hoping that by imitating them we could present them – our faces as of liars – to the waiting masses as if they are our heartfelt inspiration: and, like the βοην αγαθον chiefs, ‘die Rufer im Streite’,8 they resigned themselves to the fact that the halls of history would not resound to their battle cries but, on the contrary, what sounds like our commands are merely the empty echoes of unfolding events! This fatalistic view never openly declared itself to be fatalistic. Indeed, it always protested against the accusation. In practice, it was simply inconsistent towards itself, and hence, whenever it was attacked for its theory it would refer defiantly to its praxis. 7 Sybilla, the name of a number of prophetesses consulted by ancient Greeks and Romans. 8 βοην αγαθον is a phrase that Polanyi may have adapted from Homer’s Iliad, where Aias calls Menelaos, referring to him as a good man. ‘Die Rufer im Streite’ means ‘The callers in the battle’.

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We should not be surprised that, in this way, we never succeeded in escaping from that false circularity, through which we always derived our goals from the development of society but would always leave their execution to the development of society, in the manner of those who perceive sociology as a form of timetable that will enable them to catch the next social movement that will propel them towards paradise. This fatalism, leavened by inconsistency, has caused us untold damage. Within it, we have been able to find a new panacea, one that immunises those who are injected with it against idealism, self-sacrifice, solidarity and similar contagious diseases. I am speaking to you, my student friends; it is from you that I expect to receive the strength to make myself understood. From you, who through your youth are the earthly representatives of immortality; in whose plan of life even the longest human ages can be routed, like a walk; who can trust in the righteous road, because you have time to walk it. From you, who in twenty long years from now will only be forty years old. Allow me to be your advocate, when I say that in our world, in the human world, it is not events but we ourselves who are the masters, and that it is not from objects that we need to learn what is to be done; that all the laws of nature and society can only enrich our knowledge but they cannot impoverish our will, and that in the moral world, our consciousness is not merely a companion of the physical world in a funeral procession that leads towards eternal peace, but the opponent and subjugator of death, which achieves self-mastery, lives and thinks. In this world there is neither gravity nor statistics; only one rule exists here and that is what conviction decrees and what the will vows! We need to do that which we see to be right and good, irrespective of whether we need to act in the direction towards which society is g­ ravitating or against it, whether the waves of events lift our ship or whether its troughs scare us. In the moral world there is no objectivism. We should not, in the manner of the half-educated, transpose what we have learned to be true in one setting to another, where it does not fit and is not true. According to sensory physiology, the mental takes place in tandem with the corporeal. According to historical materialism, the higher mental aptitudes are the products of economic conditions. And physiological chemistry seeks to describe life as a merely physical process. But these truths cannot even for a moment alter the basic axioms of other sciences; they cannot eliminate life from the life sciences, just as they cannot eradicate morality from moral science. We should not bring science into the passions, for that would be just as unscientific as those new metaphysicians who seek to bring the passions into science! The world of action is a world of its own. Technology is built on the laws of the natural world, it merely tells us how we should do that which we want to do, but what we want to do is determined by our needs. Similarly, political science

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is built on knowledge of society, but it is also only able to tell me how to do what I want to do, and not what I ought to want. The benefits that man derives from his convictions are immeasurable. Unconditional trust, which protects the spirit from continuous and unnecessary harassment, and keeps it fresh and intact; fidelity to the cause, which jealously collects memories of the heart and thereby multiplies their value; true moderation, which is not dejecting, for it is only the accumulation of secret reserves; absolute determination, with which even the weaker can overcome the stronger, if he puts all his weight behind it; and, above all, unlimited sacrifice, the sheer thought of which already increases our strength tenfold and makes our enemy blench … These are the gifts that the cornucopia of conviction bequeaths to its chosen ones. For human convictions may not be visible but are no less real for that. They exist as a prism, which lets through the light, turning it into a beautiful rainbow; they exist as a collecting lens, from which wan and indifferent sunshine is projected as a burning flame! But, alongside all of this, there is the true meaning of conviction; someone who has perceived it with his spiritual eye will not be able to imagine any greater or truer reality. For human convictions, when raised as a mass, constitute something ineffable, but which, however, is as strong as a diamond, and acts not as a mirror to the world but its foundations, walls and cupola. The convictions of the masses are no longer the beginning or a means, but the end and the goal. A society whose members have changed their convictions is a different society, in which the sun shines differently and objects cast a quite different shadow. Within the field of social labour, the most valuable act is to have conviction, for it touches directly the brain and the soul of society. He who transforms himself is the one who most greatly transforms society. Yes, let us understand and proclaim, independently of all new and old philosophies, that, within the circles of our moral life, the will is free, and that this freedom is, at the same time, the highest social obligation. Let us make ourselves great and true, and the cause that we serve will become great and true. We are young, the society of the future; our coming adulthood, with the reins of the present we govern the future and dictate the law to the men that we will become  … A youth which does not feel within itself the power to change the world is not worthy of living. You ought to rip down the cardboard coulisses of societal immutability, tear up the programmes, which were drawn up for the battle of history by weak souls, and step on to the stage of life wearing the blazing mask of conviction, like the hero who creates simply by existing! The fixations are dissolving, the ghosts are trembling, and you shall act just as they did!

A lesson learned9

The war’s first great campaign has taken place. The grass is still fresh on the tombs of our dead, painful images still sear our hearts. We have lost a battle. But our eyes have opened, and we shall never ever forget what we saw. The sincerity and good faith of our freethinking has survived. The reaction was able to show the importance not only of thinking freely but of acting freely. What we attacked, asking for reforms, it attacked, seeking its extermination. It did not criticise the traditional rights of the members of parliament, but instead dragged their defenders from parliament; it did not philosophise about the relativity of law and morality, but instead took it upon itself to eradicate these words from the vocabulary of public life. Tradition and honour, constitution and the rule of law … are mere modes of expression, fanciful stories. The reaction has taught us that there is something greater than revolutionary doctrines – and that is revolutionary practice! Not once did these men admit to themselves that their goal is futile, that the chariot of progress can never be halted and that he who steps in front of the hurtling train is doomed. They did not view it in this way; perhaps they did not think at all but instead, casting aside such considerations as if they were mere prejudices, halted the chariot of progress and loosened the railway tracks under the hurtling train of development to derail it. The evildoers were never deterred by the severity of the law, to our bitter disappointment, for we had assumed that they would be in awe of the unwritten laws of development. But the more that we delve into what it was that could have driven our enemies to their mean-spirited efforts, with which they razed everything, discarding all that they had, with such hypocrisy, defended hitherto (law and justice, tradition and morality), the more we have to ask ourselves, candidly and openly, why is it that we were not capable of a similar effort; why is it that we lost the battle without even actually having entered the fray? Why did we not, like them, base ourselves upon the iron foundations of extremism and rigidity, but instead, at all times, engaged on the shaky ground of fair-mindedness and conciliation? Why were we not, like them, able to bring into battle our entire material and 9 ‘Tanulság’, Szabadgondolat, 3.5 (1913): 169–72.

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moral existence, our bodily and spiritual selves, as the moment demanded; and why did we presume that a better and worthier age would come along, in the expectation of which we felt able to moderate our efforts? It is not enough to answer by saying that we were too weak to engage in battle, for there is not a goal of real value for which it is not worth taking the risk. Nor is it an adequate response to say that we adopted bad tactics and that our allies, with whom we ought to have united on the battle field, betrayed us before the climax; this is not an answer, because our poor tactics were not the cause of our defeatism but its consequence. There is only one answer that encompasses the entire truth and the whole lesson to be learned, and it identifies the flaws in our political education, in our entire intellectual and moral organisation. This is the only productive answer, for, of all pertinent phenomena, it is the only one that we can directly influence, and which we freethinkers have a duty to influence. A successful act depends upon an intellectual and emotional organisation that firmly and clearly separates our goals from our means. Nowhere is this clarification as difficult, and yet as important, as when our actions aim to change society, where we call the aim, morality and the means, politics. Precisely for this reason, we need not concern ourselves here with the objective connection between goals and means, which for the most part exists in reality, but, on the contrary, with the subjective autonomy of each, the complete and perfect separation of goals and means in consciousness. Mostly, it is true, we will recognise both ingredients, the objective connection between goals and means and their subjective independence from each other, and yet – if we had to choose – there is no doubt but that we should insist upon the latter. For it is possible, and often transpires, that the forces of the opposition have to wage political struggle even with objectively unsuitable means, and, morally, this struggle will not necessarily be unsuccessful; but it is certain that the goals, which we have deliberately defined as dependent upon our means, have no place in the moral world, and it is impossible to achieve any morally valuable success with them. Indeed, on this point, the statesman and politician encounter the most difficult task of their profession. They have to develop the end goals from within themselves, not looking to the mechanisms of means and methods that can lead to those goals, rather like someone who does not light a lantern for human beings but instead discovers a new planetary body in the sky. One such great end goal, to mention one that is close to our heart, is the ideal of progress, because in relation to it everything else of value is but a path. Of such goals, we can say that they are greater than the mere summation of our knowledge, and that they truly increase our power. Only goals of this type, situated above the realm of practicality and created at the outer limits of our emotions and imagination, only they can express our deepest desires, and with a refulgence and fullness that fills the spirit with sublime enthusiasm. For humanity – and this

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cannot be emphasised enough – is only capable of becoming enthusiastic for goals, and indeed only for goals that emerge from the very depths and ascend on the steepest gradient! It is on this ground that we have to search for the weaknesses and distortions of our political education. Over the last ten years we have been dedicated to the discovery of Hungary, but during this genuinely important enterprise the truth became obscured: that even on the most accurate economic and social atlas of Hungary we will find no symbol of the enthusiasm without which the map itself will remain nothing but a useless piece of paper. These ten years were dedicated to the study of movements which, under similar circumstances, occupied the landscape of foreign states, but, in the process, we forgot that the scheduled trains of social development will only set off when we ourselves stoke the locomotive’s engine. As a consequence of seeking out our goals on maps, researching movements from timetables, intestinal divinations, and organic sociology, when we believed that we heard the heartbeat of the nation, we were in fact merely hearing the ticking of tactics. This is why, when events took a decisive turn and we were dragged into the arena of decisions, we could hear from every corner – when it was already too late – the faint buzz of scientific and semi-scientific philosophising, the formal and semi-formal casting around for answers to the question: what is it that we want? But not even then did we comprehend the true goals, that, when sensed and driven on by will, geared to the occasion, and fought for, could have led to victory. On the contrary, we remained in guessing mode: what will happen? What will the dynasty do and what will result from the cholera; what will the party get up to and what about the Turks; what will happen in foreign policy and what about organic sociology; and all are agreed on the point that if we only manage to get this or that right, then it will also become clear what our goal is. In this way, we turned historical materialism, which, as a social-scientific current, is capable of providing a uniquely useful system for political methods, into a bedtime compendium of political goals, from which superstitious believers await enlightenment, in vain. Those, who, in a hopeless confusion of reality with their intentions, of the means with our goals, preach an intellectually and morally problematic fatalism, are doing the cause a grave disservice. For is it not fatalism to proclaim that politics is made not by men but by mysterious and invisible forces, whose nature has only been sociologically revealed to the slightest degree, such that our duty now is to pay them the most ardent attention, assuring them of our unwavering faith and, at worshipful gatherings known as dinner clubs, conveying our earnest desire that they will carry out their tasks. And are not those weeds also fatalism, which increasingly cover and entangle the hands and feet of the actors? It cannot be said of any theory – and this includes historical materialism – that it

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is beyond mere knowledge, that it is also a purpose, one that expresses goals and, if possible, also acts, on our behalf. Let us admit it, no grimmer circulus vitiousus can be envisaged than to derive our aims from the development of society and to then place our trust in their realisation on the development of society! ‘Society progresses automatically, and it is the duty of politics to accelerate this development’. We listen to theses such as this and then feign surprise when those who place their faith in the bureaucratic machinery of social development do not take seriously the task that remains, of exhortation. Or do they truly believe that to demonstrate their thesis it is enough to name check the working-class movement, the international achievements of which have apparently been guided by Delphic oracle? This would be a superficial approach. The working class does not require theoretical explanations as to why it should act; its poverty suffices for this. Conversely, the bourgeoisie – which, ultimately, is not an oppressed class but simply an unnoticed class – does need a theory explaining why it should act, given that the overwhelming bulk of its members find not only their material but also their social and moral situation relatively tolerable. And such a theory must be based upon one, and only one, approach: boldness and steadfastness of purpose. What might have been achieved by a camp trained for battle by a decade of purposeful political education! What might we have done, if we had perceived ourselves not as a mere effect of immutable circumstances but as a substantial element within the battle of forces! What a vital role would this kind of selfconscious group have been able to play during an age of general disintegration, uncompromisingly marching towards its strictly defined goals! And would we not have been able more successfully to pit our wills against the unfavourable conditions if we had recognised that, ultimately, these are nothing but our enemy’s will! Perhaps the greatest lesson learned from the unproductive withdrawal that we suffered, and from the storm of violence that passed over us, was: that not even our bountiful knowledge can free us of the responsibility of free and autonomous decision; that we ought not to search for the meaning of events, but should recognise and realise our own intentions; and, finally, that we need to educate ourselves not to the calculating deliberation of means but to a selfless love for firmly established goals.

The calling of our generation10

A generation is born into history when it becomes aware of its calling. And the value of each generation depends upon the degree to which it has actually fulfilled its calling. Should it not recognise its unique task, should it or could it not undertake that task, it will repeat the fate of the bad and lazy servant who was unable to invest the talent he had been given. Such generations are only kept on record in the civic registers and the tax rosters, they have no home except among the calendar years. History does not know them. Such generations never come to life, for they fail to recognise the task that would have governed their life. What is the calling of our generation? It has fallen to us, as our fate, to witness humanity’s most critical trial. To the individual of our times this is a blow to be endured, but to the whole generation it is a calling to which it must rise. This generation is witness to the greatest moral event since the time of the crusades and the Reformation. In times like these, every minute harbours more elements of recognition and revelation than centuries of purblind and complacent years. At such times we catch glimpses of those hidden failings in the structure of the soul that had been hidden away, securely encased in the closed epochs. The spirit of man, moved by its sense of shame, seeks the right path and finds it. For moral progress is the only open, certain and direct road towards inner growth and perfection. And neither is there a more valuable or reliable guarantee of this progress than the sense of shame; nor is there any greater or more obvious calling for today’s generation than bearing witness to our great shame. 1. Before long, even the bare events will stand in need of testimony. Later generations will find it difficult to believe even the most obvious facts of our age. For instance, they will not believe that the outbreak of the Great War could have taken the civilised world wholly by surprise; that at its outset public opinion actually held the ineptness of diplomacy to be the sole cause of the catastrophe; that the catastrophe occurred at precisely the time that the general mood and intent for such a contest, among the public, was already waning; that, in spite of this, enthusiasm was greatest at the beginning, 10 ‘A mai nemzedék hivatása’, Szabadgondolat, 8.4 (1918): 37–46.

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because people accepted the fact that there is, after all, a war on, just as surely as, beforehand, they had been convinced of its impossibility. We ourselves can scarcely believe all this to have been so; how will epochs in the distant future credit it? To a mankind long used to peace, the war was impossibility incarnate, an exotic adventure – in which, however, everybody had to participate. And since every country was an aggressed one, the socialists rightly spoke of a defensive war. And so the universal defensive war raged on. Later, war itself came to stand for greatness and value, being both new and a renewer of things. The great sacrifices created the ‘great times’, and subsequently became only greater and greater … Later the question arose, what exactly was the war’s purpose? Many people failed to understand the question or replied that it was too early to raise it. Thus, they did not regard it as a mission, but rather as some aimless compulsion to which we all were subject. It was not being carried out for any aim, but would come to a halt at some point. In this, we see the ‘meaning’ of the war. ‘War of races’, the ‘Eastern Question’, ‘Anglo-German rivalry’, the ‘Baghdad railway’, ‘Belgium’s integrity’, ‘Mitteleuropa’, ‘Encirclement’, ‘American hegemony over Europe’, ‘Alsace-Lorraine’, ‘the ascendance of the yellow race’, ‘the struggle of democracy against autocracy’, ‘Freedom of the Seas’ – each and every one of them, at one time or another, stood for the ‘meaning’ of the Great War, which, ‘in the nature of things’, ‘evidently’ was bound to terminate, now in the West, now in the East, now in terms of blood, now in terms of gold, of nerves, of shipping lanes, now in one tremendous battle, now in attrition and fighting to the last man, now in the annihilation of one side, now in a stalemate. These slogans stood in no relation whatsoever to one another; rather, they were mutually exclusive. They changed as a matter of fashion and one and the same section of the public would subscribe now to one, now to the other or a third, or a fourth of the ‘meanings’, in which they thought to have found the solution to the conundrum. According to whether the reports from the battlefields were positive or not, people’s entire Weltanschauung, their basic outlook on the moral and social terrain, would swivel to its diametric opposite. Distinguished publicists would, out of deep conviction, change their philosophical and sociological views on a monthly basis. And at the same time no one had any clear notion of how the war had even been possible. The feeling never quite passed that in our world the war was an impossibility. And because everybody was essentially thinking in such terms and no one understood – that is, the war was not credited with more reality than one would ascribe to some terrible, abiding delusion – the general expectation was that it ought really to come to an end by itself, namely at any time, if not right now then as soon as possible … ‘It’s amazing that it has lasted so long’, people would say. Although it was the people themselves who had been holding out, holding the fronts, their general feeling was always that things somehow ran in reverse. But no one was quite sure how.

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2. Posterity will not be able to comprehend the basic mindset of our time. In this confused and unprecedented climate of opinion, the individual soul fell prone to a truly peculiar condition. It was a sickly condition, pertaining to a public mood so painful and pervasive that none but the most insensitive was immune to it. It was from this mental sickness that the soldiers on the frontline suffered most, as did the prisoners and the more sensitive people in the hinterland: women, as well as many men. But who would not have suffered under it? It was something akin to what doctors diagnose as depressive melancholia: the spirit is dejected, yet restless; consciousness, ever narrowing, revolves helplessly around one fixed point. That one point was the war. In times to come, people will not believe that the war’s greatest evil was neither destitution nor injuries, nor sickness nor strain, but that peculiar, elusive presence that crippled the soul under the horizon of the world war. And even less shall it be understood – for even today it is known only to a few – that the true cause of this dreadful condition lay not in privations or other wartime miseries, insecurities or perils, but in something quite different. This torment was the soul’s torment over existence that had lost its meaning. Man cannot live in a world whose meaning he can only search for in vain. Individual man, dumbfounded, kept gazing at the colossal catastrophe. There he stood, in its very midst, unware of its cause and unable to search for its purpose; not knowing of himself whether he was an actor in it or a mere spectator, and whether it had been enacted for or against him. One thing and one thing only he knew with unsurpassed clarity: the existence or non-existence of the war in no way depended upon his own volition – yet, throughout the war, everyone was constantly invoking himself and his will. The hero on the front line was carrying out his will, and the enemy, when justifying his actions, referred to his will; the fate of the whole world, it seemed, depended upon his will. In vain did he sense that this was sheer delusion and had no reality at all; that he could have neither intention nor will within a world which for him had no meaning. Yet, he himself no longer knew what he wanted and whether his actions were the outcome of his own will or that of others, and if of others, who were they? The sheer magnitude of the war also harboured contradictions that confused the mind. War is a means to an end. But the war and the armies of today cannot be that. The armies of the past, numbering a couple of thousand men, related to the state they defended as a part relates to the whole. It is always rational to sacrifice the part to save the whole. But in this war everyone was a soldier, and for they who did not happen to be soldiers, their freedom was subject to as grave constraints as if they had been: their property to as many risks, their life to as many hardships. The war of mutually starving out whole peoples spared neither women nor children. Nearly as many infants died in this war as adult males. No longer were there ends and means. We risked the whole and did not

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stop at sacrificing the whole – for the sake of the whole. This clearly defies sense and understanding. For it could be justified only by ends more important than the whole, more important than the life, property, welfare and happiness of the whole. But such ends could be found only through implementing some absolute moral truth, in complying with a moral dictate, which stands above anything and everything … To the soul that lacks a sense of direction, life is not liveable: for the burden of the times must either be assumed by ourselves as a sacrifice we want to make, or the vicissitudes of the epoch must be endured as an elemental disaster, a senseless calamity. Only he who is moved by a will, who does not feel the bumps on the road, and he who is suffering, who walks with humility – only he can tread the path. But one must choose between the two. He who wavers shall find no place for repose, for the soul finds rest only in the active will or in passive endurance. The sufferings of the present, uninformed generation were thus endless, beginning anew at every station at which it faltered. In the end, the tormented soul was numbed, its consciousness sedated. Each awakening brought on a new pain, each realisation brought new dejection. This is how today’s generation has lingered, unsure of itself. Not only can we not live in a world devoid of meaning, we cannot even adequately describe it. Better ages to come shall never learn the simple truth, that one of the gravest afflictions of the Great War, both in the hinterland and in the trenches, was boredom – the boredom of a world without meaning. It resembled what a man must feel scanning the endless lists of draws in a lottery, although he well knows that his ticket – his fate – is contained therein. There was nothing that the imagination could have grasped. The most famous battlefields, the most heroic divisions, remained beyond imagination. Epic battles, month-long struggles, changing details of besiegement, new methods of warfare, world-historical turning points – it was all mere newsprint. Many people even stopped reading the newspapers, or they would skip the war reports. The suggestive power of this mood was such that minds given to paradoxes began to profess that the whole affair, seeing that it amounted to nothing, was not worth taking note of. Posterity, when news of this tedium reaches it, will put it down either to some particularly frivolous or heroic attitude; the more objective minds perhaps to the excessive complexity of events. Reality, however, is utterly different. Just as before, people were interested in everything that carried meaning. Gossips and intrigues; a fight put up by the weaker; persecution of the innocent, these all animated public opinion much as before. People were far more interested in a single concealed little lie than in the most gigantic truth on which they were unable to ponder. Moral courage still gave rise to heroes, and while combatants in their millions perished namelessly there were also people dedicated to peace, whose names all Europe knew. The death by fire of a small child, left alone while

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its mother was queuing for bread would be more volubly discussed than the day’s news from the front … But this explanation will remain our own secret. To posterity the image of our time will come down in ready-made clichés: colourful, in sharply drawn contours. History records only the winning numbers. Who will be able to imagine the dread dullness of an unending drawing of numbers, and will believe that on the frontline it was boredom that killed the souls … 3. There was no escape from such a world. It would have been futile for people to try to withdraw into the closed realm of their professions, hoping to find their feet in the accustomed world of familiar duties. Work and its reward, exertion and its earnings – all that had changed. In some undefined and unfathomable way everything had changed and was no longer what it used to be. The old functions and duties in society, the traditional roles in the state, all the natural relations of humanity became muddled and confused. An acute sense of insecurity entered into the lives of individuals. The conscience of the governing circles could never be secure, for during the war it was impossible to govern. Chance decreed the fate of programmes. Those destined to lead were leading only in appearance. In reality they were stumbling along in the wake of events, which they, like others, only apprehended from the daily bulletins from the battlefields. Yet they had to display greater determination than ever, pretending to be conscious of their aims – but without any purpose or aim. This lie poisoned the whole of public life, yet nothing could be done about it, for it was covered up by complex appearances. The government, meanwhile, had to look on helplessly while its powers increased incessantly. Its growing influence was not so much due to its successes as its failures. This sort of enhanced responsibility was hardly invigorating; rather it was confusing and depressing for governments. Small wonder that they tried all they could to devolve power. Continuity in internal politics also gave birth to new, immoral phenomena. The government continued to derive its mandate from the confidence vested in it by public opinion; the same confidence whose fostering was regarded as a prime task of government; a task the control of which, ultimately, rested with public opinion…. In this house of mirrors one could not but lose the way. Ostensibly, the whole machinery of domestic politics remained in operation, with all its party paraphernalia and trap doors. And the ministry, the inner circle of which might just have been deliberating the likely exigencies of the foreign policy situation – whether to introduce democracy or erect an autocracy? – even as it haggled over bills presented by the old cliques, patching up obsolete institutions and carefully collecting and counting up the votes needed for its majority – all this for the sake of appearances, devoid of faith or conviction. The decisions were made elsewhere. The government, public opinion and the parties were engaging in politics under the wheels of the ‘satanic mill’ …

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During the time of the Burgfriede11 the opposition currents had also lost their raison d’être, but like much else that lost its justification in these times that did not mean they ceased to exist. The war was the greatest calamity of the age, yet of all issues it was the only one they did not oppose. However, it was an open secret that the opposition parties had only suspended their criticism, they had not renounced it. Hence, their importance derived from the criticism they might have exercised but in point of fact did not. They then claimed this selfrestraint as a bonus point. Thus, it was always the party most opposed to the war which had the greatest merit, its self-restraint being greatest. And if they openly admitted that they, like so many others, were carried away by the public mood, they would not only have lost their following but would also have become less useful for the government. Thus, by pretending to oppose the war, the oppositions benefited. And had they changed their conviction to secretly support the war (which in fact by and large was the case), they would have admitted all this, but would have continued to pretend to be acting against their convictions, for the sake of the national interest. This, as a matter of fact, was considered laudable by all, themselves included. The working and revenue-earning strata were equally discomfited. Initially, they closed down their shops and readied themselves for business closures and unemployment. They waited and endured. They waited for all goods and raw materials to run out and for the war to stop. But the war trumped them. Instead of ending growth, it forced a great boom, notwithstanding the all but complete dearth of raw materials. Only shoddy goods could be supplied, to be sure, for good merchandise was absent. To deliver poor quality goods, however, was a gamble: it could bring a medal or a prison term. The merchant’s occupation became almost as risky as the frontline soldier’s. The notorious Krantz,12 in the great trial against war profiteers, took his stand before his judges in Vienna as a hero. Except, this kind of risk did not bring true glory – for it was too lucrative. The many new riches, easily come by, in turn belied the fairy-stories of thrift and abstinence, throwing doubt and uncertainty on the glories even of long-established fortunes. Also in regard to war aims it was the bourgeoisie that was most interested, and they were the ones most seriously disturbed by the incessant shifting of material and moral aims. For justice, right and honour are one thing, markets, contingencies and oil wells are another. The former spell enthusiasm and sacrifice, the latter profit and calculation, but these two kept alternating in the minds, as peak and trough alternate in the vibrations of sound – their endless oscillations merging into one great moral dissonance. Yet even business could be a war aim only insofar as the war was worth the material sacrifice 11 Burgfriede: an enforced state of truce. 12 Cf. Peter Drucker, Adventures of a Bystander (Transaction, 1999), 4

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brought for it. Once war itself becomes business, its aims determined simply in order to prolong business, even the most primitive moral code is turned on its head. Even the businessman’s well-trained, practical eye was dizzied by its alternate focusing upon the immediate present and the distant future. At times, prospective peace appeared as the only reality that might bring a continuation of the customary methods of work; at other times he was snatching at the chances that the moment offered, and all else faded away. And, depending on whether he expected his business to thrive through war or through peace, the entire personality underwent a change. Incidentally, he did not feel safe even on his home ground: the devil of the exchange-rate was ubiquitous. The more money he earned, the less his wealth was worth. He was being encouraged to buy war bonds by the argument that they will mop up his ready cash, and what remained would be worth more than the whole of it otherwise would be. Thus, state credit was based upon a lack of confidence, the state itself providing war loan subscriptions as a kind of usury with which the patriot could exploit the state. The confusion of the bourgeoisie was complete. The peasant was ceaselessly shedding blood and continually getting richer; thus, he himself no longer knew what was good and what was evil. Out of blood came fortune, fabulous riches out of the country’s dire misery. As long as he was the loser, the peasant considered himself a patriot; now he has lost his moral foundations. Now, for the first time, he fully understood the voice of selfinterest, and came to know temptation. Lacking all social education, he failed ignominiously. The cheaper his own life was on the front, the more expensive he made the lives of others at home. His naked self-interest conquered everything it came up against: ideals, the common good, the nation. But it was the proletariat that fell into the gravest moral crisis upon the outbreak of the war, for only its policies rested upon a worldview; only it applied higher moral standards to its conduct. It could well have been its worldhistorical debut on to the stage of history … All eyes were upon it. And then, in the face of a world tense with expectation, before the eyes of all, something happened which dumbfounded it, something that it never fully grasped. Its true meaning revealed itself as sheer disappointment, a disappointment so tragic that no ideal can survive it. For it had been expecting, and ardently believed, that on the day of the outbreak of the world war the bourgeois world would awaken to the Internationale. ‘The international capitalist syndicate, which incites the peoples against one another’ would find itself up against the closed ranks of peoples, having achieved maturity. Instead, it was the proletariat that awoke: to the fact that all peoples, including itself, were burning in the sinful fevers of war; that memories, emotions and solidarities long thought dead had arisen, and were prevailing against its own intentions, hopes and better selves … But there was more to come. Another pleasant, but all the more discomfiting,

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turning point lay in wait: the predicted dire consequences of the great refusal did not materialise. It had been assumed that all the horrors of war would fall upon the proletariat. In that case, at least a consciousness of the deserved sufferings would have kept alive the agonising shame over the sin committed against itself, and this consciousness would have been the guarantor of a brighter future. Instead, to its stupefaction, the proletariat found itself among those privileged in the war. The organised working class proved indispensable in keeping the war industry going. Its unions, press and leadership turned into essential ingredients of the wartime state machine. The very rationale of the war excused them from paying tribute in blood, allowing them to remain at their places of work. While the unorganised masses, the rabble and the patriotic poor, were plagued and decimated in the trenches and by starvation, the elite of the international working class were treated with consideration. They were not the greatest losers of the war; and so faded even the last hope of some later repentance which, after the great volte-face, might still at least have saved the continuity of revolutionary tradition. 4. Such was our epoch, this generation was our generation. It never knew where it stood, whence it came, and where it was going. It could not command the situation, for it found the nature of the emergency to be unclear. The suffering could not be pure and great, because it had no meaning. Blood was cheapened, bread was dear, sickness a physical advantage and money, for which people would give everything, bought nothing. There was no common denominator with which to measure the world. Question marks were raised over health, wealth, bread, homeland and all. A world that had lost everything received one thing in exchange, something that could make it rich. So rich, indeed, that even a mere intimation of it was a moving experience, and humanity was enlightened by a new consciousness of abundance: rich in the profound and definite disenchantment that an entire generation had undergone, rich in shame – so torturing and creative. The new revelation hit us like an epiphany. All the flaws of the past, its empty slogans, its nurtured prejudices, its idle assurances, its cynical affectations of seriousness, and its entire criminal negligence lay open before us – and we understood. What became evident to us was not how we could have avoided the war but that everything that we had done until now had contributed to making it unavoidable. What we perceived was not who was to blame, but that we all were. If mankind could have cast this revelation into an institution, the United States of the World would have been born in a single day. But all this merely appeared to the souls in flashes, as the fleeting recognition of a single moment. Meanwhile, the years were passing over the generations, neither greater nor smaller in stature than usual; their souls continued to be ruled by the old powers. These powers had one guiding idea, one ardent desire: to erase these revelations and disenchantments, to falsify

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them, denying their existence. The truth, however, may be understood in a flash, but it cannot be so quickly forgotten. Deep in their souls, everyone felt that the pain of these initial disillusionments was the final human and valuable pain suffered in the war; that with the outbreak of the war, history had delivered its message: what comes after is mere repetition … the lesson, in turn, will be that of humanity, which has suffered for it. And that lesson will be the heritage of the ages. 5. These great lessons, which are hidden in our times, cost millions of lives. To internalise them, to grasp them fully, will be the labour of the next generation. But we must never forget that it is our shame that will make their minds and souls amenable to the task and it will be our disenchantments that shall open their eyes. The heritage of humanity rests upon our true and candid witness. We will have to overcome two kinds of obstacles. One is temptation, which we will have to suppress within ourselves; the other is the dangers coming to us from others. First and foremost we have to resist the temptation to forget. We must give objective form to the ephemeral present in word and in writing, in poetry and prose, in art and science – so that its truth cannot be washed away by time. We must faithfully guard its memory, much as Moses when he set in stone the Ten Commandments with solemn words, decreeing everlasting memory to be the law. We must resist the distorting perspective of looking backwards. In retrospect everything seems to take on meaning and justification. But this semblance is misleading. To give in to the temptation of this semblance would be enough to undo our calling. Therefore, let us very clearly understand that the spiritual reality to which we bear witness exists nowhere save in the present. From inside we can only glimpse the present age once: here and now. Finally, we must resist the temptation of glorification, which posterity will bestow upon a chosen generation such as that of today. We shall be judged by our epoch. If, then, our epoch was great, we shall be considered great. And we shall be asked what these times were like, for it is we who witnessed them. Our honour and glory in the eyes of posterity therefore depends upon ourselves. But we must not falter and we must take responsibility for the truth, for the sake of our calling. We shall faithfully proclaim the nature of this our generation: we, the contemporaries of world war. This last ordeal will be the hardest test of all. When we shall have conquered, one by one, the temptations of forgetting, of looking back, and of glorification, we shall then encounter the dangers that come from others. One common feeling, one common fear holds the world today and all its historical forces in its grip: that it is the end!, the end!, the end! – that irretrievably, this world of theirs has passed. And one common will, one common

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determination is at work, hidden and secretly, in this moribund world, in all its governments and all its oppositions, its science and its religion, its culture and its civilisation – one sinful hope is rife in the minds of its ruling spirits – that in spite of all and everything, they shall prevail, they shall forget everything, they shall silence everyone, rip the revealing pages from the book of history and continue as the rulers of the world – without faith and conviction! Woe to him who has been an unwanted witness to the humbling of the mighty. For, should he wish to testify how things transpired, the powerful will turn on him with a common effort. And they will sanctify the present, in order to make it inaccessible to those who search for the truth, and the heretics who shall believe the true witnesses will be ostracised. For the inestimable interests of the world’s old-established priests demand that posterity shall never hear of today’s Revelation; that no word shall filter through to them of any voice that was heard by an entire generation in the era of blood; that we all have heard the Word that spoke thus to us in the epoch of disillusionment and shame: ‘Cease the worship of idols. See where the false gods have led you. Bear eternal witness to the shame of the present, and you shall find the true path’. Our generation must unite behind this lesson.

Oration to the youth of the Galilei Circle13

It was ten years ago that a newly formed student circle dedicated its 15 March celebration14 to an unknown poet. Both the poet and the circle were known by only a few people, and those who happened to know their names had heard only words of ridicule and slander in connection with them. Preaching a new faith to the public, in a language that it found incomprehensible, the poet sought a new martyrdom. He repudiated and cursed what people here call the fatherland, considering his home to be instead among the outcasts of the Earth. It was ten years ago, at a celebration dedicated to this same poet, that a section of Hungarian intellectuals – who by virtue of their youth would become the poet’s destined audience – set forth on their way. The vilified and stigmatised student group was the Galilei Circle. The name of the derided, ridiculed and persecuted poet was Endre Ady. To the poet, then in exile in a foreign land, these first echoes of his words came as a blessing. As he once said, it gave him power and encouragement, and he always remembered it with gratitude. But the event was also a critical moment in the history of the Galilei Circle. It was not by coincidence that his first disciples came not from a literary or poetry association, but from the youth. For Ady did not merely announce a new trend, but a new epoch. The audience for literary trends is conditioned by individual inclinations and temperament – the poet of a new epoch can only be adopted by a new generation. It was Ady who wrote the prelude to the world revolution. The generation to which he spoke was the revolution’s chosen generation. For five years, the poet’s songs accompanied the battles of the youth. For five years the youth, the Janissaries of his songs, went from one fight to the next. Then he came, already an ailing man, to the youth’s 15 March celebrations and bade them farewell with the following lines: And now, young brothers of my heart, forgive your old and eternal man for not being able to say more today – for more would not be more loving or better – and let him 13 ‘Szózat a Galilei Kör ifjúságához’ (1919). The original text is in Karl Polanyi, Fasizmus, demokrácia, ipari társadalom (Gondolat Kiadó, 1986), 180–6. 14 The national day of Hungary, in celebration of the 1848 Revolution.

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go in peace. The older brother of your young hearts now beats as if a youth and wishes that he would never be torn away from you; from the youth, the truth, the revolution.

Endre Ady was truly the poet of the revolution. Against the insoluble discord of human existence, human spirit defends itself in two ways. By placating and forgetting the disharmonies of existence with songs of beauty – this is the method of the great Sedators: the Canticles, Homer, Goethe or János Arany.15 But there are also those whose calling it is to magnify our consciousness of the unbearable aspect of human existence, to burst the searing shackles of ancient structures in order to envelop the spirit in less tormenting bonds and braces. They are the great dispensers of Consciousness, mankind’s Awakeners. It is poet-awakeners, such as Jesaiah and Tyrtaeus,16 Jesus, Byron, Pushkin and Petöfi, who kindle revolutions. The contemporaries who misunderstand this, and, seeing their influence confined within narrow historical frames, believe that their purposes exhausted themselves in the revolutions inspired by them. Yet Tyrtaeus’ song elevates every vanguard to humanity’s most noble heights, not only his country’s sons, of whom he sang, but also the man who calls no country his own. And the words of Jesus, ‘Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the Earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn the man against his father, and the daughter against her mother’, stand for all that is eternally resolute within every spiritual truth, not merely for the revolt against the tetrarch for which he was executed. Endre Ady is also one of the great Awakeners who instil the revolution of life into the life of the soul. They live on beyond each revolution, since they themselves are the revolution incarnate. Yet misunderstandings are perennial: contemporaries interpret the flashes of lightning that are discharged from the tensions in the poet’s soul according to whichever chance historical event serves as a lightning conductor. And when the lightning has struck, they fall back into their slumber, now called wakefulness. But the misunderstanding between the poet and his age is at its most tragic when – as today – he is born into an unbelieving epoch, an epoch that denies the reality of the soul, of the idea and the spirit. Ady did not want to serve his era by asking for orders and directives, but by giving them. He wrote: I could drum up councils, if I wished, And command them before the troops Loud Dózsa and the prolific Jacques Bonhomme.17 15 János Arany: poet, journalist and friend of Petőfi. 16 Tyraeus: an ancient Greek poet. Legend has it that his songs inspired the Lacedaemonians to victory in war. 17 György Dózsa: Hungarian martyr, who led a sixteenth-century peasants’ revolt. Jacques Bonhomme (alias Guillaume Cale, Jack Goodfellow): French peasant, leader of a fourteenthcentury Jacquerie.

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These are the words of eternal Awakeners. But we, the children of these times, have different beliefs. We hold that history is not made by individuals. Individual views, individual wishes and desires are of no account; reality is the creation of the collective destiny alone. The longings and laments of the isolated soul do not exist for us; we only believe in the reality of society, we only believe in impersonal facts. We believe that capital exists, and labour, war, economic crisis and class war. And we believe that they and they alone constitute the life of man. And yet, my brothers, we have come together here to mourn a strange man, a reckless rhymester, who dreamt that we are the synod whom he had drummed into being, and that he was sending Hungary her rebels, her Dózsas. And behold, we truly mourn him and are holding a mourner’s convocation to follow his directions and to honour his memory. He is our leader. For we believe that only society is real, the individual does not exist. The poet’s yearnings, desires and laments are individual, so individual that only the mood’s imaginings, racing along on the wings of the rhyme can take us to the realms where such yearnings can be understood. He is the leader of souls. And, ultimately, we, the people of this age, believe that the fate of the human soul, including the soul of the poet, is laid down in the reality of society. That the measurable and enumerable facts of the external world are the foundation of society which sets the frame upon which all inner life is stretched. The fate of ideas depends upon the course of society’s development and the significance of dreams and fantasies depends upon the direction of economic progress. We believe that the torch ahead is but the reflected gleam of the revolutionary fires that smoulder in the masses, that the poet’s battle cry is a mere echo of society’s seismic rumblings. We believe that the world is driven not by our passions, but the world sets our passions going; we believe that we do not shape the reality of life according to our ideas, but that our ideas and consciousness are mere reflections of real life. But, mark, we only believe that we believe all this. For the heroic and majestic struggle between the reality of society and the poet’s consciousness cannot be a mere mirage; nothing in fact is more real than it. For this struggle is pain and exertion, creative will, vivid vision. This struggle startles us, and the shock is real, it is within us. Or could it be that only the tears which our pain brought forth were real? And that our pain, which was there, deeply rooted, even before, was mere delusion? But what sense is there to speak of a mirage if there is no reality, and what would reality be if not the wrestling of the poet’s soul and our awe-struck mourning as we weep for the hero? So, ultimately, we believe that mankind must adjust to the realities of society, that the external objects are the reality and that science is the guiding light within them. We believe that not men but circumstances made the war; that responsi-

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bility and guilt for it lies not with us human beings but with circumstances, and that therefore not we ourselves but the circumstances should change. The creed of our times is that human existence in itself is devoid of significance, the creed of humankind today is that it does not actually exist at all. For we believe, with a grimly determined faith, that we are the chosen generation of unbelievers who will reach the promised land of unbelief, the world of perfect institutions and contrivances. This is the faith of the unbelievers: just let everybody say this or that; just let everybody vote this way or that; only shoot so-and-so, and everything will be fine and perfect, without us having to change ourselves. What the believer says is this: I shall change, and everything will change. If I were to change but a little, my world would already be not quite the same; and if others were also to change, the whole world would be genuinely different. And I shall assess acts according to how well they serve my transformation. Yet, dear congregation, we only believe that we are unbelievers, for, while professing unbelief, behold, we lower the flag of mourning to the hero of belief, the poet, and we ourselves are trying to follow his example on the road of selfsacrifice. In secret, we have also changed, for in secret we all are believers. No science can alter, but can only affirm the truth that the bird flies not in accordance with the law of gravity but in spite of it; that the tree does not spread its foliage according to the law of economic maximisation but according to the law of creative abundance; that society rises to higher spiritual levels not in accordance with material interests but in disregard of them; and that human faith and self-sacrifice bear us aloft not by the downward-bearing gravitational force of material interests but by force of the hallowed laws of the spirit which defy them! Ady wrote ‘The tree of necessity’ [A kényszerűség fája]: I knew not what I was, I wanted to be an accusation, No, not an accusation, but an alert And as a beautiful example My poor, tame head Is blossoming, bearing fruit. Oh, me, obligatory Order, The headstone of denial, From rogue to Holy Father, Oh, poor, poor, me, From insurgent to partisan, Seditious usurer.

Endre Ady, you restored faith to an unbelieving generation, you showed the path to those who had lost their way. The Time, which you read in the eyes of the children, has come:

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And the Earth begin to move and seethe.

The Earth has begun to move and to seethe. But as long as there are Hungarians, and a Hungarian youth, we, the Hungarian barbarians of the great revolution, in the darkness of our souls, will look towards you and say: ‘you did not sing for us in vain’.

The resurrection of Jesus18

The more we get to know about the history of humanity, the more astonishing one aspect becomes: its brevity. The supposedly ancient cultures of India, China and Mexico turned out to be mythical. Before Egypt, there were settlements worthy of mention only in Mesopotamia. But beneath the ruins of Ur and Eridu we can already see the traces of Stone Age man. In this area, human history dates back no more than 10,000 years. Before that, there were no people on Earth who surpassed the level of the savages of Borneo. Oswald Spengler’s basic error is that he does not take this circumstance into account. That is why he can deny, and does deny, that the history of mankind is the history of human progress. To this day, the causes that started this progress are unknown. Essentially, they can be explained by changes in the climate, which made possible the settlement and reproduction of people. World history was most probably initiated by economic forces. Looking back on this history, we can distinguish between two periods: the period before the birth of the world religions and the period after it. The period of transition between the two stretches from the seventh century before the birth of Christ to the seventh century after it. Confucius, Lao-Tse, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed all lived in this short time span.19 Before it, the idea of a common fate of humanity was unknown. The essence of the establishment of religions lay in proclaiming the creation of a new order to replace the traditional order of power, wealth or ritual: a common order of all human beings based on living individual self-consciousness. That is why there is no greater figure in the history of the white race than Jesus of Nazareth, and why his life and death is more important than the life and death of any other human being of whom we are thus far aware. Although an almost infinite distance separates us from the era when the teachings of mutual support and love become a realistic foundation of human life, even so, it is equally true – and easily overlooked – that a similar vastness gapes between our world, which is the driving force behind this idea, and the history before 1 8 ‘Jézus feltámadása’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (5 April 1923). 19 One may note the resemblance to Karl Jaspers’ ‘Axial Age’.

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the birth of Jesus, in which it did not exist. The Gospels show with convincing realism that Jesus himself was fully aware of his revolutionary mission. He foresaw his death as a martyr; indeed, he hastened his own death. His weak body could withstand the agonies of the cross for only a few hours. His last words, which the Greek texts have preserved from the Hebrew original, were desperate cries. His final minutes were darkened by the doubt of whether he died on the cross?! Jesus knew what we know today from the Gospels, that none of his followers understood his teachings. The Jews considered him to be the Messiah, who would defeat every enemy with otherworldly help. They did not understand that the powers of earthly man come from the earth, and thought that he was capable of realising the kingdom of heaven on Earth. And when he died, proving his fate to be that of any ordinary mortal, his unbelieving followers permanently denied him by proclaiming that he had been resurrected. This legend of the resurrection was the first step in that counterrevolution which, with varying degrees of success, has waged a struggle against Jesus’ revolutionary appearance for nearly two thousand years. Later, the Catholic Church also joined this counterrevolutionary movement, monopolising Jesus’ teachings for the benefit of the powerful and doing everything in its power to falsify the social and democratic meaning of his teachings and concealing them from the wider masses. But the legend of Jesus’ physical resurrection, which later became the basis of Christian dogma, was unable to prevent the resurrection of Jesus’ spirit. All the various social, economic and political formations since then have only managed to be durable to the degree that they proved to contribute to the development of equality, freedom and human solidarity. And ultimately, the achievement of a relatively fair and more humane society will require the mobilisation of conscience. The cultural activity of medieval Christianity, the advance of the Reformation, the French Revolution and modern socialism all bear witness to the fact that ever more people are becoming aware of the common fate of humanity in ever more distant and clearer objectives. Only the forces of reaction, which crucified Jesus and poisoned his ­teachings, are too blind to see the signs of the time. In vain do they proclaim on Easter Sunday from countless pulpits that Jesus was not human, for, behold, he was resurrected from the dead. In vain do they teach that not only the kingdom of Jesus, which he himself rejected, but also the kingdom of justice is not of this world. In vain do they attempt to drive a wedge between Jesus and his people. In vain. The tens and tens of millions in the camp of socialism are the living proof that the forces of reaction will not triumph. This army of common people are sustained and infused by the gradually emerging spirit of peace, justice and humanity. They are the bearers of world history today, for in them the spirit of Jesus’ teachings has been resurrected in the clearest possible way.

Part II Political ideas and ideologies

The crisis of our ideologies1

‘The consciousness of men is determined by their social existence’. 1. The ruling ideas of capitalist society are in crisis, for the first, transitional phase of capitalist epoch is drawing to a close and the next period, which is in gestation, will give rise to a different set of prevailing values. The first phase of the capitalist system was characterised by an intensification of knowledge, in both content and scope. The elevation of knowledge became manifest not so much in material or spiritual ways but as a culture of consciousness. a) The apprehension of moral values in contemporary capitalist society is governed by an expansion of self-consciousness. Different individuals are appreciated according to their self-consciousness: individuality is valued above all else. With regard to human activity, the emphasis is upon an entrepreneurial and risk-taking consciousness, and in general, all human behaviour comes to be valued with reference to the consciousness of the individual (cf. Ibsen). b) In art, the ruling ideas deem everything of content to be useless, since it contains the least manifestation of individual consciousness; only atomised experience is valued, whether fragmented in time (impressionism) or in person (individualism). Things and content are irrelevant; it is in the productive and consuming artistic consciousness that value inheres. Consciousness of all the senses is appreciated separately (in aesthetics); works of art are ‘enjoyed’ separately through the eyes (in the decorative arts), ears (music), and touch (materiality); indeed, thanks to their variously understood sense of style, any and every content can be ‘perceived’ as ‘artistic’. The clearest expression of this mood, in respect of modern artworks and their creation, is the stance of unconditional admiration, for it is, ultimately, possible to appreciate them and to develop a high level of consciousness only through the experience of a minimum of content and of precision of detail. The cultural ideal of capitalist society is the individual who possesses the highest instability of consciousness and who, in any given situation, is open to experiencing anything. 1 ‘Nézeteink válsága’, Huszadik Század, 11.1–2 (1910): 125–7.

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2. The next period of the capitalist age will, we expect, produce more or less stable conditions of material existence, although we cannot of course precisely forecast the degree to which the phenomenon of competition and of the business cycle will be modified or eliminated. For our present discussion it is sufficient to assume that there will be a tendency to stabilisation, as foreshadowed by restrictions and limitations on competition (trusts, international agreements and state formations, the determination of prices by public authorities, and above all by the dominance of state power in the economy, etc.) and the increasing organisation and regulation of the labour market (trade union recognition, collective bargaining, factory legislation, welfare insurance, etc.). Whether or not this will result in state capitalism cannot be foretold, but it certainly will be a period of regulated and stabilised capitalism. 3. In the age of organised capitalism, the ruling ideas in society will undergo a thoroughgoing transformation. As a result of the increasing centralisation of capital, private property will no longer possess an individualised character, and as a result, individual consciousness will appear superfluous to the interests of capital. Indeed, abstract, impersonal capital will only strengthen the cohesion of capitalist society. In the age of collective bargaining, the uniformity of consciousness and standardisation will become increasingly valued, the growth of regulation will displace entrepreneurship, stable economic conditions will make the critical mentality appear superfluous and loathsome, even immoral. The objectivity, which the instability of today’s conditions demands and which enjoins a high degree of consciousness, will cease and be replaced by knowledge in the form of instrumental prejudice. The importance of will is set to diminish, while that of compulsion will grow. The rhetorical ‘solution’ of the so-called social question will no longer be valued, since the long-term maintenance of equilibrium in society is only possible through acknowledgement of the class struggle. And today’s half-hearted ruling class will find itself obliged – by the growing workers’ scorn and by the state capitalism that will replace the ­exploitation of the individual – to co-opt the goals of the class struggle. The vitality of individual personality will become increasingly irrelevant in all spheres of society: personality will lose its importance, as the individual becomes defined not by the ‘personal’ but by the ‘social’: that which is characterised not by the subjective direction of will but by adaptation to the will of others. ­Consequently, in the approaching era of organised capitalism the ruling ideology will be socialist. The maxims of individually different consciousness will no longer be acceptable; instead, a disciplined society will once again generate a solid faith and strict morality, to which the ideal individual will effortlessly adapt with the minimum of conscious intervention. 4. By ‘socialism’ we refer neither to an economic system nor to a movement but to a philosophy consisting of domains of knowledge (historical ­materialism,

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etc.) and ideas (ethics, etc.). These ideas perform two functions: 1) they set out in general terms the behaviour of one class towards another; and 2) in a narrower sense, they are socialist ideas; they ascribe value to individuals and phenomena. By socialism we refer here to these socialist ideas, in the narrower sense, since class ideas (the law of value, etc.) will remain inseparable from the labour movement. 5. In this way, socialist ideology is returned to its originators – the bourgeoisie. The movement and the theory, which ‘found each other’ in the work of Marx, will thereby once again be separated. Capitalist society will receive back from the subaltern classes, in a practical and more advanced form, those views that it had once bequeathed them in a utopian form. 6. As a result, the working class will lose a substantial segment of its theoretical armoury, which will instead turn into a means of self-defence for the capitalist class. History thus repeats itself: the capitalist system will turn socialism into a state religion, just as the Roman Empire took over Christianity, the militant religion of the rebellious slaves. 7. Syndicalism may be regarded as one of the theoretical manifestations of this crisis. Increasingly, the working class of the advanced capitalist countries senses the tragedy entailed in the triumph of its brilliant vision of the new age. The resultant conflict of interests and ideas demands strength and clarity. The theoretical representatives of syndicalism are searching for distinctive ideas that can equip the working class in its struggle against the ideas of a capitalist society that is increasingly co-opting socialist ideas. The future will see the demise of the ‘individual’ and ‘experiential’ epoch, and in its place will come the rule of socialist ideas and values. But equally, this victory will mean that socialism, as a militant religion, will be lost to the working class.

The test of socialism2

‘The problem lies not with Bolshevism, but with socialism itself’. Today, the only serious representative of socialism is Bolshevism. Its programme is nothing but the practical realisation of Marxian socialism. Any type of socialism which is not Bolshevik is nothing but the abdication of the programme, a repetition of 4 August 1914. This fact can be distorted, concealed or denied – but the contrary argument cannot legitimately be made. The fact that the majority of socialism’s adherents do not seek to realise Bolshevism, and indeed dismiss any form of it, has been prepared by the developments of the last two decades. Bernstein (and his followers) – who during the war demonstrated that their revisionism was not opportunism but in reality the intellectual’s intense quest for truth and moral courage – had already declared at the end of the nineteenth century that for the workers’ movement ‘the goal is nothing, the movement is everything’. At the outbreak of the war, on 4 August 1914, apart from one group of intellectuals, French and German social democracy in their entirety, for the same reasons and facing the same conditions, backed the war and declared the International to be redundant. From this bald truth all apologetic commentary peels away as assuredly as the plaster of Jesuit apology flaked off the comparable behaviour of the Catholic Church. The de facto rejection of socialism did not come as a surprise, but even if it was predictable, it is no less important for that. Today, only the Bolsheviks desire the realisation of socialism and those who no longer want it are no longer socialists. And yet, is it possible to envisage a gigantic organisation existing in contradiction to its own principles? How do we, who are not socialists, dare to assert that those who claim to be socialists are not? And should this organisation, despite its huge size, not have disintegrated as soon as the fatal flaw which constitutes the basis of its existence was detected by the critique of historical facts?! Behold, the Catholic Church! Look at its almost 2,000-year-old stormravaged fortress! Despite its bloody crises, horrific calamities, and despite 2 ‘A szocializmus próbája’, Szabadgondolat, 8.10 (1918): 241–6.

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having endured innumerable scissions and ruinous ordeals, have you encountered its courageous and determined power, its will to survive? Is there any wise and humane mind, any warm heart and deep spirit, in or beyond Christendom, who doubts that the Catholic Church has repudiated, trampled or crucified its own raison d’être and declared creed: the teachings of Jesus and the ideals of Christianity?! Hence, we should not be surprised, but move on. That the representatives of socialism do not call themselves Bolsheviks is due not to any lack of moral courage but to their lack of faith in socialism. Yet the fact that they disguise this, and that they are not open and honest with regard to such a crucial question facing humanity, does indeed betoken a lack of moral courage, and for this we must blame the education that made them into what they are. For us, Bolshevism is the only form of socialism existent today – there is no other. It is not yet possible to draw any far-reaching conclusions about Bolshevism. For we do not know the outcome of the Russian experiment, still less its details. A social system cannot be instituted in one year, nor can the attempt be made. It is undoubtedly also true that it would only be after the clarification of all factors, one by one, that it would be possible to conclude that the Bolshevik system as such had failed, rather than a specific attempt to institute it. We will get closer to the essence of matters if we survey the outlines of the issue, while taking care not to present our findings as irrefutable or exhaustive. It is undoubtedly the case that the Russian Bolsheviks set sail in the name of peace, internationalism, democracy and socialism. However, in place of peace they have brought a series of wars; instead of internationalism they have brought the right to self-determination, that is the resurrection of nationalism; instead of democracy, the dictatorship of the proletariat; and, most crucially, instead of socialism, the maintenance of a decaying and impotent, but economically unaltered capitalism. However, far graver than the failure of the programme is their denial of the programme. In this case too, the restoration of capitalism is especially flagrant. Industrial production in Russia today – and, in the end, it was only the socialisation of industry that was entertained – is once again following the diktat and interests of the old owners. Although the decree officially describes them as ‘temporary tenants’, in a de facto economic sense they are what they were before: the purchasers of labour power and the expropriators of surplus value. Added to this is the complete abandonment of the socialist agricultural programme. Here too, we are not cavilling about the fact that it turned out to be a failure, in the sense that the entire peasantry turned against them, but – and this is theoretically crucial – that instead of expropriating the land through nationalisation,

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socialisation or collectivisation they switched to a system of private property. Of equal significance is another abandonment of their principles, namely the attempt to resolve the problem of mental labour not according to Marx’s value theory but through the separation of the white-collar workers. According to Marx’s value theory, the entire camp of the bureaucracy, army officers, doctors and engineers, factory managers and entrepreneurs, private and public o­ fficials, in other words, all intellectuals who live only from their own labour, who, under capitalism, are economically disinterested, would have been destroyed and hence, on the basis of a diametrically opposite analysis: had to be evaluated on the qualitative and individual value of intellectual labour. In assessing social systems, arguably nothing is more important than how and with what means mental labour is made available to the human race. Perhaps it is on this question that theocracy, feudalism, capitalism and socialism can most sharply be contrasted with one another. Under theocracy, the priestly and military authorities are the direct mediators of divine power and thus the only absolutism of society; the feudal world also invests the priest, the scientist and the doctor with the most elevated power that it has available: the recognition granted to a specific status order. It was capitalism that stripped mental labour of its status trappings and turned it into a lonesome jobseeker among the beneficiaries of the world of material production. Socialism is not only not able to offer it salvation from this materialistic fallacy, but, under the rubric of the labour theory of value, seeks to enforce the theoretical basis of this system upon the world. This is why the abandonment of the principle is of such a great importance; and instead, contrary to Marxian value theory, the place of the intellectual worker in society is based not on the laws of work, but intellect. In our critique of Bolshevism, we have placed particular emphasis upon aspects of its own programme that it has repudiated, rather than those that it has either failed to realise or has realised but at the cost of such sacrifices that it makes the success of their realisation questionable. This approach pivots upon the true meaning of scientific socialism. Marxian socialism differs from other utopian* systems precisely in the fact that it not only hopes for its realisation but also expects it. For it, socialism is not mere hope, advice and programme, but also a prediction. As hope, advice or programme it would not stand, even for a minute, competition with other, earlier utopias in human history. The Platonic philosopher state, or the heavenly realm of Christianity, are far more uplifting hopes, rousing counsel and more attractive programmes than the socialisation of the means of production, * By ‘utopia’, we do not refer to something unachievable, but to a theoretical system that aims at the creation of a better society, such as Christianity, Socialism, Anarchism, Radicalism, etc. (K. Polanyi note)

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the phalanstery and forced labour. The latter can hardly be said to give hope or instruction, to transmit power or direction. But Marxian socialism does not compete merely as utopia. Rather it goes beyond its rivals in that it is not only a utopia but also a scientific prediction. It does not only delineate a goal but also the road through which it is to be achieved. This is the reason why revisionism could state that ‘the road is everything and the final aim is nothing’, without this appearing as the complete and unqualified abandonment of the principles of socialism – for in reality it is the means, the methods and the form of realisation that distinguishes this great hope for society from other utopias in human history. From this stems the fact that the central focus of socialism, on which it stands or falls, is not the question of the phalanstery, or Morris’ garden village, or the architectonics of the future society, or child-rearing, but the theory of class struggle, the tenets of accumulation and concentration, the Verelendungstheorie and the Zusammenbruchstheorie.3 Accordingly, the success of socialism is determined not by what it actually achieves but by the ways and the means through which it achieves it. Every success that refutes the methods that are the only warrant of the Zukunfsstaat4 is not a success but an exposé and stumble that is more wretched than any failure. When the Bolsheviks agreed a cheap deal with the system of private property this was not problematic because they were thereby retreating from this part of their programme, but because by doing so they completely and finally resigned their hopes that the road that they had been pursuing would lead towards the realisation of the Zukunfsstaat. For the Marxist, the inner contradictions of capitalist private property are the mysterious force whose dialectical movement must give rise to socialised property. If somebody constructs something on the basis of private property, he not only negates its socialisation but also negates the faith, hope and expectation that distinguish the socialist utopia from other, more beautiful, higher, elevated and attractive human utopias. Our observations concerning socialism’s compromise with private pro­perty are also applicable to all compromises over methodology. Just as the thesis and antithesis of dialectical movement does not acknowledge any middle road, the theory of class struggle allows no room for solidarity between classes, the Verelendungstheorie only expects results from the extremes, and Marxian crisis theory only predicts solutions in the final stages, so too do the Bolsheviks’ compromises lead to the negation of all truths of their theory. Humankind possesses numerous more beautiful ideals than the organisation and improvement of production; it was only won to this ideal by the fact that socialism also 3 Verelendungstheorie: theory of immiserisation; Zusammebruchstheorie: theory of collapse. 4 Zukunfsstaat: future state.

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indicated the methods by which to achieve it. This, and only this, decided the struggle of theories in its favour. To believe in this road: that is the essence of socialism, and if the Bolsheviks no longer believe in it, humankind will be free once again to determine its goals. The critique of scientific socialism is pursued from two sides, since it is essentially, in Engels’ phrase, ‘the meeting of socialist utopia with the modern workers’ movement’. Until now, theoretical critique has only focused on the first factor: the utopia. For our generation world history has opened up the second factor too: the modern workers’ movement. And if it is true that the meaning of this is not poverty, anger, sentimentalism or any other views or ideologies but the material of history itself, the class struggle, then we must unconditionally accept the historical character of this factor with regard to its own historical appearance: the fatal historical self-criticism. The critique of socialism is thus no longer the critique of utopia but that of the proletariat, and the history of the last five years provides the most important, richest, almost sole and crucial substance of this critique. On this basis we have claimed the right to place not the critique of socialist ideals but the critique of the proletariat at the centre of our attention. When, in the above, we studied its loyalty towards the method, we were testing the proletariat’s loyalty towards itself. The outbreak of the war and the Russian adventure: these are the two crucial issues that were selected to reveal the meaning of the working-class struggle. All contemporary criticism of scientific socialism, which, once again, and perhaps for the thousandth time, only studies the utopia and not the second factor, the proletariat, either does not recognise the basic position of Marxism towards scientific socialism, or is in flight from critique of the facts, now that its time has arrived. For this critique is wounding in respect of all of socialism’s illusions. Two groups of facts manifest the critique of events as they pertain to the proletariat: 1.     the behaviour of the proletariat with regard to the outbreak of the war, and, 2. its behaviour with regard to the Russian revolution. With regard to the war, the proletariat’s behaviour was so unanimous and so devastating that every impartial observer – who might have harboured illusions concerning the spritual nature of the industrial working class – became disillusioned once and for all. With regard to the outbreak of the Russian revolution, the crucial fact is that it did not break out in the West, where ‘conditions were ripe for it’, but in the East, where they were absent. As the superiority of scientific socialism over the more beautiful, superior and more intelligent utopias – we repeat – rests upon just these ‘conditions’, the critical importance of this disappointment is evident. The conduct of the proletariat on the eve of the general European revolu-

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tion was, lo and behold, nothing but the complete and absolute renunciation of Marxian socialism at its most vital hour. If intellectuals had until now been called fellow travellers, now that term could more accurately be applied to the workers of the world rather than to a few well-known intellectuals – who are in reality not driven by their material interests (that Marxian panurgy) but by the moral and aesthetic fibre of their illusions and, still more, by their lack of feasibility. Meanwhile the workers of the world, finding themselves at the brink of the new order, abruptly decided to stick with the old. The only thing that will remain of socialism will be the global edifice of the trade unions, just as the only thing that has remained of Christianity is the Holy Church of Catholicism. With this, Bolshevism’s respectable principle of loyalty towards the false teachings of socialism will be reduced to a single dimension: its relationship to the labour movement. And this, no matter how comprehensive and radical its importance for society, is so marginal to the spiritual world that nobody will be able to save themselves from the duty to find for themselves, to the best of their strength and ability, their own and humanity’s path ahead.

Law and violence5

‘There is no rule of law without executive power. And, ultimately, the method of executive power is violence’. ‘Yet frequently, even executive power has been born of the use of force. For, many times, the ideas that are incarnated in the rule of law could only become legal power through the deployment of force and can only remain so by threatening to use violence’. For simpler minds the self-evident conclusion is that the meaning of law is violence. Let us elaborate. Neither in a psychological sense nor in nature can light exist without darkness. We can only perceive light if it stands in contrast to darkness; light can only be created by something that is not itself light, but is the darkness of matter. Nonetheless, the meaning of light is not darkness but, on the contrary, its opposite. There is no health without illness; neither conceptually nor in reality can they be separated. They are polar phenomena that do not exist without one another. Yet the meaning of health is not illness but, on the contrary, its opposite: the lack of illness, its absence or constraint. We present these examples unwillingly, as they are inherently flawed.* For, according to Pascal’s first law, ‘we should never venture to define something that is already so evident that there is no clearer definition with which it can be 5 ‘Jog és erőszak’, Szabadgondolat, 9.5 (March 1919): 117–19. * Indeed: this form of reasoning is neither scientific nor honest; rather, it is just as unscientific and limited as the thesis which it attacks. This is due to the fact that we are seeking to refute metaphysical theses, rather than simply pointing to their nature. Thoughts that are based a priori upon vague and elusive concepts, such as ‘essence’, ‘contradiction’, ‘inseparability’, and so on, cannot yield useful results, for they are made out of the wrong material. How could I shed light on something by stating what is its essence when there is nothing more vague than ‘essence’; how can I determine something with the help of the word contradiction, when there is nothing more miscellaneous than the number of possible ‘contradictions’; and, how can we separate phenomena using methods of this sort, when the concept of ‘inseparability’ is clearly nothing but a poetic image disguised as logical preposition, compared to which pure poetry is in truth much clearer (K.Polanyi note).

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explained’. And what is more evident than the fact that law and violence are not the same in principle, but two antithetical phenomena? The truth is that we can discover many types of correlation between law and violence, whether we study the objectively existing rights and forms of violence that have existed sociologically and in history, or whether we study them as so-called pure concepts. Even more so if we simply conflate the two, which was the epoch-making achievement of dialectical reasoning ‘turned on its feet’. But these multifaceted correlations do not alter the fact apropos the world of ethics, which is the only one in which it makes sense to speak of human values, for which the two concepts always and everywhere appear in diametrical opposition. A war of words would erupt if anybody, after serious consideration, attempted to deny this; we are convinced that this has not so far occurred. For the law – whether as concrete theory or as objective institutions – there might be, in fact there most certainly are, accompanying phenomena in the world of power and violence, just as the lover cannot imagine anything so sublimely ideal, or the poet cannot search for such an ethereal rhyme, that have not been preceded, and will not be followed, by the rigid chemical formulae of the brain’s metabolism. The interpretive consciousness of the enamoured soul is neither oxygen nor hydrogen, and even an all-powerful, objective science can never reduce a single one of Petrarch’s rhymes to the 72nd element. And the same applies to the law. It is as a result of the structure of the human soul, the ultimate terrain of experiences of the subject, and not of the economic system, productive forces, statistics or the like, that man desires and favours the law – indeed, not only favours it but is also willing to sacrifice himself to defend it, and if he were the victim of violence perpetrated in the name of the law, if the law recognises it, he would be able to tolerate it with infinite lightness. In this way, the human spirit desires, protects and tolerates the law. But with violence the contrary applies. If, in spite of the law, one desires it and condemns himself for it; if one, in spite of the law, uses it and takes responsibility for it; if one, in spite of the law, is forced to tolerate it, the pain penetrates him to his roots and drives him insane. We admit that during a revolution the rule of law is abrogated. This is selfevident. Opposing forces fight each other for different laws, with different means of violence. Always for a legal order. The communists suppose that what they want is a legal order: the dictatorship of the proletariat as a transitory legal order (and admittedly, there have existed more extreme legal orders in the past). It will not be seen by the majority of the proletariat as a genuine legal order, and that is why it is not called such, but instead a dictatorship: an order of violence. They provide sanction for this game of words by proposing the extravagant case: that right and violence are essentially the same, and they seek to inject a philosophical mist to this world-changing discovery, because they rightly fear

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that, if taken as a common sense statement, it would simply be seen as stupidity. Cicero puts it well: no absurdity exists that cannot find support from a thesis supplied by one philosopher or another. Law is not the same as violence. The transitional legal order that the communists advocate is also an order of law. It is not fair or reasonable, but if force is able to establish power, which proclaims it and ultimately validates it, then it is also an order of law. This has to be recognised by all their enemies – but it has to be recognised by them too. If they believe in their legal order, let them proclaim its justice and efficiency, and thereby give it an ethical foundation. But they should not do violence to concepts. The needs of the human spirit must be satisfied, for they do not accept any mystification. The basis of law differs from the basis of violence. They should not declare the identity of law and violence, nor should they ask the masses to take responsibility for the use of violence, which they will later recoil from in the absence of a sense of legitimacy, and nor should they enforce, upon innocent philosophers, theories that – although well-meant and thoughtful – contain not the slightest glimmer of truth.

Civil war6

Where should we look for truth and justice? Those who would say that there is no such thing as truth and justice need not ask on which side they stand. For those who see truth and justice as mere functions of society, as a superstructure or some bourgeois humbug, every answer simply begs another question. We are not of that persuasion. We hold that people are, now more than ever, actuated by the search for truth and justice. And we have become as sensitive to every nuance of this question as bourgeois society is to the fluctuating prices on the stock market. The mistreatment of the arrested communists had the whole capital, within a matter of hours, in a state of feverish excitement. Not just the communists, but everyone. For, hundreds of thousands of people – who, incidentally, have no political education and are opponents of communism – suddenly came to see the cause of communism in a new light. Presumably there was something here that might have shown right to have been on the side of the communists. There was nothing more to it than the mere possibility of truth, yet the masses were stirred by it. For we only believe that we are materialists. In reality, there is today no more decisive political factor than ideas; they are central to people’s consciousness, and they revolve around a single invisible axis: the question of where the truth lies. For non-communist public opinion, the behaviour of the socialist police chief and the Social Democratic Party was the first indication that certain essential aspects of the communists’ claims were true. This belief was further strengthened by the events in Berlin.7 And those who have partially proven their ‘truth’ have won hands down in the eyes of the masses. According to the communists, as long as the state exists, a hidden civil war will continue to rage. Lynchings, atrocities and acts of cruelty are only the more blatant examples of this. By the same token, there is only one way to end the hidden violence: by open violence. 6 ‘Polgárháború’, Szabadgondolat, 9.6 (1919): 121–5. 7 In January 1919, social democratic leader Friedrich Ebert ordered the Freikorps to crush leftwing revolt. In Berlin, the CP leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were captured and executed.

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The first proposition is exaggerated, but in times of revolution it is true: whether or not the state appears to exist, a civil war is raging. The second ­proposition, from which the dictatorship of the proletariat is derived, is entirely arbitrary, and the withering away of the state, which it promises, is nothing but wordplay. Yet it is only if we openly acknowledge the truth of the first proposition that we are protected from the sophism of this wordplay. We must acknowledge what the communists emphasise with such vigour: that we are in the midst of a civil war. That a party which is backed by the state is merely a party, like any other. We need to acknowledge that, today, the use of violence in public affairs is unavoidable. And finally, we need to acknowledge that when it comes to violence the only difference between the two sides is that while the communists advocate it, the government practises it. If we acknowledge this, we can proceed to draw our own conclusions. We do not need to leave it to the prejudices of the communists, who, in possession of a half-truth, use it to practise the usurious business of drawing arbitrary conclusions. We acknowledge that which is true; no more, no less. Today, the use of force in politics is unavoidable. Not because the essence of politics is force, but because its essence, the elimination of force, cannot prevail. And where the use of force is unavoidable, only they can be right who do not take advantage of this fact but consciously seek to limit its use to the minimum necessary. The problem is not new. For centuries, humanity has lived in a state of civil war. Today, freed from our materialist prejudices, we can understand the bloodstained chapters of the wars of religion, which we had viewed with a sense of strangeness or cynical superiority. The events of recent years have liberated us from the superstitious idea that material interests are the only motive force in history. The Americans flooding into Europe, the feverish arming of millions of Russians in the East against the West – are these different in essence to those gigantic spiritual processes, from the Hijra to the Peace of Westphalia, which constituted the history of Europe for more than a millennium: the Arabs’ military campaign from the Fertile Crescent through Spain to France; from the home of Tristan to Jerusalem; the conflagration of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, which swept through the villages, towns and peoples from South America to Sweden, and from Rome to Peking? Almost all the religious movements of the Reformation were communistic, and contemporary communism is likewise a religious movement. We are beginning to become conscious of these tributaries, although even today there are only a few who recognise what we have advocated from the beginning: that the present civil war is simply the consequence of the most momentous religious event that our generation has experienced – the world war

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itself. Only a few recognise that this grandiose suicide attempt of civilisation was but the sudden and tragic eruption of our meaningless existence, our confused conscience at odds with itself, of the whole creeping despair of our generation. Every war of religion is a struggle for moral superiority. It is with the side that achieves it through faith that truth and justice lie. The crusader’s ideals were humanity and moderation, mercifulness and chivalry. From the Cross of Malta to the Cross of Geneva, we inherit a thousand years of war ethics. Those who acknowledge civil war, as do the communists, or who practise it, as do the social democrats, are obliged to abide by the Geneva Convention. Prisoners must not be maltreated. Combat is only legitimate between combatants. The non-combatant has civilian privileges, even if he is a prisoner of war in army uniform. But if the use of sanctions is questionable in foreign wars, it is selfevident in the ethical realm. He who is victorious but without humanity loses the battle that he has won. For he cannot be in the right. But there is yet another, even more important, limitation to the just civil war. The side that loses sight of the moral goal for which it is fighting, or lets itself drift away from it, be it even slightly, loses the right to exercise force, and the harm that it causes humanity through its deeds reverts to ordinary crime. The violence that we use connects us to our own ideals. If we depart from them, they will turn on us. The theoretical position of the Social Democratic Party is that socialism cannot be realised through force but only through a transformation of souls. The political task of schooling, educating and transforming the proletarian masses – this can only be achieved by democracy. The communists, on the other hand, have succeeded in proving that it is impossible to stay on this road without the use of force. Hence, in their view, the position of the socialists is contradictory, and the road that they have taken is mistaken. This contradiction, however, is only apparent. It is a mere quibble to claim that the road of democracy is also the road of violence simply because it impossible to stay on this road without the use of violence. Suppose that one doctor wants to operate upon a patient while the other recommends medication. As a result, the surgeon attacks the physician with his knife, demanding that the latter consent to the patient being operated on, whereupon the physician also takes up a knife and slashes the surgeon. For all that, the surgeon cannot claim that the physician’s position was contradictory, for, behold!, he was also cutting with a knife. Or had he already surrendered his position by claiming that the patient could only be treated by medication? Or, to take another example, one philosopher takes a stand for materialism, while the other proclaims the power of reason. To refute his opponent, the former butts his head against the other’s with such force that both their skulls

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crack. In so doing, has the former been able to prove that it was in vain for the other to think ideally with his head, for his head is but a material one? In fact, he has proved nothing, for what the mind thinks up, the skull cannot disprove. Not only the surgeon but also the physician will respond to violence with violence; you can bash in the head of Kant as well as that of the victim; and, if they are to function, the institutions not only of war and class struggle but also those of peace and democracy must put up physical resistance. If, despite this, we feel that the Social Democratic Party erred in condoning the mistreatment and in refusing to exclude from its ranks those who committed the acts of brutality, then this is not because it resorted to the use of force but because it proved itself to be unworthy of it. For the Social Democratic Party is also basing itself upon ambiguity, on the ambiguity of the word democracy, albeit for them it can only mean that there can be no socialism without a spiritual ennobling of the masses, without educating them to a higher level of solidarity and voluntary discipline. For this reason, in giving up these ideals it has betrayed socialism itself. In its practice, it uses the other meaning of the word democracy: the sense not of the transformation of souls but the artificial kneading of the electorate by the same means that they accuse the communists of using. Violence, coercion, intimidation, overbearing political power, terror – these are the methods which the Bolsheviks expect will lead to socialism, and the diffidence that honest social democrats feel towards them is indicative of their own programme. When, then, the social democrat reverts to the same methods in his own party’s interest, he is turning away from a faith in his own vocation, and also abandons the right to use force to defend the path towards it. The Social Democratic Party ought to have branded as enemies of the revolution all those – whether common cops, police chiefs or party leaders – who, acting against the basic conventions of civil war, behaved with a brutality that defiled the universal movement. It ought to have expelled any organisation that identified itself with these brutalities and it ought to have held aloft, with the full weight of its prestige and regardless of the cost, the purest ideal of humanity. Only by so doing could it have hoped to see unity established among the masses on the march to socialism rather than won to the ideas of violence within their fratricidal strife. It lacked the moral strength to do so. In their relief at having got rid of the communist leaders, they made haste not to morally justify the use of force, but to immorally exploit it. This is the deepest reason why the conviction is rapidly spreading that the Social Democratic Party is wrong, and why, in the eyes of the masses, it appears increasingly unlikely that socialism can be attained through its methods. Only a socialist party that is steadfastly set on the road of the moral transformation of souls can be entitled to use force to defend the programme of democracy.

Believing and unbelieving politics8

The spirit of the masses, impelled onwards by emotions and illusions in good times and bad, rashly issues its judgements. Spurred on by success, it perceives even the impossible to be possible, while any setback seems to turn even the possible into the impossible. As cautious as progressive public opinion should have been with regard to the prospects of the Russian communist experiment when it seemed to have succeeded, so it should be cautious now, when seeking to draw lessons, to be sure not to flip over to the opposite extreme. The author of these lines has never been among those who believed that the actions of the Russian communists would possess an enduring importance. For cultural and economic reasons, but first and foremost out of moral conviction, I was obliged to counter the myth that a socialist society was under construction in Russia. Ever since, I have continued to insist that there can be no talk of a communist economy in Russia – despite propagandistic stories from capitalists and communists alike, who, like colluding partners within the broad schema of class war, have always struck up the same tunes. Perhaps it is precisely the absence of illusions that will enable objectivity in our judgement of the failure, for otherwise, under the spell of shattered dreams, an overly pessimistic viewpoint will once again dominate public opinion. What is it, we begin by asking, that we, with critical eyes, cannot conclude directly from the events in Russia? We cannot directly pass judgement on the historical and economic validity (or invalidity) of Marxism. It is a central argument of the Marxist historical outlook that socialism can only be achieved after the full development of capitalism. Hence, Russia’s leading role in the realm of communism has always been an absurdity and remains so today. We have no right moreover to pass judgement on the validity (or invalidity) of the programme of the Russian Social Democratic Party, or its Bolshevik ­fraction, in the sole light of the events. As the Russian revolution can be said to have occurred against Marx’s injunctions – against the clear direction of an entire life work; the few fragmentary letters that give a less rigid meaning, 8 ‘Hivö és hitetlen politika’, Napkelet, 2.7 (1921): 984–90.

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albeit discovered amidst great fanfare, mean nothing – and it is also well known that the Russian Social Democratic Party (from 1903: Bolshevik, from 1918: Communist Party) only took the road of the dictatorship of the proletariat under the constraints of the revolutionary process. It sounds odd today, but it is well known to those acquainted with the circumstances, that the nationalisation of the factories, the development of the socialist economy, even the dictatorship of the proletariat itself – the party’s anxious loyalty to its traditions notwithstanding – was carried out in an ad hoc manner, entailing the piecemeal abandonment of the Bolshevik programme. The ‘making’ of the revolution itself stands in such complete opposition to the Marxist principles of the Party that even on the day before the outbreak of Russia’s November revolution, the Party issued a fiery proclamation against those ‘slanderers’ who, mistaking the Bolsheviks for vulgar Social Revolutionaries, had claimed that the Party was preparing ‘to make’ a revolution. This proclamation carries the signature of Trotsky … At the end of 1917 the Bolsheviks were still dogmatically repeating the phrase that the revolution is not made by men but by circumstances. But would the old Bolsheviks be recognised in the Moscow headquarters of the makers and exporters of the revolution? Once again we are obliged to say: if the failures of the former Russian Social Democratic Party, today known as the Bolshevik Party, prove anything, they prove the correctness of the original principles that have since been abandoned. We cannot even, directly and without closer consideration, pass judgement on the methods employed in the Russian revolution. For any normal person, the use of violence and terror is deplorable, whether it leads to success or not. However, if we consider the effects of the dictatorship and terror in Russia not from the decisive moral aspect but from a narrower sociological perspective, then we cannot but observe that the use of violence as a tool of government is not legitimated by the teachings of Marx or the programme of social democracy but, on the contrary, by the concrete conditions in Russia. Essentially, as the humanist and pacifist philosopher Bertrand Russell has remarked, the Bolsheviks have followed the mission of Peter the Great, implementing Western civilisation through the methods of Eastern despotism, responding to the incursions of the West against Asian barbarisms with barbarous deeds. It was not for nothing that Peter the Great’s towering figure always occupied a legendary and prophetic place in Dostoyevsky’s mythologies … Finally, it cannot be emphasised enough that there is no acknowledged concrete and constructive conception of socialism today, nor has there ever been, which is why the so-called communist experiment, even if it has advanced enough to be judged by its own principles, does not and cannot prove anything about the virtues or vices of socialism. Marx and Engels never formulated a theory of socialist society, let alone of socialist economy; they never moved beyond vaguely

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adumbrating the outlines of a future society, still less of commenting on what concrete political and organisational methods of production, division of labour, distribution of income and exchange could and should be used in order to realise it. It can only be down to the epigones’ impotence and lack of imagination that socialism could become equated with a nursery school society governed by an omnipotent, bureaucratically organised state, reliant on the shackles of enforced labour and administered consumption. There are many ways of ‘socialising the means of production’, as many as there are ways of transforming today’s slaveowning and plutocratic feudal society into an association of truly equal and free men. It may be that the German context of Marx’s work has fed into a delayed renaissance of the Prussian militarism contained in Hegel’s conception of the state. However, Marx’s scientific endeavour cannot be made culpable for the childish economic conception of what is today known as communism. Even today, socialism, however underdeveloped, comprises ideologies, including British guild socialism or so-called liberal socialism to name but a few, which, both morally and in practice, stand far above the naivety of the so-called communist programme. Thus, unless we are biased, we cannot draw any direct conclusions from the failures of the Russian Bolsheviks about the historical philosophy of Marxism, or about the programmes of the workers’ parties, the dictatorship and the methods of terror, and still less about the values of socialism. And yet: every progressive soul rightly senses that what has happened in the great social laboratory of the East is more than merely a local event, it is the rallying cry for an entire generation: tua res agitur! From these momentous events, what kind of conclusions can be drawn that are not futile; what conclusions can speak to every soul and be worthy of the great, approaching battles? * On the basis of two different worldviews, two types of politics are possible, with two different methods: believing and unbelieving politics. Unbelieving politics hopes to achieve its aims without transforming individuals, while believing politics cannot conceive of any genuine progress without the flourishing and progress of individuals. The difference is fundamental – the abyss of a worldview separates each from the other. The politics of unbelief is essentially pessimistic. Its two main strands are reactionary and Marxist politics. Their common assumption is that human nature is unalterable and that this constitutes the true essence of politics. They differ, however, in their conclusions. Appealing to the fixed character of human nature, reactionary politics insists upon the maintenance of the social status quo. Modern pessimism postulates new aims, but, appealing to the immutability of human nature, it argues that political life must be reconciled with this basic

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dogma. From this there necessarily follows a belief in the miraculous effects of institutions; a superstitious belief in the notion that such organs of power are indispensable, for they guarantee the material, moral and intellectual resources necessary for society – which otherwise could only be obtained as a reward for higher levels of altruism, mutual tolerance and support than those existing today – without changing the nature of individuals. The idol of this institutionworshipping politics is necessarily the state. The omnipotent and omniscient state, which ideally should be charged not only with maintaining the defence system, public security and economic administration but also with the organisation of private life, guidance of cultural life and guardianship over individual conscience. It regards believing politics as vain and declamatory, a politics that fails to take account of the reality of human nature. As with reactionary politics, its ultimate word is coercion and dictatorship, which, as Lenin said, will sooner or later accustom people to being good. This pessimism is the true meaning of the deterministic Weltanschauung of our age. Confidence in the enforced laws of development, not in the voluntary progress of freedom, would be pessimistic even if it hoped only for good things to arise from this development. Henry George called it ‘hopeful fatalism’. For, as worldviews, optimism and pessimism differ from one another not in their conception of the world but in their judgement of man. Beyond any Marxist doctrine or the programme of social democracy, the Russian revolution has been the test of this worldview. In its origins, the Russian revolutionaries’ lack of belief is identical to that of Western civilisation. Before we go on to discuss the worldview and methods of believing politics, let us examine its practical consequences. The essence of socialism lies in the fact that it stands for greater equality and freedom than that which currently exists. Herein lies its truth, and its strength. If we deny the validity and the virtue of those ideals of equality and freedom, then no sociology, economics, statistics or evolutionary theory can in our eyes deem socialist society to be preferable to, and more valuable than, the Indian caste system. The promise of universal welfare would be a weak argument in favour of its realisation. For, if somebody sees an argument in the pursuit of welfare, then, in so doing, he acknowledges the right to selfishness, and selfishness in turn demands the achievement of my own welfare, not that of my fellow human being. The upshot is strike-breaking instead of solidarity, corruption and usury instead of the work ethic, positioning oneself ahead of others instead of the supersession of capitalist society. The achievement of more genuine liberty and more universal equality can only be secured if the ideals of freedom and equality are acknowledged. Hence, there can be no socialist who is not a socialist in the name of human ideals. It is in the nature of unbelieving politics that it does not believe in the power of ideals. Wittingly or unwittingly, reactionaries use them as a means for achieving

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their class goals. Religion has been wrenched from its true meaning and the eternal awakening of conscience has been put into slumber or violently silenced. Modern Marxist dogmatists are more honest and straightforward. Confusing the desire to live according to ideals with adhering to idealism, they do not want to hear discussion of ideals when it comes to politics. Those that mention such ideas are branded as petit bourgeois ideologues. Of course, they carefully conceal the fact that, in the depths of their souls, it is these petit bourgeois ideals that provide them with the strength to fight, the determination to persevere, and which give them an unshakeable belief in the ultimate victory. Yet from the masses, which likewise consist of men, they nonetheless demand the complete opposite of all this. As unbelieving as it is in the good times, the politics of unbelief turns believing when times are bad. As distrustful and critical as it is when it comes to moral virtues, as trusting and confident it is when reference is made to evil. It is a feature of one of Dickens’ characters that he is consumed by infinite distrust when he senses even the slightest trace of idealism, but is ingenuous to the point of gullibility when he suspects that somebody is up to something bad. The arousing of envy and profiteering, the incitement of hatred, the revival and heightening of class war and its ubiquitous projection under the most audacious interpretations, are all magical tools in their hands; they promise supernatural effects that are expected to solve all problems. The natural consequence of this blind faith is a superstitious belief in the use of violence. They overestimate the effects of force with a grotesque extravagance. When it comes to doing good, human nature, which they proclaim to be unchangeable, becomes like soft putty for them when the effects of force come into play. If they gain apparent control over two or three of the innumerable functions of life, they already feel as if they have become masters of a myriad of diverse functions … They cannot see the wood for the gallows. Yet, fighting for absolute goals on the basis of relativist views is like trying to square a circle. Neither the individual nor the masses can sustain themselves in a struggle for distant goals if something does not live within them, an internal force which drives them forward. The most common form of human organisation is that which is created by the unifying power of ideas. Common ideals create an invisible community, which is transformed into reality when individuals act under the influence of ideas. Those who make reference to individuals’ interests remind them of their separate interests; for the common interests of humanity are nothing other than that which we generally call ideals. Branding the appreciation of ideals, and pure idealism tout court, as foolish affectation, cunning hypocrisy or helpless naivety – all this stems from the essence of Marxist thought. Their political practice in Russia should have convinced the masses that this attitude is more than just a theoretical stance. Equality,

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freedom and fraternity have turned into counter-revolutionary slogans. Instead of countering these supposedly outworn ideals with higher ones, the Bolsheviks proclaimed their contempt for and denial of all higher ideals in the name of a new and incomprehensible – because lacking any reason – materialist immoralism. The suffrage was built on the principle of indirect elections and pluralism. The denial of the freedom of the press, the abolition of the freedoms of association and assembly in favour of one-party organisation, the discounting of local autonomy, the politicisation of justice and the attrition of those freedoms that seemingly remained, and the deployment of manifold forms of material and moral terror ought to have proved to everyone that the new world in preparation here has radically broken with the shabby traditions of idealism. Then new ideals disguised in materialist form may be proclaimed to the people: but all human ideals are nourished from a common root, and whoever destroys that can never expect the tree to bear fruit. It can be stated categorically: what the Russian communists have achieved has occurred through the involuntary and unconscious surrendering of their pessimistic and inhuman worldview. That all their heroism and sacrifice turned out to be in vain resulted from the fact that they were not able to reach out to the forces of ideals and morals, which are the safeguards of all lasting progress; and of course they could not, since they themselves denied their validity and effectiveness, for ‘theoretical reasons’! Yet, the shackles of servitude can only be released in the name of the ideal of freedom, tyranny can only be superseded by the acknowledgement of the individual’s right to self-determination, and a nation cannot be directed on to the road of self-sacrifice under the sign of selfishness. It is only in the awakening of human consciousness that the heartbeats of all humanity are unified; the stomachs digest separately and in isolation from one another. * The politics of belief – and herein lies the essence of the matter – does not believe in the changeability of human nature, but in the capability of humans to change. We should not dwell on the essence of human nature. For our part, we refuse to discuss the topic. The question is too obscure and vague to be able to support the sort of important conclusions that are under discussion here. The future of humanity, its universal faith, cannot reasonably be left in the hands of a seemingly well-founded economic theory or law of physics, let alone commonsensical philosophical truisms. For the politics of optimism is not based on ‘human nature’. Let it remain as it is; human beings change of their own accord. We may concede: this change may be ‘insignificant’, it may occur as a matter of course, and it need not affect human ‘nature’ … But one thing is certain: it is precisely this process of change

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that makes human beings unique, and which matters to them. Politics is a practical undertaking and practice belongs to the science of progress. As for what the substance which renders humans subject to change actually consists of, it is precisely the Marxists who emphasise this, of course in a mocking and belittling tone, since it is nothing but the so-called ‘ideologies’ of men. It is an undeniable truth that the views and value judgements of men, the conscious aims and ideas with which these aims are legitimised, change over the course of history. It is a fact that, within a short space of time, and without any apparent transformation of objective structures, human consciousness can alter sharply and move in new directions. And everyone also acknowledges the fact that this change depends upon education, Bildung, enlightenment, propaganda and the intensification of organisational and cooperative work. Accordingly, believing politics is no more than a politics that recognises that without a change in the individual no institution can guarantee the lasting achievement of our common goals – humanistic education, intellectual training, theoretical conviction and above all the provision of moral examples: efforts to create traditions that aspire to radically transform that which can and should be changed within human beings, their views and value judgements, ideas and ideals. Selfish motivation can only protect and secure the material interests of individuals. The common material interests of the masses can only be moved forward through the connections of cooperative effort. And the community of this mutual effort is based, as in every human community, on the organising force of ideas. Let us therefore not try to dig too deeply into the reasons that enable the common ideals of humanity to be connected to the material interests of the wider masses. Naturally, the human interests to which we are entitled are included on the scale of human values. But they only serve the aims of the community in so far as the consciousness of common material interests directs people towards the path of community and ideals. For this reason, the politics of belief, everywhere, places its emphasis on theoretical propaganda. All party schools and pedagogical activity are, of course, nugatory where the doctrine itself is false. Such an education can, in the best case scenario, only achieve a modest increase in the number of unbelieving politicians. A true theoretical apprehension of socialism can necessarily not be expected from those who cannot understand it themselves. All their zeal and enthusiasm is in vain, since it does not spring from the ancient well of righteous ideas. Enthusiasm for scientific truths and a faithful passion for party and trade union work are values in and of themselves, but they are not those in whose name every human soul can be exhorted to make the greatest sacrifices. In this spirit even the most persistent mass-educational work remains reactive; for what ideas can be constructed by a global movement whose cardinal tenet results in the negation of its own weight and eternal value!?

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The working masses do indeed need to be organised around the goals of defending and securing their material interests. We must arouse their consciousness of their class position. But the form and content of their consciousness needs to be built upon the solid foundation of the spiritual truth of their cause. This needs to be the basis on which their rights and duties, their needs and responsibilities, arise. This is the only way in which the struggle for common interests can be won. Because insistence on the crucial point – and, ultimately, this is what always decides the correctness or incorrectness of the chosen path – demands not only ideological and material sacrifice, often extending beyond mere financial and welfare costs but the forfeiture of freedom, and physical sacrifice, but also demands that life itself be put on the line. The sacrifice of material interests, if it concerns the life of an entire generation, can never be rooted in material motives. Against this, how shallow and petty-minded appear the organisational methods of unbelief ! Even if we have been able to ‘recruit’, ‘vote out’ or even ‘arm’ the trade unions, parties or the revolutionary militias, have we truly captured these people, do they really belong to us, can we really count on them? We have only won some crowns from their purse, several minutes of their time, or at most a few phrases from their mouths, nothing more. They constitute a gigantic tree, whose branches, through slender twigs, connect only a few leaves. At the slightest pressure, the leaf breaks off and the organisation’s network is no longer held together by anything. ‘People, be not afraid!’ – thus speak the unbelieving organisers – ‘we are not preaching a new morality, we do not demand from you that you should henceforth become less selfish and more communitarian than you have been up to now. We know well that, basically, you are selfish and evil, and we acknowledge the iron law of the immutability of human nature. Thus it is to your selfishness and evil that we appeal when we say: engage in this or that trivial act and we sincerely promise that society in its entirety will be transformed into a realm of truth and love. Vote on this or that day on this or that coloured ballot, pay this or that sum, shoot whomsoever we point to, and we promise you, if you do all this, then you can remain selfish and evil, and yet society, which is comprised of yourselves, will nonetheless change fundamentally. If you take this to be a miracle, so be it, but this miraculous power, which comes with a particular coloured leaflet, particular payments and particular types of murder, holds the key to the victory of socialism!’ All over Europe today, these are the words addressed to the people by the politics of unbelief. But those who are appealed to without belief will turn back at the cockerel’s first crow. This materialist world view, which essentially denies moral ideals, has achieved its bankruptcy in Russia. *

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These conclusions confront today’s generation with colossal tasks. The substance of progressive ideology has to be fundamentally re-examined. It is not enough to dismiss the scholastic templates of orthodox Marxism; it is not enough to concretely and constructively reform the programmes of the workers’ and peasants’ parties; it is not enough to place socialism on a new economic and historico-philosophical footing: we have to root out any unbelieving and insipid pessimism in ourselves, including the seeds of any basically inhuman ideology, and courageously, undeterred by deterministic superstitions, step on to the path of the only correct and practical politics of belief, which seeks to transform not only institutions but also individuals.

The constitution of socialist Britain9

‘The majority will of parliament is all-powerful’. This dogmatic idea is the key to the political development of modern Britain. It is the reason why revolutionary ideas find so little fertile ground in that country and yet, equally, it is why Britain has become the home of pragmatic radicalism. This apparent contradiction is the true explanation for those paradoxes of the British labour movement which sometimes baffle observers on the continent. Namely, why Owen, the ‘utopian’, and not Marx, the real politician of the class struggle, became the intellectual father of the world’s most realistic workers’ movement. This contradiction lies at the heart of the Webbs’ book, A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain, published in 1920.10 Its authors, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, are towering figures in the intellectual and practical wings of the trade union and cooperative movements; they represent the most moderate branch of collectivist socialism, and are slated to be members of a future Labour government. The significance of their proposals consists in the fact that they are neither utopian nor abstract constructions, but represent the views of responsible statesmen and seek to provide a socialist programme of government for Britain. According to the authors, in a socialist Britain the constitutional expression of national sovereignty would be represented by not one but two democratically elected parliaments, each independent and equipotent, but with different competencies. One would be a political parliament, in the narrow sense, responsible for the ministries of foreign affairs, defence and justice, while the responsibilities of the other, a social parliament, are defined by the authors thus: ‘the management of the common economic life on which all production and distribution depend; the equitable distribution of the national income; the conservation and wise administration of the resources of the nation, for the advantage not only of the present but also of future generations; the determination and the maintenance of the kind of civilisation that the community intends and 9 ‘A szocialista Nagybritánnia alkotmánya’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (16 April 1922). 10 The Webbs’ book can be found here: http://archive.org/stream/constitutionfors00passuoft/ constitutionfors00passuoft_djvu.txt (last accessed 10 November 2015).

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desires; the hygiene of the race and the education of each successive generation, and the promotion of literature and art, no less than of scientific discovery and research’. In other words, in echo of Engels, ‘the political parliament would exercise power over persons, while the social parliament would exercise administration over things’. Out of these two, equally sovereign, parliaments, which would rely upon mutual agreement with one another in regard to a range of fundamental questions, the attention of the authors is naturally directed to the social parliament. For it is this body that would assume responsibility for carrying out the socialisation of production, and thereupon its administration and management. Socialisation, according to the Webbs, will take three forms: state, municipal and cooperative. Where expropriation becomes necessary (in contemporary Britain, only the postal service is state-owned), the guiding principle will be that indemnification will be given for all expropriated property, covered by wealth taxes. (We should emphasise that because the agricultural question barely plays a role in Britain, numerous problems of socialism are simplified for the Webbs.) The following branches of production should be nationalised immediately: railway and canal companies, mining (including oil reserves), forestry, banks and insurance institutions. Subsequent to this will follow: metallurgy, passenger steamer lines and so on. Each nationalised branch of production will be headed by a National Board which, its leadership apart, will be comprised mainly of representatives of the relevant trade unions and consumer associations. The authors envision a much greater role for cooperatives. ‘In a Socialist Commonwealth, as much as one-half of the whole of the industries and services would fall within the sphere of Local Government’ – in the spirit of localism, of course. Consumer associations already provide a third of the British population with more than half of their necessities. No wonder, then, that the authors envisage a broad operative sphere for this form of socialisation under the future socialist constitution. (To give but one example: capitalist media corporations would be abolished, with the free press transformed into an association of subscribers, the members of which periodically elect the editorial boards, while any profit, of course, would be ploughed back into production of the n ­ ewspapers.) According to the Webbs, it will not even be necessary to aim for the complete eradication of individual corporations. Why is this so? On this point they present new and original arguments. According to them, the protection of the isolated individual necessitates checks and balances that ensure his right to self-determination vis-à-vis the overwhelming might of collectivist production and the absolutist bureaucratisation that accom­panies it. We can only illustrate this in general terms here: the autonomy of the trade unions is one constitutional guarantee that the Webbs propose to introduce,

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while another is economic freedom for each socialised corporation. But the administrative diarchy itself also guarantees the freedom of the individual: since the political parliament does not have the right to levy taxes, its ‘power over persons’ is necessarily dependent upon the agreement of the social parliament; the ‘administration of things’ by the social parliament cannot become tyrannical, since it does not exercise the right to issue criminal law arbitrarily. Hence, without agreement from the political parliament, socialisation can never force consumers to consume the products of socialised industry, nor can it prohibit consumers from organising their respective needs differently. The possibility of operating an individual company thus plays the role of a safety valve. To the credit of the authors, they have devoted themselves tirelessly to an almost microscopic analysis of the fabric of society in order to search for ways and means by which to promote collectivist socialism, not simply as an abstract idea but also as the only true spiritual reality of individuals. The continental critic will doubtless discern two paradoxes in this distinctly British constitution: firstly, that the sternest opponents of communism propose for Britain a far more sweeping socialisation than that which Lenin advocates in the contemporary Soviet Union; secondly, that British socialists are more serious and responsible defendants of individual freedoms than the ‘liberal’ capitalism that confronts them. Finally, we would like to make one critical remark. The Webbs’ text leaves no space whatsoever for discussion of actually existing industrial councils, and only barely acknowledges the existence of works councils. Moreover, it does not accord any independent power regarding questions of production to the trade unions or to industrial associations. In keeping with the collectivists’ oldfashioned mistrust, the Webbs announce that ‘due to workers’ limited level of consciousness and self-activity, and the intellectual and practical conservatism of the trade unions’, the central idea of guild socialism – the creation of industrial councils – is completely unattainable. On this crucial question, the Webbs concur with the position of the Russian Bolsheviks. In our view, their plans can only become viable if they accept the idea of industrial cooperation, as realised in organs of industrial self-government.

H. G. Wells, the socialist11

The telegraph is announcing that H. G. Wells, the world-renowned author, has agreed to stand as a candidate for the Labour Party. It may be that it is only through this news that many readers will become aware of the fact that Wells is a socialist. It is true that his politics had not previously come out into the open. However, his dozens of published volumes stand as the most important monument of socialist philosophy to date. According to traditional yardsticks, Wells would be unlikely to rank among so-called great men, whether as a scientist, writer, artist or politician. And yet his oeuvre is nonetheless great. For, greatness does not depend on the person but on his ideas. Wells apart, England today has three representative writers: Rudyard Kipling, Bernard Shaw, and G. K. Chesterton. And yet, these three extraordinary artists and notable writers have nonetheless been overwhelmed by a comparatively grey character and less creative novelist, H. G. Wells. It is not these Goliaths but the socialist David who has become the teacher of England’s new generation. Perhaps there is no truer poet alive today in the world than Rudyard Kipling. He is the magician of magicians, the father of enchantment. But his social teachings are constructed on the moral codex of the wild beasts of the jungle. He glorifies the world domination of evil, the right of the strong and the romanticism of deceit. Surrounded by the majesty of natural law, he declaims the rule of force across the world. He believes in only two modes of happiness: to rule and to obey. A satanic idyll. Bernard Shaw is a great author and artist. His dramas represent a distinguished continuation of Ibsen’s technique. He is an incredibly clever writer. Yet, for all his intelligence, he has no wisdom. He does not seek truth; for the most part he is ‘simply correct’. Perhaps he was also correct when he proclaimed socialism for millionaires and when he celebrated the politics of the Bolsheviks for their pragmatism. Nobody in Britain has compromised the truths of socialism more than Bernard Shaw. 11 ‘H. G. Wells, a szocialista’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (25 July 1922).

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Of G. K. Chesterton we can venture that he is the wittiest of writers. He is the weathervane on the Tower of Babel of Oscar Wilde’s paradoxes. More recently he has also begun to express comparatively progressive ideas. He combines these from the truths that he has not succeeded in refuting. Yet the pygmy Wells has effortlessly dislodged these three talented giants from their saddles. To a degree, he was influenced by them all. From Rudyard Kipling he took the masculinity and the romanticism of willpower. From Shaw he learned about socialism. Admittedly, he cared little for Chesterton’s neoCatholicism. For Wells’ intellectual roots were nourished from a completely different soil than these high profile British writers. H. G. Wells is a proletarian by blood. For many years he killed time in suburban subsistence, first as a water boy and later as a draper’s assistant. He is the English brother of Proudhon, Bebel and Gorky. Like them, he is an autodidact and an idealist. And like them, no matter what or how much he writes, he will never become a scholar but will remain a committed servant of humanity. Wells’ socialism is not, of course, based on scholarly catechism or revolutionary phrases. He is at home in the social chaos of the present and observes it from within, as the proletarian in the factory. It is the precise knowledge of detail that makes Wells’ observations so brave, original and convincing; this is what provides his futuristic imagination with such a solid basis. What Fourier calls the anarchy of civilisation, Proudhon the contradictions of the economy, and Louis Blanc the effects of monopolistic competition; all this Wells perceives as our society’s physical property expressed in every corner of the cities, ports, shop windows, newspapers, advertising hoardings, rural landscapes and human dwellings. And although he is not a Marxist, no one else has provided such a concrete and delicate internal analysis of Marx’s thesis of the historical nature of human value judgements, their dependence upon economic and technological circumstances. Marx’s apparent amoralism, which his followers tend unfortunately to take for granted, is of course foreign to Wells (who, when debunking bourgeois conventions and ideologies, always stands on the firm ground of the eternal ideas that express the whole of humanity’s interests). While Anatole France never managed to move beyond the sceptical worldview of historical relativity, and his socialism developed into an anaemic utopianism, Wells, although a lesser poet and artist, is nonetheless a greater, because more dedicated, writer. With profound sophistication, he is capable of seeing through ephemeral ideologies to their technological and economic connections to the fabric of society. His adventure novels are thus only seemingly adventurous. In reality they are a sociotechnological experiment, depicting the manifold forms in which the material dependence of human life is manifested. Let us take them in turn: The Time Machine – perhaps his most famous novel – presents a terrible dystopia of class society. Above, the imbecility of the wealthy; below, in the

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depths of the Earth, the sunless somnambulant proletarian masses, turned into hairy lemurs … Similarly, When the Sleeper Awakes depicts the demonic perspective of capitalism’s ultimate victory. Here, however, the workers’ yellow organisations become traitors to humanity: bribed by panem et circenses, the working class chains itself into slavery, assisted by the armed negro mercenaries of the world trust. The War of the Worlds foretells the destruction of the Martians, these fragile giants equipped with sizzling weapons, who putrefy when they come into contact with microbes in the earth that are indifferent to, or even useful to, our human bodies. The symbolic meaning that the novel expresses – the unobserved yet no less vital effects of the natural environment and conditions of life – encapsulates one of Wells’ basic sociological ideas. There is an eerie quality to The War in the Air. This is where Wells first demonstrates how a single war can destroy our entire civilisation, and in the process lead to the inevitable regression of our culture back to the Dark Ages. The Food of the Gods and How it Came to the Earth imagines the consequences for society of the chemical-induced transformation of human beings into giants, discusses the potential social effects and asks what ethical and aesthetic weapons the ruling class might use to defend itself against any innovation that might unexpectedly increase the power of the proletariat. According to Wells, even The Invisible Man would necessarily perish as a result of his apparent superiority. For in human society, only those survive who can adapt themselves to its spiritual and material circumstances. And so on, with his objective and yet vivid imagination, expressed throughout his numerous works … H. G. Wells, a great socialist writer.

Karl Kautsky and democracy12

Review of Karl Kautsky’s Die proletarische Revolution und ihr Programm, Stuttgart, Dietz, 1922. Marxism and socialism are not one and the same thing. While few have contributed as greatly as Karl Marx has to socialism’s armoury, the road to socialism is not tied to the fate of his scientific method. Socialism’s moral truths were true before Marx, and socialism will live on and flourish even after the progress of science has uttered its final verdict on Karl Marx’s social, historical and political thought. Whereas Marxism, like all scientific constructions, evolves, socialism, as the highest stage of human fraternity and the road to social perfection, is eternal. For this reason, all socialists have to stand guard to ensure that the ineluctable obsolescence of Marxism, or its possible sudden collapse, does not also bring down with it the idea of socialism and, in the process, delay its victory. This danger is all the more relevant today, given that many people are incapable of distinguishing between Marxism and socialism. This is particularly the case in Germany, where the ideas of socialism have taken the shape of Marxismsocialism, also known as collectivist-communist socialism. (Incidentally, this Marxist socialism not only neglects many important elements of socialism, but also of Marxism.) Collectivist-communist socialism has not only narrowed the goals of socialism, but has also diminished them. For socialism is essentially an ethical objective that seeks to achieve the realisation of human freedom and solidarity. (This, of course, necessitates the resolution of certain economic problems, but today only these latter problems attract attention.) Marxism-socialism has turned this grand objective into an essentially economic movement, in the process drastically simplifying and narrowing down even the economic problem itself. It does not deal with problems of freedom and justice, which result from today’s decaying economy, and which real, living people are having to struggle with, of which disputes over wages and working hours form only a part, but instead 12 ‘Karl Kautsky és a demokrácia’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (17 September 1922).

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seeks to foist an artificial schema upon humanity, the ultimate aim of which is to institute a centrally administered economy, free from money and exchange. For this collectivist-communist economy, Marxism-socialism is willing to sacrifice the essence of socialism: justice among people and individual freedom. What we are witnessing in this conjuncture was predictable: the resounding failure of Russia’s collectivist-communist experiment has shattered the façade of Marxist socialism. Its essential theses, arguments and methods have been ruined. The foundations of Western socialism, to the extent that they were built on Marxist ground, are shaking. The credibility of socialist leaders, with a few notable exceptions, is being eaten from within by worms. But only Marxism, not socialism, is at fault for their adherence to Marxist socialism. (Neither is it due to individual errors or to the allegedly unimposing characteristics of the Bolsheviks.) The flight of those alarmed leaders whose faith in socialism has been shaken must be stopped. And we need to forcefully raise our voices against them when, in line with the eternal defeatism of those who bow before dogma instead of the living truths of socialism, they seek to salvage antiquated Marxist doctrines from the Russian disaster. Karl Kautsky’s latest work presents a poignant picture of the disorderly retreat of Marxist socialism. He defends until the very last breath the presentday relevance of the tenets and formulae of Marx’s scientific system even as he dismisses, and throws as cheap carrion to the enemy, not only some of Marxism’s (i.e. collectivist-communism’s) untenable positions but also the basic foundations of socialism’s worldview. With the rigidity of the dogmatic Marxist, Karl Kautsky, the pope of orthodox Marxism, proclaims his solemn faith in the doctrinal liturgy. From the book’s first sentence until its last, its author speaks in the name of Karl Marx, bases his reasoning upon his writings, and accepts Marxist precepts as binding judgements. Its first part is written in the spirit of the old (and outdated) theories of exploitation, immiserisation, crisis, concentration and labour value and – above all – a still more outdated materialism and amoralism, pitting the Erfurt Programme (1891) against the recent Görlitz Programme (1921). And if Kautsky succeeds in ‘saving’ a scrap of orthodox Marxism by means of petty, formulaic trickery, he subsequently abandons what has become indefensible (in the fields of socialist politics, economics and organisation) in the second part of his book. Without ever seriously lifting his sword, he dismisses not only that which has already been proved fallacious (the collectivist-communist notion of the economy) but also that which is not only salvageable but even, today, becoming an inspiring reality: the transformative potential of socialism. Kautsky’s position has of course become untenable due to its internal contradictions; instead of offering a supplement to the Erfurt Programme it results in programmatic chaos. If you abandon collectivist-communist socialism you

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cannot honestly claim to accept Marx’s scientific system either, since the former (i.e. collectivist-communist socialism) – an economy based on the absence of money, goods, markets and exchange – is the necessary consequence of that system. Hence Kautsky insists only on the façade. While he tries desperately to follow Marxism by the letter, we can feel in his every word that he has lost faith in the infallibility of Marx. He agrees with the theory of capital concentration – but excludes agriculture from it. He maintains the validity of the theory of surplus value – but no longer claims that all productivity gains fall into the hands of the capitalist. He sticks rigidly to the theory of proletarianisation – but exempts the peasantry from it. He claims the theory of immiserisation to be of fundamental importance – but rejects the axiom that ‘the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains’. He insists on the theory of crisis, but abandons the theory of the ‘industrial reserve army’, and so on – repeating numerous such contradictions throughout the course of his text. We have already discussed the true reason for these contradictions: namely that Kautsky repudiates collectivist-communist planning, and, in so doing, Marxist socialism in its entirety. According to him, the labour theory of value cannot be used as a measurement of value; a production plan cannot be drawn up by statistics; the state cannot be entrusted with managing the economy; money, gold currency and bank notes are indispensable even under socialism; and workers’ savings can play a crucial role in the construction of a new credit system, etc. In other words, Kautsky is not attempting to ‘revise’ the programme of Marxist socialism in praxis, as Eduard Bernstein once sought to do, but is rejecting it completely. In Karl Kautsky, collectivist-communist socialism has committed hara-kiri. So, the reader might rightly ask: what type of socialism is Kautsky seeking to promote in this programmatic work? To this we can only respond that in political terms he is seeking to strengthen parliamentary democracy, and in economic terms he postulates socialisation as the road – and end goal – of socialism. He is fairly liberal when it comes to the forms that socialisation can take but ultimately favours its Austrian type. No wonder that Kautsky himself does not seem to believe that this programme will be sufficient to divert humanity on to the path of supreme sacrifice and save it from the threat of barbarism. It has been proven that it cannot. From the case of Russia, Kautsky has finally grasped that the simple use of force is a useless tool for the construction of a new world. Kautsky has eliminated everything from collectivist-communist socialism which cannot be obtained through democratic means – according to his understanding of democracy. That is, he has eliminated nearly everything (not only that which is associated with collectivism and communism, but also that which is associated with socialism), since, let us be honest, in terms of what Kautsky understands as democracy

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little, if any, socialism can be won against the economic and media-technological power of feudalism and monopoly capitalism. Indeed, Kautsky’s democracy is nothing but the political democracy of parliamentary majorities. While this institution is a prerequisite for the development of socialism, it is also certain that this type of democracy is, by itself, not sufficient for achieving socialism. Without a much wider, richer and more concrete meaning of democracy, nobody should expect socialism to lead to democracy. But Kautsky, due to the orthodox Marxist stamp of his thought, does not seek knowledge of this new meaning of democracy, and even were he to do so he would fail. He is unable to understand the new forms of democracy that are welling up from the spontaneous life of labour. He has no inkling of the relationship between cooperative forms of production and industrial democracy. For this reason, he has no understanding of the constitution of factory labour, of the democratic character of workplace and factory councils, municipal workers’ councils, agricultural workers’ cooperatives, regionalism and other forms of industrial autonomy. He therefore exhibits an almost shocking incapacity to understand the forms and potential of the cooperative spirit and movement. Karl Kautsky has no comprehension of this new democracy which, in tandem with political democracy, comprises the true nature of socialism. And it could not be otherwise. For the generation of materialists and amoralists are unable to see the proliferating branches of this new form of democracy, which is spreading its flowers far beyond the limited confines of politics. Instead, Kautsky insists more zealously than ever that socialism cannot be rooted in the ground of ethics! He recognises – and this is the only theoretical advance that Kautsky makes in this book – that the central question for workers today is not so much questions of wages as questions of power and freedom, yet he evidently does not fully comprehend the meaning of this transformation. For, how could the fight for freedom possibly be fought for, and legitimated, except upon an ethical basis?! In developing a critique of the collectivist-communist slave state, Kautsky has performed a useful service. But the alternative he offers is useless. For the transformation of society in its entirety, from its roots, cannot occur by means of political democracy and socialisation alone. Kautsky does not, and will never, see that it is democracy combined with the cooperative spirit that leads to socialism. In order to see this he would need to liberate himself from his amoralist prejudices and reconstruct his worldview upon the ethical ideals of socialism.

Guild socialism13

Since the Great War a new current within the labour movement has been spreading from Britain towards the European continent and America. Its goal is the same: the realisation of socialism. But the path that it charts is new, and diverges sharply from both the collectivist-communist and syndicalist traditions. In essence, perhaps, it is nothing but the theoretical and practical reconciliation of these two strands, a synthesis of two antitheses, undertaken by English common sense. Maintaining all the proven and viable elements of Marxist thought, in particular the notion of class struggle, guild socialism nonetheless represents a modern reinterpretation of socialism that is rightly attracting a broad interest. If we leave aside those final goals that fade into the distant future, we can say that the aim of collectivist socialism is comprehensive nationalisation, while syndicalism strives for the complete elimination of the state. The former places the management of production in the hands of the central administrative organs of the state, while the latter wishes to place economic power in the hands of the producers themselves. Just as the state is today responsible for providing the public with postal services, it could take responsibility for all other functions of production and distribution in society – so argue the collectivists. Just as the private entrepreneur today carries out the tasks of production, workers could do the same, if they controlled the factories, the offices, the land – so respond the syndicalists. Wage labour, they add, will remain wage labour even if the state, rather than the private entrepreneur, becomes the worker’s master – if indeed the worker does not become a mere robot serving the leviathan of the state. The producer can only become truly free if he becomes the master of his own labour. Against this, the collectivists legitimately point out that a capitalism of workers’ collectives is not the same as socialism; on the contrary, to substitute contemporary private monopolies with collective monopolies would only increase anarchy within the economy, weaken workers’ solidarity, and ultimately 13 ‘A gildszocializmus’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (18 June 1922).

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lead to the resurrection of private capitalism. Production is not an end in itself but ought to serve consumption; in this only the state and the community can effectively represent the consumer. For this reason, the control of production needs to be handed to the state and not left to the producers, who have regard only for their own private interests and not those of the public. Guild socialism stands for the unification of these two conceptions. The state or the community should represent the interests of the consumer; the producers’ association should represent the interests of the producers. To this end, the current organisations of producers should be transformed into guilds. During the medieval period, ‘guild’ was the name given to corporations in German speaking areas. Contrary to the degenerate corporations of Eastern Europe, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, etc. guilds were the true bearers of urban culture in medieval and early modern times. Material abundance, sophisticated crafts and genuine fraternal solidarity underpinned the flowering of the guilds of Venice, Florence, London and the Hansa, which were only broken by the ‘industrial revolution’, i.e. mechanisation. The vision of the guildsmen, indubitably, is a renaissance of this glittering medieval industrial realm in the form of a utopian era of guild socialism. A society of workers’ councils built on the elimination of competition and respect for craftsmanship, one that nowadays would include not merely a segment of the population but a world federation of hundreds of millions of industrial and agricultural proletarians united in solidarity – this is the ideal that has breathed life into the guilds movement. Guild socialism as a form of scientific socialism was developed by G. D. H. Cole, when he discovered those elements in contemporary society whose inner meaning hinges on their ability to contribute to the construction of industrial guilds. One of Marx’s basic historico-philosophical ideas was that a new mode of production would only replace the old order after it had fully developed within its womb. For Cole, the international trade union movement represents the bearer of guild socialism. Today’s trade unions need to change into industrial associations, that is, from being constructed on a professional basis (woodworkers, ironworkers, etc.) to being based on industrial sectors (manufacturing, construction, etc.). Indeed, this type of association, as the director of production, represents nothing less than the modern guild. If the working class directs its strength not only to the conduct of wage struggles but also to winning for itself the right to a say in the administration of the factory, and not merely in partnership with the employer, then the capitalist’s role in the factory becomes superfluous, as do all related institutions within the wider social order. In a word, either he withers away or he is forced to locate himself within the new organisation of labour. In this way, the foundations of capitalism will be eroded by the forces of industrial self-government.

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However, the working class simultaneously needs to continue its struggle for political power, since – contrary to syndicalism – the state and the community also play an important role within the programme of guild socialism. Concomitantly with the authority of the guilds, state power will be maintained; not in the shape of a ‘sovereign’ will, but as a body that exercises equal functions. This is especially the case in the economic sphere, where the state stands in opposition to both the guilds (as the representatives of the producers) and the commune (as the protector of the consumer). Within its own sphere of interest, each body holds legislative and executive powers, and where their interests intersect, decisions are made by agreement between the state and the guilds. Evidently, on this point guild socialism reveals itself as a radically new political theory. It can be summarised in the thesis that the essence of society is not to be expressed by the state but through cooperation among the functional organisations of society, a harmony that in a society free of class divisions will not need to be secured by any artificial constraints or through the ‘sovereignty’ of the state. For the guild and the state cannot come into conflict with one another, since both represent different forms of representation of the same constituency. The collectivist-communist idolisation of the state is therefore just as misguided as the anarcho-syndicalist revulsion towards it. The solution lies in discovering the state’s true role. Today, guild socialism is no longer a mere theory. In Britain, important sections of the labour movement stand behind it. There, increasingly, the idea of industrial self-government is becoming the battle cry. Alongside this practical accomplishment, an equally important element consists in guild socialism’s ideological achievement, in that we can now, once again, connect the true values of freedom, as they arise from the lives of working people, to the idea of individual self-determination and to an appreciation of craftsmanship, freedom of association and the voluntary assumption of responsibility for society. This is why many people today see guild socialism as the force that offers to the working class the prospect of a genuine united front.

Guild and state14

On the 19th of this month, Britain’s Independent Labour Party presented its new manifesto, which is based on the idea of guild socialism. The essence of guild socialism is well known: it seeks to socialise the means of production, but instead of nationalising them it would place them under the democratic control of the trade unions and cooperatives. It opposes nationalisation, that cornerstone of the old creed of collectivism, not only because of the danger that centralisation leads to increased bureaucratisation, but also for reasons of principle: for the guiding spirit of socialism is the yearning for freedom. This does not require an extension of state power, but rather its reduction. In this connection, the manifesto of the Independent Labour Party, which is the representative of the guild socialist idea within Britain’s Labour Party, argues the following: ‘We oppose state socialism, together with its bureaucracy. We look to the trade unions and wish them to reach out towards manual and mental labour alike. In a socialist society, the trade unions will be responsible for production and for the internal administration of industry. But in this they will not be alone. Industrial production concerns not only the factory worker but also the housewife and consumers in general. We therefore propose the motion that consumers’ representatives, for example from consumer cooperatives, work together with the producers in all industries and offices’. Accordingly, the means of production seized from private ownership will neither be transferred to the state (as the collectivists want) nor to the factory workers, but to the trade unions, which will have developed into guilds. We can speak of guilds in any industry insofar as they organise workers according to industry (not profession) and include manual, administrative and intellectual workers alike. Hence, within the labour movement, the guild socialists would place power in the hands of the trade unions. The guilds are the culmination of the trade union movement. Up to this point, the new socialist manifesto is readily understood. But, how does this system of trade unionist, cooperative and municipal socialism relate to the question of state power? This is the stumbling block in 14 ‘Gild és állam’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (29 March 1923).

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the guild socialist manifesto. For if the state is the representative of society’s will, then only its organs can drive through radical reforms within society. An organisation developed in this way, however, will necessarily be built on state power, not on the self-governing organisations of the workers: the trade unions, cooperatives and municipal councils. To put the essence of it: is an organised society possible without the state, and if so, how? – that is the question. The guild socialists answer this question with a new social theory. In brief, this new and revolutionary theory argues: It is not true that the organic functioning of society can only be guaranteed by the state. On the contrary: state power artificially unifies and, by so doing, impairs the natural and healthy unity of society. Society is essentially an organism whose individual organs carry out their functions in unity with each other. This is the starting point of the new functional social theory. At first sight, functional theory does not appear to be original. Long ago, Menenius Agrippa’s tale of the stomach and the limbs based itself on this organic metaphor. And yet it is new and original. It derives the causes of social harmony completely differently than did good old Agrippa: not through superficial analogy with the animal body but through the lives of the individuals who constitute society. The different functions of individuals are: production, consumption, neighbourly relations, intellectual life and their flourishing. These are the functions that encourage people to form associations: collective production, collective consumption, common neighbourhoods and intellectual associations. The contemporary incarnations of these natural associations are the trade unions, the cooperatives, community organisations, ideological and cultural groups, each of which expresses a function of individual life. One and the same individual can belong to more than one group, depending on which function of his life is served by the association. In a truly democratic society no violence or privilege of property will disturb the natural right of individuals to form associations; thus, harmony rules between the associations of which society is comprised. How could it be otherwise? After all, the same individuals constitute them. The producers, the consumers and the municipalities are differentiated but organised elements of one and the same population. In a functional democracy, therefore, there is no need for state power as a unifying factor, since the organisations arising from the different functions of individuals’ lives already operate in harmony. However, this does not mean that state power becomes redundant. Its authority merely becomes attenuated. It still remains an important bearer of functions located on the municipal, regional – in other words neighbourly – scales. Yet it would no longer remain the single ‘sovereign power’, but rather simply one power on an equal footing with the other main functional power: the guild. Free cooperation between the guild and the state – this is the new social imaginary envisaged by the guild socialists.

The historical background of the social ­revolutionaries15

The principal purpose of the courts of white terror that swept Hungary following the demise of the Councils’ Republic was to brand its fighters as ‘common thieves’, ‘swindlers’ and ‘extortionists’. In similar fashion, the true meaning of the political trial in Moscow is to brand as ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and ‘agents of the bourgeoisie and the Entente’ those Russian revolutionaries who had the courage and integrity to reject the flesh pots of the Soviet bourgeoisie and to fight against corruption, tyranny and oppression, and for a democratic and free socialism – just as they had been doing when they stood before the gallows not of the Third International but of the Russian Tsar. Courage and integrity, however, do not spring from programmes but from the character and moral bearing of individuals. The Russian social democrats, who are composed on one hand of the Bolsheviks, and, on the other, of the now-persecuted Mensheviks, had for decades been brothers in arms in the heroic struggle against Tsarism. They were also partially united in bringing the November Revolution of 1917 to its victorious outcome. Wherein, then, lies the difference between the programmes of these two social-revolutionary camps? This is one of the most contentious questions in the historiography of the Russian revolution. From the standpoint of the present it is not difficult to answer the question. Today, ‘social revolutionary’ denotes half a dozen revolutionary parties and groups, some of which are operating in Russia, others in emigration. All of them are opposed to the Bolsheviks, although for the most part only on certain questions: land reform, the cooperatives or the manner in which the decline of Russia’s local soviets should be reversed. (We are not concerned here with the Mensheviks, who constitute the minority wing of the Social Democratic Party. 15 ‘A szociálforradalmárok pörének történelmi háttere’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (2 July 1922). In Russia on 8 June 1922, a trial commenced of central committee members of the Social Revolutionary Party, for acts undertaken during its time in office during the provisional government in mid-1917 and in ‘white’ governments during the civil war, for the assassination of German diplomat Wilhelm Graf von Mirbach-Harff, and for an attempt on Lenin’s life. Of the thirty-four defendants, some were acquitted while others were sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment. Fourteen were sentenced to death, although the death sentences were later suspended.

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Their sacrifices have been no less heroic than those of the social revolutionaries.) Hence, ‘social revolutionary’ figures as the umbrella term for all socialist revolutionaries who stand today in opposition to the Bolsheviks. Historically, social democracy in Russia has always rested upon a relatively solid theoretical and practical basis. In contrast, the Social Revolutionary Party, although a multifaceted, adaptable and highly dynamic organisation, lacked any capacity for mass mobilisation and acted therefore as a hub of revolutionary energy rather than as a guiding hand. While social democracy based itself fundamentally upon the organised industrial working class and was the expression of a militant movement that, being Marxist-inspired, emphasised the assessment of objective social conditions, the Social Revolutionary Party was geared instead to the peasantry and the intellectuals. Politically oriented, conspiratorial and terrorist, its revolutionary élan was based upon a subjectivist spirit; it pursued guerrilla warfare and a Bakuninist-inflected agenda. Obviously, these differences extend only to individual behaviour, tactics, methods and the movement’s ethical ambience, and not to the parties’ programmes. Created a quarter of a century ago by Zsytloffszkij and Rappaport, the Social Revolutionary Party was not anarchist but was itself a socialist party. In its theory, it unequivocally followed Marx, not Bakunin. Wherein, then, lies the sharp divide between these two fraternal Russian parties, the divide which still separates them, at times bringing them into tragic confrontation with each other? The clue to the riddle lies in the person of Bakunin. Not in his anarchist conception of society, which the Social Revolutionary Party rejected, but in the revolutionary ethics which his name has come to symbolise. The trial of the social revolutionaries in Moscow merely represents a further twist in the fratricidal struggle which was already present at the inception of the modern labour movement and to which the First International also fell victim: Marx’ struggle against Proudhon and Bakunin. Although in that struggle right was almost entirely on the side of Marx, today every impartial Marxist acknowledges that the methods by which Bakunin was overcome planted a moral weakness in the international labour movement, which was later to fatally avenge itself. Proudhon, the genius print worker, was the oldest of the three. It was primarily due to the influence of his critique of property that the twenty-fouryear-old Marx became a socialist. His work, Marx wrote of Proudhon in 1844, represented ‘a scientific manifesto of the French proletariat’. Following their fraternal debates in Paris, Marx broke with Proudhon. In his pioneering work, The Poverty of Philosophy, he not only went beyond Proudhon’s theory but also attacked him in a ruthless ad hominem manner. Bakunin, the Russian nihilist, was a student of Proudhon and a contemporary of Marx. He was twice sentenced to death, clamped in iron hoops – more than

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once – in the jails of the Reaction, and sentenced to eighteen years confinement in Siberia’s lead mines. Across Europe, insurrections, riots and revolutions followed in his wake. He founded, in secret, the first international revolutionary organisation in Italy, naming it the International Revolutionary Association. Some years later, in 1864, Marx founded the ‘International’, which Bakunin and his party joined in 1868. But there was an unbridgeable gap between Bakunin’s burning love for freedom and Marx’s deterministic revolutionary ideas. Bakunin rejected Marx’s position on the peasantry, as well as the residues of the Hegelian spirit which, at times, inclined Marx towards excessive bureaucratisation, forced centralisation and the endorsement of nationalisation at any cost. Society should be ‘organised from the bottom up in completely free and independent associations’, wrote Bakunin, and ‘without governmental paternalism’. Once again, the leaders of the First International made the old mistakes: in 1869, Bornheim, who was close to the leadership, in the pages of Zukunft accused Bakunin of being a Russian spy. Liebknecht repeated the accusation in the Volkstaat, and for this the party, which Bakunin had asked to pass a judgement on the matter, seriously reprimanded him. Bakunin did not regard the decision as worth the paper it was written on, but offered to shake hands. Liebknecht, however, refused to apologise (despite having promised to do so). The battle continued. In 1872, the leadership of the First International accused Bakunin of having embezzled 300 roubles from its funds, which he had received in advance for a translation of Das Kapital. Needless to say, the accusation did not hold water, yet that did not prevent Bakunin from being expelled, as a common embezzler, from the International – which, as a result, essentially ceased to exist. Forty years later, just as the First International before it, the Second International also fragmented over questions of revolutionary ethics. From the early 1860s, all significant groupings of the Russian revolution came under Bakunin’s influence. His anti-authoritarianism, unbounded love for freedom and exemplary morality infused a remarkable tradition in Russia, which was later to find expression in the spirit and actions of the likes of Vera Zasulich and Sofia Peroffskaia.16 Unfortunately, obscenities of the Nechayev variety were also able to flourish in conspiratorial habitats. Uspensky and his three-member group murdered Ivanov on 24 November 1869, on the instruction, and according to the interests, of Sergey Nechayev.17 In The Demons, 16 Sophia Perovskaya belonged to the populist organisation Narodnaya Volya. She assisted in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. 17 Sergey Nechayev was a Russian nihilist and associate of Bakunin, known for his advocacy of political violence. When I. I. Ivanov, a member of Nechayev’s revolutionary cell, quarrelled with him and left their organisation, Nechayev persuaded Peter Uspensky and other associates to murder him.

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Dostoevsky immortalised the satanic figure of Nechayev in the character of Stepanovich Verkhovensky. The Moscow trial has shown that this reckless, conspiratorial type retains a presence in the ranks of the Social Revolutionary Party. The Moscow tragedy is merely the latest incarnation of the titanic clash between two different conceptions of life that have existed within the labour movement since its inception, and which frequently flare up in a struggle against one another. For our part, we argue that, of Marx and Bakunin, it is Marx who possessed the more profound and more fruitful conception of the proletariat’s revolutionary vocation. However, we are concerned that, just like the Justizmord to which Bakunin and his followers fell victim fifty years ago, robbing the international workers’ movement of irreplaceable moral values and revolutionary energies, the dishonourable methods deployed in Moscow’s bloody epilogue will likewise extinguish those ideas and energies in the absence of which Russia’s workers will sooner or later succumb.

Part III World politics and philosophy of history

The clowns of world peace1

Across the world, in opposition to the united and self-conscious camp of the victorious peace, stands another camp, which is less self-conscious and also less united: the supporters of peace through conciliation, of durable peace and p­ acifism. Among the Central Powers, the idea of peace through conciliation is based upon the famous July resolution passed by a majority of the parties in the German Reichstag. The catalyst for a durable peace was the proclamation of King Charles I of Austria. Of our statesmen, Count Czernin was the first to proclaim himself a supporter of pacifism, in his historically important Budapest speech. Most recently, the semi-official German newspaper, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, has cautiously backed [Woodrow] Wilson’s ideas. Let us call the followers of these three different strands, which until now have not possessed a common name, the camp of sober peace. Today, everywhere, the most pressing political question in public affairs is the struggle between the victorious peace and the sober peace. It is the most important question not only because of its all-encompassing importance and immediacy but also because, in principle, all of humanity is today divided into these two camps. And yet, the intensity of the struggle is remarkably low. The united and selfconscious camp of victorious peace scarcely encounters any serious resistance. The supporters of sober peace are unable to engage decisively; their approach is hesitant and vacillating, and at the critical junctures they abandon their flag with perplexing consistency. The supporters of sober peace show solidarity only towards the annexationists. But a successful military thrust is enough for this unity to become disorganised and disrupted, and when a decisive victory on the battlefield actually becomes conceivable, then the camp falls permanently silent and its troops go over, in groups, to the enemy. This situation is exacerbated by the arbitrary insignia that adorn the new and unsystematic slogans. The demands for peace through conciliation and for durable peace at times coincide with each other, 1 ‘A világbéke Dummer August-jai’, Szabadgondolat, 8.6–7 (August–September 1918): 97–105.

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but at other times they are mutually exclusive. For example, in the states of the Entente, the durable peace is seen as synonymous with the victorious peace. Sometimes peace through conciliation appears less oppositional than does durable peace. The two positions are closest to one another when they take a stand in unison against their pacifist comrades. If the pacifists would only remain faithful to their own programme, this would happen even more often. But whereas the socialists, for example, are pacifists in theory, according to their programme, in practice they often support peace through accommodation – even if not that of victorious peace, as we have often experienced on the part of the Entente. Yet even a figure such as Friedrich Adler2 stands with the opponents of pacifist peace. However, one strand of the peace through conciliation camp is moving ever further from its original standpoint and is now demanding pacifist peace. Here, the foremost figures are Mihály Károlyi and Oscar Jaszi. Amidst this Babylonian confusion, the camp of sober peace marches to battle against the disciplined armies of victorious peace! No wonder that the prospects of success are slim. Yet this situation is not merely disgraceful; it is at the same time dangerous. It is disgraceful because if a theoretical programme is vague, if a movement of ideas is not united, then the reason can never be anything but moral cowardice of the movement’s supporters and participants, towards themselves and against one another. But this state of affairs is also dangerous because, ultimately, whether or not the cataclysm of endless war that threatens all of humanity can be stopped will depend upon the strength and determination of this camp. Let us therefore intrepidly analyse the paths that the supporters of peace are following, and let us ruthlessly debunk all false and duplicitous messages, however pious they may sound. *

Let us begin at the beginning: do we need peace through conciliation, or durable peace? Or are the two identical? Many claim that peace can only be durable if it is based on conciliation, and that all peace based on conciliation is durable. In reality, matters are not like this. The parties can agree to a peace in which they compromise with each other but it is not necessarily durable. Throughout history, most peace agreements signed by equal partners have followed this pattern: first, peace terms were agreed, but later, due to the will of one party or the other, or perhaps both, the agreement was overturned and war resumed between the two. For a bad agreement requires conciliation, while 2 Friedrich Adler: Austrian social democratic leader, and assassin.

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satisfaction and permanence come only through a good agreement. Most agreements, however, are not like this. What was created by mutual exigency is also felt by the parties to be mutual exigency. Hence, what counts is not that the peace is the result of negotiations but that it brings forth a situation that the parties perceive as being in their own interests. In itself, peace by conciliation is not equivalent to durable peace, and even if this were the outcome it would be the result not of the parties reaching an accommodation with one another but of the ground upon which they had reached it. Secondly, it must be recognised that a durable peace can be achieved by other means than through conciliation. On this point the Sigfrids of Siegfriede3 are correct: both in theory and in practice the peace that we have foisted upon the dust-stricken enemy is more durable than that which is reached through negotiation. In a negotiation, both parties can see themselves as losers and neither is necessarily comforted by the notion that it had to be this way. The annihilated enemy can, at most, think about revanche, but so too can the one who feels himself to have been wronged by an agreement. Hence, peace through conciliation will only rarely result in a durable peace, while the most durable peace is often that which rests not upon conciliation but on victory. We seem here to have arrived at the surprising and seemingly paradoxical conclusion that peace through conciliation and durable peace do not have any individual content or meaning of their own; it is as if they are nothing but thin, attenuated embodiments of their essential, viable representative: victorious peace?! And this is indeed the case. For today, the peaceful coexistence of modern states can be imagined in only two ways: on the basis either of the balance of power or of a legally enforced equilibrium. Either, as has been the case hitherto, as sovereign states whose will cannot be constrained by any means, hence not even through physical force or physical power, or, as the new world order requires, as states in association with one another, on the basis of law and justice. We call the first system militarism and the second pacifism. Today, these two systems are more than mere ideals, constructions or possibilities; they are the concrete realities of practical politics. Militarism is embodied in the armed state whose freedom among other states is limited only by its own power, whose scope of action is decided by force and, if this scope is disputed, is decided through a power struggle between the conflicting parties. This decision is then perpetuated by the terms of peace, which render the stronger, the victorious, even stronger. But not even a peace that rests on power 3 The name, derived from ‘sigu’ (victory) and ‘fridu’ (peace), connotes victorious peace.

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can last forever, because power relations fluctuate and the sovereign state, which, according to its innermost meaning, only knows one calling – the validation of its power – even as it fulfils its calling finds itself confronted with the old terms of peace, which it needs to push aside. In this way, the periods of peace through power give way to ever-new power struggles. However, their intensity depends less on the harshness or mildness of the terms of peace, as the supporters of peace through conciliation believe, than on a completely different set of factors, which vary in every historical process. Opposite to this stands pacifism, an international political system in which the relations between states is based on law and justice, and where the moral values of humanity are derived from the concept of the rule of law. Hence, pacifism does not, first and foremost, acknowledge sovereign states, because it believes that something, namely principles of law and justice, exists that trump raison d’état. In its conception, individual states belong to the League of Nations, and the supreme will no longer belongs to individual states but to the totality of states. A tribunal of arbitration, which is invested by the member states with executive powers to act against non-compliant states, supervises the enforcement of general disarmament, as well as national obligations and treaties. Its initial coercive measure to deploy against non-compliant states is the economic boycott, but if necessary military force by allied states can be deployed. Just as, under the rule of law, the state employs force against the evildoer, so the pacifist world order ultimately forces the rule of law through war. The creation of this rule of law is the goal of the pacifist movement. This movement’s first milestone is pacifist peace. For the pacifist does not see the causes of world war in ‘vital interests’ rooted in the idea of rivalrous sovereign states, that infuse themselves into their citizens’ excitable imaginations, and which have therefore to be adopted as a ‘guide to victory’ or ‘wisely smoothed out’ in the interests of peace, but, on the contrary, they are convinced that such ‘vital interests’ are rooted merely in the drives of sovereign states, that they do not exist in reality, and that the cause of war lies precisely in the fact that people continue to believe that they exist. The basis of this phenomenon lies in the militaristic world order itself, in the contradiction between the idea of the sovereign state, on the one hand, and the realised unity of modern humanity on the other. For the sovereign state, the mere existence of another state can only be conceived as the denial of its vital interests, because to itself, its own sovereign existence is absolute, it demands exclusivity. In contrast, the world economy, world literature and world civilisation have rendered modern human beings so similar to one another, and have brought them into such close interaction, that human beings, given that individuals from innumerable sovereign states separated by borders have coalesced into a single human community, can sustain neither their intellectual nor their mate-

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rial existence in isolation; without each other they cannot think or produce; separated from each other they can no longer subsist. For this reason, sovereign states can no longer survive in isolation – although, being sovereign, they are incapable of entering into community with one another. The catastrophic form in which this contradiction is resolved, and in which the interconnectedness of the international sphere is mediated through absolute and exclusive sovereign states, is: world war. On the scales of mutual danger among states, the world war is that state of balance which, externally, manifests as the order of sovereign states, but, internally, manifests the natural form of existence of today’s world united into a single human community. The pacifists eliminate the fundamental cause of war when they end the contradiction that exists between humanity’s actual community and its external division into sovereign states. The pacifists demand an external order that is appropriate for this inner human community, and that cannot be anything but the definitive repudiation and supersession of the sovereign state, via the League of Nations and the international rule of law. Thus, the pacifist peace is that which, within the context of the peace agreements that seek to end the world war, would create and secure the institutional basis of a new regime for the world’s leading states. Pacifist peace does not seek to place the foundations of the peace treaty on the increasing power of the victor, or on reconciliation between the mutually accommodating parties, or on any other factor that does not recognise the order of the moral world, but instead seeks to found it solely on the rule of law, the creation of which would be an incomparably greater achievement of the peace treaty than any particular peace conditions. Pacifist peace is that which through the conclusion of peace would not only liberate today’s world from the apparent and subaltern antagonisms that divide the warring parties but would also set humanity free from ‘club law’, through which we all degenerate into slaves of barbarism. Accordingly, there are two positive conceptions of the conclusion of peace: one is the victorious peace; the other is the pacifist peace. Alongside these two exclusive possibilities, the slogans of peace through conciliation and durable peace are really nothing but half-hearted and unprincipled formulae, empty of any serious meaning or immanent truth. For let us be clear, as long as there are sovereign states and their peace is governed by the balance of powers, the extent of the freedom of peoples will be determined by force, the only method through which to adjudicate the claims of nations will be war, peace will only be guaranteed by the strength of armies, the threat of force and the success of war, all peoples will only be able to tilt the balance of power in their own favour through victory, the highest degree of freedom will only be guaranteed through victory, and deploying the means of war in order to resolve disputed claims and unsolvable contradictions will only be effected by one method: victory.

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In such a world there can only be one good peace: the victorious peace. All of the world’s civilisations and cultures can only serve it; every human effort and act of self-sacrifice can only find final confirmation in it. The supporters of peace through conciliation sense this, but even if they did not, the contradiction would still reflect itself in their behaviour. The truth is, the supporters of peace through conciliation are content with this situation. They are content with it either because they do not trust in the victorious peace or because its achievement appears to be too expensive or too hazardous. The victorious peace remains their secret yardstick of value, their unconscious ideal. No matter how much they may protest, peace through conciliation is for them, in reality, nothing more than peace through resignation, which is only alleviated and rendered more acceptable by the fact that it rests on reciprocity. There are, however, those for whom the slogan denotes not resignation but a straightforward ‘positive demand’: that conditions which might dishonour or offend the enemy’s vital interests should not be enforced upon them. Not even, if it were to eventuate, in the case of triumphant victory. For them, conciliation refers not only to the means of concluding the peace but also to its very conditions: they should not leave any sting in the enemy’s wounds and should not encourage it to seek revanche. In these parts, this is generally understood as constituting the demand for durable peace, and it is at this point that it merges with peace through conciliation. This seemingly more elevated conception is, upon closer inspection, nothing but either cheap sentimentalism or transparent cunning. For such a peace is no different to any other peace between sovereign states: a mere state of equilibrium within the balance of power! And this system’s mechanism cannot be concealed, whether by tenderness or trickery. Such attempts can only be harmful, for they are disruptive. And besides, others have tried it many times before. There was a time when governments handled the labour question with police bayonets. When it came to the question of class struggle they believed only in victorious peace. The notion of social reform only slowly found its way, through thousands of misunderstandings, stumbles, slurs and persecutions. Mocked as a utopia or dream, on the one hand, and labelled terrorism and anarchy, on the other – precisely the same treatment as, until recently, pacifism has received. And if there existed, even then, a mediatory movement with an unconsecrated memory, one of the drivers of traditional philistinism, that was divided internally and impotent externally, always benevolent and ultimately always harmful, it was bourgeois charity – which, in the name of fraternity and humanity within society objected to the politics of force and victorious peace but, at every decisive moment, would stab the working class in the back whenever it attempted to secure its own future through institutional means. This politics – hesitant, anaemic, pedantic, confused and disrup-

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tive – had to be swept aside for liberation to be secured; it, the clowns in the circus tent of history, in whom the cleverest cunning comes fused with the most infantile naivety, makes its appearance today as: peace through conciliation! In practice, of course, the supporters of victorious peace and peace through conciliation merely differ in their opinion of the military situation. Yet just as he whose instinct is to grab as much as he can remains true to himself even when he grabs only scraps because he cannot take more, so too, when, following the successful breakthrough at St Quentin,4 the majority parties in the Reichstag began to ‘explain’, ‘interpret’ and ‘tighten’ their July resolution on peace through conciliation – that was anything but an edifying spectacle. Yet it was not the first time that it had happened, nor will it be the last. ‘If victory is impossible then we have to compromise’ – that is the lofty programme of peace through conciliation. ‘If we could not defeat our enemies this time, then we would not in any case be able to succeed next time’ – this is the redeeming ideal of the supporters of durable peace. It is in the name of such ersatz theory that they propose themselves as leaders of a rudderless humanity? Is this not akin to stock exchange bears posing in the role of social reformer and moral crusader in opposition to the bulls of the same institution? Indeed, we really have to wonder about the level of public moralising and political dilettantism, when the vacuous phraseology of peace through conciliation can be expected – so long as the actual fortunes of war are not reversed – to win over the realist politicians of victorious peace. And if they were to be won over, nothing more than a changing of the guard would result – between the ‘peace parties’ of the Central Powers and the Entente. * With this, we have answered the question as to why the party of moderate peace is so divided and weak. For today only the supporters of victorious peace consistently represent the militarist order, but the world order of pacifism can only be guaranteed by a pacifist peace. Beyond these two positive conceptions no third way exists. Peace through conciliation and the durable peace are nothing but scrappy, half-baked forms of the victorious peace, and as such are fatally compromised by the evolving military situation. Their alliance with the pacifists is based upon superficial appearances, which make them seem a united opposition against annexationists. However, a dishonest relationship of this sort cannot withstand the test of action. In the struggle that is to commence, not between armies at war with one another but between supporters of the old and the new world order, and which must be resolved in order to terminate this war, supporters of pacifist peace find 4 The reference, we may presume, is to the Battle of the St Quentin Canal of September– October 1918, in which German forces suffered a defeat.

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themselves ranged against the rest, a ‘single reactionary mass’ of all the world’s other war and peace parties: the annexationists and imperialists, the supporters of peace through conciliation and of durable peace, whether they belong to the bourgeois or the socialist camp. At this one cannot but smile, for the futility of every attempt to ‘reconcile’, ‘placate’ or ‘bring the parties to an agreement’ is so obvious. As if it were really that the ‘parties’ cannot be reconciled, as if the world war had really been fought over Alsace-Lorraine, and as if the inability to find agreement is really about clashing interests! Some are still so blind that they cannot see that what cannot be reconciled today is not the ‘parties’ but something completely different: it is the conception of the sovereign state that cannot be reconciled with the necessity of an international legal system; it is the actual system of coexisting peoples that cannot be attuned to the demands for justice that are now the order of the day; and it is the gamut of emotional and intellectual forms, the entire institutional framework and mode of existence of contemporary public life that cannot be reconciled with the deepest practical need and the loftiest intellectual conception of the contemporary age: the world order of pacifism. In these circumstances, peace through conciliation would be akin to agreeing on the fact that the world war had been fought in vain. A peace by accommodation would result in nothing more than all the generals, diplomats and the world’s other overlords expressing a mutual declaration to the effect that, in their consideration, the event had not taken place at all. At most, in an additional clause, they would agree on collaborative international persecution of the pacifists. Everything else, however, would stay the same … And humanity, which had been brought, by the insoluble contradictions of a relentless and ruthless war, right up to the gateway to a new, better order; which was about to step over the threshold of law and institutionalised peace, and therewith across the boundary separating today’s behemoths from the empire of pacifism; this desperately battered, miserable humanity is now being pushed back once again, into that old world, of which the foundation and cupola, and every column and pillar, are made of force and yet which we nonetheless call peace. The inferno from which this world war was created – in just a day – and to which the supporters of conciliation are seeking to guide humanity back, was known to us as peace. But history has passed judgement over the world order of force, and peace through conciliation will not be able to suspend the death penalty. Peace through conciliation remains the last hope for the conservative forces seeking to impede pacifism and, thereby, ensure the survival of the old order. This is the Burgfriede 5 that all the reactionary and backward factions of the 5 Burgfriede: an enforced state of truce.

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rival states will sign and announce as soon as the success of pacifism threatens their common realm. But taking a bird’s-eye view of history, we see that in current circumstances no form of peace through conciliation can be durable. Not because ‘peace by conciliation would merely be an armistice between the warring forces’, but because it would represent only a short-lived armistice between the real – albeit invisible – antagonists, those between whom a life-and-death struggle is raging: the world orders of militarism and pacifism! Any peace through conciliation would only postpone the final decision with regard to this burning question. History would abort this monster, in a series of unforeseeable convulsions entailing conflagrations of domestic and foreign politics. For, as easy as it may seem to mediate the conflicts of interest between today’s adversaries by means of peace through conciliation, as impossible and prohibited it is to achieve ‘peace through conciliation’ with regard to the global question that is labouring within the depths of the present: the rule of force or of law, the question of militarism or pacifism!

New era6

If we step out into the open, our horizon expands dramatically. With a similar abruptness and broadening of scope, humanity’s historical horizon has expanded since the collapse occasioned by the world war. This tremendous quake is putting the soul’s capacity of adaptation to a stern test. As the mountaineer sometimes suffers vertigo when he looks down into the abyss without a transition – a sensation caused, it is said, by the sudden adaptation of the eye muscles to the new perspective – it comes as no surprise if many people have been prisoners of some form of mental disorder since the bursting of the home-made black pudding of the 1910s, after which a bloody lightning strike revealed us to be standing before the infinity of historical existence. The lightning has passed, but the vision remains. Our generation, and perhaps many to come, will live in a world that was revealed by this vision. In religious history such events are usually termed revelations. The substance of the revelation is fairly clear. ‘We should not cause one another harm, because we are all brothers on this Earth’ – this is essentially how the message has been understood by every well-meaning soul. Of course, we would not be human if we did not search for the Promised Land along different roads. The fierce struggle between worldviews which is raging around us revolves basically around interpretations of the revelation. All the different shades of socialism, in their different hues, have assumed responsibility for the world war and for learning its lessons. Evidently, this great quarrel cannot be avoided. Intellectual disputation is the means through which the human soul formulates its own laws. Our intellect only knows that which it argues. For this reason, the intellectual struggle is a necessary evil, and we only need to be vigilant that it causes as little harm as possible to the values over which the struggle is raging. More problematic, however, is that over which there is no struggle because it remains a mutual agreement, an unwritten law. If in many ways more benign, unwritten law is more troublesome than written law due to the fact that it has 6 ‘Új idöszámitás’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (10 October 1922).

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not been set down. It is less conscious, less efficient, and more easily forgotten. Perhaps this is one reason why the great common lessons of humanity accumulate and crystallise only slowly, whereas ideas that have won out through struggle remain stubbornly powerful, even when they were not particularly valuable. That is why we should never regret the effort of contributing, in line with our abilities, to the drafting of these common lessons. Although we are speaking only of raising ­awareness of that which is already half-known, in the absence of appropriate words this is still not always an easy task. For words are created chiefly by struggles, and therefore we do not even have words to express that which no one questions. One such non-controversial yet still not sufficiently conscious common lesson of the post-world war generation can perhaps best be defined  thus: as regards passing judgement on twentieth century civilisation, we have become poorer. We have awoken to the recognition that our own tent is not pitched outside world history. We had believed that catastrophic wars, devastating revolutions, plagues and famines were disasters that struck human societies throughout history, often even leading to their demise, but that this experience was only true of the ancient world or societies in far-off climes and not of our own. ‘What the experience of three generations seems to show is that which people take to be the natural order’, said Keynes. And as the three generations that have grown up in Europe since the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars experienced perpetual peaceful prosperity and increasing growth, European humanity came to take peace and the continuous growth of prosperity for a natural law. The pride with which this peculiar and honourable (and yet so little earned) privilege filled us, a pride that we had perhaps sensed vaguely at the outset but later happily forgot, this pride exerted its effects, insensibly and in all directions, and gradually extinguished our sense of sober modesty. And although at times the noises of internal doubt made themselves heard, we would silence them with a self-conscious gesture alluding to our technological and scientific achievements, claiming that he who has harnessed the powers of nature need have no fear of the vicissitudes of time. Instead, we invented museums, specifically to contain world history, much as we had once used zoos to contain monstrous beasts. Today, it makes one smile to recall that the last century, which witnessed history from the box seat, was proud of ‘historical sentiment’. The historical approach came naturally to nearly every field of the social sciences. It had two great branches: the conservative and the revolutionary. The former considered history’s distinguishing feature to be the imperceptible slowness with which it proceeds. For its delicate historical senses, even reform seemed too great a leap. Because history does not make leaps, the conservative theory of development would teach, it is best if we do not do so either. In contrast, the revolutionary

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school did see leaps in history. It privileged one particular leap, perceived as greater, bolder and more exuberant than any other leap, and as such deserved to stand as the paradigm of the great transformations of the future – with our mind-sets today, having witnessed the destruction of entire continents, we cannot but smile when we think of this – this historic upheaval, which set the limit to their horizons, was the French Revolution. It was not the desert sands, the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, Peru’s shabby splendour, the fragmentation of Genghis Khan’s massive empire, the collapse of the Arab Empire or the dissolution of peoples, empires and races to which they pointed when hailing the iron law of the historical dialectic. For them, the true crucible of history had always been Europe, and their historical perspective only reached one generation deeper into the past than that of the myopic conservatives. They simply shifted the scene of the storm from a teaspoon to a glass of water, that was all; the ocean of being and non-being was concealed from them too. Swimming in shallow water is not the same as swimming in deep water. Our generation cannot sense the ground beneath its feet. With this, a new era in the history of our soul has begun. Not in the sense that time may come to be measured from this period onwards (although this is also possible), but in the sense that we ourselves will measure time differently. (According to Spengler’s curious pessimism, time moves in a deceptive circular motion which, like the snake that bites its own tail, returns into itself. Spengler has invented the inverted perpetuum mobile: time that stands still. However, all genuine life is optimistic.) The new age will measure time differently: the history of life on Earth is about the creation and destruction of races, the long history of humanity, and the most recent episode, the brief time that has passed since then and which is generally called world history, almost forces us to recognise the span of infinity. We believe that this truly historical measure of time, of which every philosophising soul is becoming more or less conscious but which is also germinating in the simplest men, will prove to be one of the most important legacies of the generation of the world war.

7

Against fear

We can scarcely remember the time when we were not afraid. Yet only ten years ago we considered those whose every thought and action were governed by fear to be paranoid, or sick with cowardice. Nowadays we candidly admit that we are afraid. Our lives are pervaded by a monstrous uncertainty. The value of money changes from one hour to the next. In the future, misery lurks. We do not know when and against whom we will be herded on to the battlefield. Civil war has become familiar to us. Small states are afraid of large states, large states fear one another. Soldiers and ­military commanders are the most fearful of all. They are arming themselves feverishly, as if the enemy were already breathing down their necks. The development of technology only exacerbates our fear. Ten years ago we were happy to hear of improvements in news services, the acceleration of transport or advances in chemistry; we were proud of the wireless telegraph, through which we conquered space. We had faith in science, because it improved our security. Today the reverse holds true: when we discover new, modern explosives under the beds of our neighbours, when general staffs begin an arms race with chemical weapons, and when crazed fanatics pass on their murderous instructions with Marconi-signals, we no longer rejoice in technological development but fear it. Chemistry is producing poison instead of medicine; technology is constructing electric chairs instead of life buoys. The shadow of economic development, too, silences rather than reassures us. Should we rejoice over the fact that, within only three years, Hugo Stinnes erected a sky-high Tower of Babel in Central Europe, just to fill his own pockets even more? Instead, we crouch anxiously in the shadow of this guilty edifice that straddles our marshlands, arrogantly advertising our slavery. We are afraid of it. There is no trust between peoples, no belief in the economy, and no faith in contracts. We are less human today than we were ten years ago. And as long as the great fear persists things shall not be otherwise. The sources of fear need to be plugged – there is no other solution. There are two 7 ‘A félelem ellen’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (7 July 1923).

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sources in question: the fear between peoples and that between classes. In their fearfulness, the dominant nations will take advantage of their position until the family of nations guarantees them security against the vengeance of others. The power of dominant classes, or those that were dominant until recently, needs to be broken, and, through the establishment of a sturdy democracy, they shall be protected against the possible tyranny of those classes that hitherto have remained oppressed. Institutionalised pacifism and institutional democracy respectively will remove the dominant nations’ and dominant classes’ fear of annihilation. Humanity’s forehead is bathed in a cold sweat of fear. Fearing for their survival, they carry on sinning, in proportion to their power. And a bad conscience is the best breeding ground for fear. There is therefore no other solution but to limit the power of individual nations by the mutual constraint of their powers. But this will only succeed if it does not increase but instead diminishes the fears of the stronger powers. For this reason, the dominant nations of yesterday need to be guaranteed that they will not be oppressed but will remain equals in the family of nations. It is here that we see the comforting effect, within today’s European alarm, of institutional pacifism: the idea of a genuine League of Nations. For the same reason we must also loyally and staunchly promote the idea of democracy. The feudal and big capitalist exploiters are desperately struggling against the advance of the working classes. They hire non-aligned people-classes as their mercenaries; and with bombs and the toxins of the media they corrode the seeds of a new society. In their wild panic they smash the connective tissues of morality and constitutionality. Here too, the only solution is the foundation of a true democracy that assures to the lords of yesterday of their equal rights. Honest democracy which does not accept tyranny – even when directed against past tyrants. Today, the heroes of wars and civil wars are not advancing the cause of humanity: they only add to the fear that is driving our world to suicide. Our St George will be he who slays the dragon of fear with his spear. This is why we believe and trust in a true League of Nations and an honest democracy. Because by these means, fear will subside and humanity will be renewed.

The question of war and peace in Geneva8

Nowadays, all respectable peoples and nations attend the educational institution at Geneva. Known as the League of Nations, the institution is half kindergarten, and half correctional school. The main subjects are: peace and disarmament. America, the star pupil, finds it demeaning to go to Geneva. Meanwhile, the incorrigible Germany and Russia are not allowed to join … although the question arises whether they would join at all? They say that we have gone beyond the stage of oratory and the semantics of pacifism, and it is simply not the time for self-educational discussion … Many people regard the Treaty on Mutual Defence and Disarmament, which constituted the main issue in the just-ended session of the League of Nations, as merely another topic for self-education. Others see in it nothing but a tactical success for the Little Entente. Most people do not even read the r­ elevant reports. ‘Whatever they decide will be of no consequence’, they say. This colossal mass of disinterested people are not even aware of the great responsibility that their indifference implies. For it is largely their responsibility that the consequences of the decisions have, thus far, been so meagre. But the example of Corfu9 shows that the extent of achievement is not as low as zero. Because if the League of Nations had not existed, Mussolini would not have defeated the Greeks peacefully, but bloodily. In this way, he only received fifty million liras, but no laurels from the battlefield with which he was hoping to crown his conquering and imperialist fascists. Ultimately, the vigilant people of the small nations were the orange peel on which the Roman Triumfator slipped. In this instance, the voices of indifference were mistaken. Neither are the voices of those who impatiently wish for peace sensible. The struggle around the Treaty of Mutual Assistance has demonstrated acutely the formidable extent of these problems. The Assembly of the League of Nations had to choose between two proposals: the first position was formulated upon the basis of conceptual purity, while the second attempted to adjust its position to the international situation. The 8 ‘Háború és béke kérdése Genfben’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (16 October 1923). 9 In summer 1923 Italian forces invaded and occupied the Greek island of Corfu.

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former was presented by Lord Robert Cecil and proposed by Britain, while the latter position was defended by Hanotaux, the French representative. The latter was also supported by the votes of the Little Entente. The result was a compromise. The question is, however, whether a middle ground position is feasible? According to the British viewpoint, all signatories to the Treaty of Mutual Assistance would, in the case of war, be expected to provide military assistance to the party under attack. This obligation is tied to one condition: that the party under attack had indeed fired armaments and that this had been adjudicated by the League of Nations. As for which party is considered to be under attack, this is to be decided by the League of Nations within four days, after which the signatories to the treaty are obliged to provide one third of their military forces to assist the party under attack. It is clear that this proposal does not reckon with the existence of defensive alliances between the different states that have signed the treaty, not even with pacific alliances, such as the military alliance that unites the states of the Little Entente. The French motion does take into account existing defensive alliances: it stipulates that all alliances properly registered with the League of Nations are valid, and all signatories to such military treaties can immediately come to the rescue of their allies. The position adopted by the League of Nations post factum should then decide the position of the other states vis-à-vis the conflagration. This formula, which was tailored to the Little Entente, was dismissed by Britain primarily for reasons of principle. For completely different reasons it was opposed by Italy, which, out of jealousy towards the Little Entente, suddenly leapt on to the white steed of pacifism and fired rhetorical arrows against ‘the militaristic dragon that conceals itself behind secret treaties’. While Salandra, the Italian representative, was, with the palm branch of peace in his hand, declaiming in Geneva, his commissioner, Mussolini, was sending an admiral to Corfu and a general to Fiume, accompanied with the appropriate threats … The outcome of the dispute was a compromise: the text adopted by the League of Nations enables the members of a narrowly defined military alliance to assist one another immediately in the case of a declaration of war, but, at the same time, the League of Nations will decide within four days which is ‘the party under attack’, after which all states are obliged to provide it with military support. Thus, for example, a state that on 1 January decided to help its ally, state A, against state B, could find itself on 4 January compelled to help state B, and to march against state A. Despite the many obstacles in its way, the League of Nations is continuing to move forward towards its goals. The greatest obstacle today is the atmosphere in Europe. In an armed Europe, on a war footing, with non-pacifists in power, the treaties mean something entirely different to what they would mean in a Europe

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imbued with the spirit of peace. And a treaty that only adjudicates upon the legitimacy of a war after it has been initiated does not provide a strong encouragement to disarm. The internal political relations of the European states will have to undergo substantial changes; only then we can expect results from the League of Nations that differ significantly from those of today.

Uncle Polly10

Prior to the London conference, Harvey, the US ambassador to London, issued a solemn statement. The fate of Europe, he declared, will be decided at the London conference. His announcement met with general agreement. The four prime ministers then took their seats amidst great excitement, and did nothing. So, what really transpired in London? One of H. G. Wells’ novels is quite unusual. Its hero, ‘Uncle Polly’, is a grocery dealer in a small English town. His store is of the old-fashioned sort: any and every item can be found there, even if you may need credit in order to obtain it. After all, Uncle Polly’s suppliers also pay in credit. But Uncle Polly himself does not keep accounts. Even if he did, it would be hopeless: unable to really find himself in all the numbers, Uncle Polly is permanently afraid that he is bankrupt. He does not know for sure. He only knows that he runs hither and thither, struggles, flounders and attempts to save pennies from dawn until dusk, and yet still there is never any money. One day he runs away from home, leaving behind his shop and ageing wife, and becomes a member of a boat crew by an idyllic lakeside pub, somewhere far away … No news of him is ever heard back home. Uncle Polly’s shop, it is later revealed, was a veritable gold mine. The four prime ministers in London cannot run, and neither can they hide. Yet, they are just as lost in that small corner of the solar system that is known as Europe as Uncle Polly was in his chaotic shop. Might they all be bankrupt? Who knows. Bankruptcy is the weapon that the four of them use against each other. It is the secret that they keep hiding from one another. The claim of economic failure is the false accusation that they hold against each other, while at the same time they live with the false hope of avoiding bankruptcy themselves. Meanwhile, they are jointly responsible for administering bankruptcy to a fifth country, which they suspect of prospering economically, in secret. Where the truth lies, no one can tell. Britain is the master of illusion; still to this day it pretends as if nothing is amiss. It continues to repay its debts to the US in instalments of US$ 50 10 ‘Polly bácsi’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (15 December 1922).

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million. The debts for the French wars: here is the security for it. The security for these funds, however, are the German reparations. But if the Germans were to repay this debt, the British economy would plunge into bankruptcy. It is with this crisis that the British threaten the rest of the world. They use it openly against France and covertly against the USA. For the latter cannot be threatened openly: in that case Britain’s credibility would vanish. And for a nation of merchants, credit represents everything. Hence, the ideal situation for the British would be to create the appearance of a false bankruptcy, out of which they would then be able to consolidate their own credits. Poor Uncle Polly. What English self-control manages to conceal, the French rooster crows to the public: France has won. ‘France is not suffering from stagnation; it is the greatest military power in the world’ – crows the rooster in the morning. ‘France has been plundered; it is unprotected and unable to pay its debts’ – crows the rooster in the evening. Next morning, the rooster crows that France will repay its obligations to Britain once it has received its reparations. Yet later, in the evening, the rooster crows again: that even if the French debts are cancelled, Germany cannot be allowed to go free. In this manner the bickering carries on from morning until night: which is of greater value, a Germany that is able to repay its debts or a Germany that is placed under administration? Which is more dangerous, a Germany that goes bankrupt or a Germany that deploys the false threat of going bankrupt? The great dilemma of the French is whether it is the Germans or they themselves who are bankrupt. Poor Uncle Polly. As for Belgium and Italy, the only difference between these two countries is that the former is ever open to compromises while the latter always cleaves to an extremist approach. As for which end of the extremist spectrum the Italians will ultimately choose, that is almost a matter of accident under Mussolini’s rule. Whether it is the compromises of [Georges] Theunis or Mussolini’s intransigence, both are equally lacking in foresight and sensitivity. While one sits quietly in his dark room, the other screams until his voice goes hoarse. Throughout, none of them is able to see a thing. Poor Uncle Pollys. As for America, it affects the pretence that it had nothing to do with the whole affair. Yet, if the Uncle Pollys of Europe run into bankruptcy, that will gravely affect their main creditor. Without Europe, even the US is just another poor Uncle Polly. Despite this, the gathering in London, of these masters in disguising bankruptcy and administrators of mass debt, remains a truly illuminated ensemble in comparison with poor Germany. Who knows if Germany will be able to repay its debts or not? Should it repay its debts or not? Is it currently living in peace or at war; is it living or dying – nobody knows. The darkness over Germany is that of the prison, the darkness of the dungeon. So, the conference in London has brought nothing new, other than that the old uncles of diplomacy have yet again decided to postpone the decision to

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clarify their affairs. If poor Europe is one day able to liberate itself from its old uncles, it will discover that on a foundation of justice and peace it is possible to rebuild a world that has been destroyed by war and lies.

The rebirth of democracy11

A few years ago it almost seemed as if the idea of democracy was dying. It was as if this ancient weapon of popular freedom was disintegrating in the hands of its bearers. The followers of progress observed despondently that the achievement of political democracy, rather than serving those oppressed and excluded by society in their fight for social and cultural equality, seemed only to shore up the power of the ruling classes and the dominant nations. A long litany of disappointments gave birth to this growing sense of disillusionment. In the hands of Napoleon III and Bismarck, universal suffrage was transformed into the battering ram of Caesarism and reaction. The introduction of women’s suffrage strengthened clericalism and nationalism everywhere. And the United States of America, the cynosure of political democracy, notoriously became the home of corruption and the covert rule of corporations. Similarly, in the realm of national cultures, those who had placed their faith in democracy experienced one disappointment after another. Representations of the popular will that were undertaken on the basis of a broad suffrage evinced barely any more understanding for the cultural needs of minorities than had the old parliamentary oligarchies. Neither did democracy begin to serve the cause of social justice with the necessary force. The ruling classes used the socio-political achievements of the workers in order to erect protective bastions for themselves against demands for a thoroughgoing social transformation. And most of the taxes that had once been levied on the wealthy were transferred on to the weak shoulders of the poor. But the bitterest disappointment for believers in progress and devoted supporters of democracy was experienced in respect of world peace and fraternity among nations. The collective downfall and bankruptcy of the world’s democratically elected governments on 2 August 1914 will remain in memory forever. It seemed as if the martyrdom of Jaurès, the holy apostle of democracy, had been in vain. There was no one left to continue the campaign in his spirit. 11 ‘A demokrácia feltámadása’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (26 November 1922).

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On the contrary. Having graduated from the world war, that school of violence, the masses, driven by the logic of their passions, turned against democracy. With the burning radicalism of the frustrated soul they turned to the other extreme: the cry for dictatorship rang out from the peoples of all those countries that lay mangled in defeat. The weaker the traditions of democracy in public institutions, the greater seemed the faults and shortcomings of democracy. Nevertheless, historical progress driven by genuine ideals cannot be derailed for long by the errant logic of the emotions. Right now, the idea of democracy is being reborn in the minds of the masses, and with redoubled potency. The basis for this turnaround does not exist simply in the sensational economic collapse of the Russian dictatorship, but above all in those gains that democracy has achieved for the cause of progress since the end of the war. These political, social and cultural achievements are of such magnitude that the flag of democracy is once again hailed as the hallmark of progress. The reason for this astonishing turn of events, moreover, lies not in some abrupt enlightenment of the individuals who represent the vanguard of progress, but is the outcome of a tidal shift within the camp of reaction. The privileged elites of the ancien régime realised sooner than did the emerging popular forces that for the peoples who have begun to reach a certain niveau of education and discipline there is no more favourable battleground than itself. They realised sooner than did their enemies that neither the media’s ability to sow illusions, nor the power of the Church, nor even the supremacy of wealth is able to block the phalanxes of progress, if the parties go to battle on the field of democracy. Across the world the leaders of reaction are turning against democracy and parliamentarism: this is the present historical situation. Mussolini, the uncrowned Caesar of anti-popular demagogy, has become the latest idol of international reaction. Hergt, a German, Kortanty, a Pole, Escherich, a Bavarian, and the Hungarian Héjas have all added their voices to the hymns of glory struck up in his honour. Their common programme is the abolition of universal suffrage. The aim is clearly visible: to open a front, overtly and unambiguously, against parliamentarism and democracy. And the adherents of progress can deduce with satisfaction that the reactionaries are not blind: with every passing day a new encouraging sign is given that the idea of democracy is living up to its promise. We see this in the fierce resistance mounted by the German democracy – the brother of the Austrian Republic – to the attempts of reactionaries to sabotage it; in the entry of Poland’s minorities into parliament; and in the triumphant entry of the British Labour Party on to the stage of the world’s oldest parliament, girdled by its thousand traditions. All these events indicate that it was too early to lose our faith. The idea of democracy has been resurrected and no power will be able to thwart it on its victorious march.

Titanic journalism12

In the business pages of a British daily newspaper, distinguished philosophers have been discussing contemporary questions of political economy. One of the causes of the global cataclysm of 1914 undoubtedly lies in the fact that we committed a grave error in the intellectual division of labour. While sharpest intellects and the most original thinkers were troubling themselves with questions of relatively minor importance, the fundamental problems of society as a whole were entrusted to second and third rate figures. While the major intellectuals of humankind absorbed themselves in the minutiae of the sciences and applied technology, the task of finding solutions to the vital problems of the day was passed to relatively obscure minds. This perverse division of intellectual labour, in which the great minds dealt with the little issues while the diminutive ones applied themselves to the important questions, became fashionable in the nineteenth century. That century witnessed the rise of machine production, but it demonstrated no concern for the fate of the man who had produced the machine. It elaborated a grandiose labour-saving system, but one which brought with it a more burdensome lifestyle than the previous one. It developed new weapons, without taking into consideration that they might be fired. It built an imposing structure of money, credit and trade, but ignored their fateful interdependencies, of which it consequently became a prisoner. It developed the disciplines, but to the detriment of philosophy, religion and global consciousness. Finally, it constructed a world economy, the source of fabulous welfare, of the true nature of which it was, however, unconscious. Through the interaction between exchange rates, the balances of trade and payments, currencies, tariff and tax systems, stock markets and market prices, the world became a tangled confusion. Clearly, this state of affairs heralded danger for the whole of humankind. Market prices dominated everything, while no one governed them. In the nineteenth century, humanity turned the forces of nature into its slaves, but at the same time it became prisoner of the socio-economic forces (and interconnections) that it had summoned. 12 ‘Titáni publicisztika’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (23 September 1922).

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However, the thinkers of the nineteenth century showed relatively little interest in these fundamental aspects of human existence. After 1825, even the field of theoretical economics became dominated by second-class intellects. Together with the disciplines of law and political science, its sun began to set. Only among academic heretics or in circles of social revolutionaries could any great economists be found, such as Eugen Dühring and Karl Marx. But even more troubling than the decay of economics was the fact that the field of political economy became completely excluded from the sciences. Those not so cerebral professors of economics considered discussion of such issues to be beneath their dignity. Problems relating to currencies, stock markets, tariffs, customs, taxes, bank discounts and population policy now huddled together in the halls of the sciences. Those who sought sanctuary did not descend to the unscientific and trivial level of these subjects. Here, pedantic rulers, ordinary politicians, legalistic private lecturers and dilettante philanthropists could win cheap victories. It is as if the task of inventing a rubber heel had recruited all the intellectual energies of the brainiest professor of chemistry while the supervision of population growth was entrusted to a lowly clerk in the statistical office. The nineteenth century could not see the wood for the trees. Yet in the eighteenth century all this had been so very different. Political economy had constituted a battlefield for the greatest minds in Europe. The theories of money, exchange and the rate of interest derive from David Hume and John Locke. These great philosophers devoted a major part of their ­lifework to the economic problems of the age. Isaac Newton resolved the problem of coinage, while Voltaire penned a book on the tax system. And in the famous Encyclopaedie, the entry on the science of political economy was penned by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Francois Quesnay, a doctor and philosopher, Turgot, the great statesman and art historian, and Adam Smith, a psychologist and moral philosopher, all considered political economy to be a science worthy of geniuses. It was only in the nineteenth century that these issues were demoted to the level of everyday journalism. If it is true – and this indeed seems indisputable – that economic forces played a significant part in the outbreak of the world war, then it is also apparent that one of the causes of this great catastrophe should be searched for in the fallibility of those intellectual forces who were tasked with resolving the great questions of political economy in the nineteenth century. In this regard, a decisive turning point is now upon us. Bertrand Russell, the author of Principia Mathematica, Benedetto Croce, the Italian philosopher, Guglielmo Ferrero, the famous historian, and other distinguished scholars have turned their attention to the field of economics. It is a sign of the times that in the latest issue of the series on ‘the reconstruction of Europe’, published in the Manchester Guardian Commercial, that archetypical business organ, we see

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not only ambitious corporate managers and diligent statistical clerks expressing their opinions but also the greatest minds of epistemology, the philosophy of history, and mathematics. What socialist writers such as Saint-Simon, William Morris, Henry George, Tolstoy and most recently H. G. Wells insisted with such passion – the primacy of human problems over problems of nature – now finally seems to be recognised. With this, the contours of a titanic journalism appear on the horizon. Just as when heavyweight wrestlers stride among young pupils, so these dilettante newcomers tower above the ‘experts’ who are busily formulating their currency equations. Their intellects are fresher, more original and adventurous, but also sharper and more educated than those of the economists. They are more radical, profound and concrete. Most importantly, they are not ashamed of acknowledging their ignorance of those things that the economists know no more about than they do but of which they are too afraid to admit ignorance. A boundless scepticism with regard to society’s direction and its foundations now prevails. It extends beyond materialistic socialism’s critique of capitalism, which halted at the question of income distribution and the organisation of technology. The critique voiced by the new journalism goes deeper. Whereas for materialistic socialism, machine production remains a taboo – one whose soothing quality carries the force of a dogma that regards the unlimited expansion of material welfare as a natural law and the reproduction of mankind as necessarily desirable – the new journalism does not leave unexamined any of the intellectual heritage which the generations of the nineteenth century bequeathed to us. The relationship between population and food – the Malthusian problem – has once again become relevant. No lesser voice than John Maynard Keynes is today voicing a Malthusian position. The real significance of the industrial system and machine enslavement is being studied by Bertrand Russell. Lenin, too, belongs in the camp of philosophers who are addressing the practical questions of political economy. Perhaps this is the source of his blood brotherhood with J. M. Keynes, whose monumental critique of the Versailles Treaty was the first manifestation of this new, globally conscious journalism. Although in more complex form, a number of the writings of the Heidelberg professor Alfred Weber are striking out in this new direction, and another German, Walther Rathenau, also evinces affinities with this emergent ideology. The new journalism portrays the psychological and religious preconditions of the so-called transitional era of capitalism in a completely new light. For it has become increasingly evident that the ideal capitalist never acted on the basis of rational calculation and common sense (as he believed), but under the influence of all manner of beliefs with mysterious origins, economic superstitions and religious convictions. Thrift, which is so closely related to the ­accumulation

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of capital, is not at all as ‘natural’ as it appears. When the power of religious Puritanism to accumulate capital in the seventeenth and eighteenth century is contrasted with the accumulation of capital in the nineteenth century associated with machine technology, new light is shed on the irrational basis of thrift and ‘investment’. The effectiveness of the critical effort is enhanced by the fact that this time it truly is taking place on an international stage and in an internationalist spirit. Until this moment, the field of political economy was unable to emancipate itself from the various national viewpoints. But now, in this field, only internationalism represents true regulation. Without such regulation, there is no power, and no courage to take action on a comprehensive scale. The new journalism is placing its intellectual wherewithal in the service of humanity, and, so long as it remains guided genuinely by a spirit of devotion and love for humanity, we can expect much good to come from it.

H. G. Wells on salvaging civilisation13

We never felt the power of Wells’ vision more than we do now, in the days when the chaos is about to commence in Germany. Plunged into barbarism, mankind forgets his practical and theoretical knowledge. And since man in his condition of degeneration lacks the vitality that he had possessed in his infancy, he is displaced by all his animal enemies that have steeled themselves for attack, or he falls prey to diseases spread by dogs, rats and insects. And in the ruins of the cities, harbours and bridges, these animals will succeed mankind. The danger of war, which was not banished with the ending of the world war, threatens the whole of human civilisation with destruction. Can civilisation be saved, and if it can, then how? These are the questions that Wells seeks to answer in his absorbing little book, to which – and for serious literary products this is currently a rarity – the Hungarian reader also has access. (H. G. Wells: A civilizáció megmentése [The salvaging of civilization]. Translated by Béla Rácz. Published by Manó Dick.) The prelude to humanity’s great crisis commenced two hundred years ago, when the Mongols achieved resounding military success through the use of Chinese gunpowder. The underdeveloped character of industrial culture set limits to the size and carrying power of cannons. In the nineteenth century, however, science was enrolled in the service of destruction. Through the development of chemistry and the steel industry the use of explosives has been perfected. Gigantic tanks lay waste the earth, while aerial bombing, with one bomb enough to obliterate a small city, totally erases the distinction between combatants and non-combatants. In the wars of the future the only real areas of refuge will be the well-buried, concealed and carefully located headquarters of the competing armies. From here, men will carry out colossal destruction, without even understanding its meaning. Mankind’s physical powers have grown enormously but without social structures developing in proportion. The condition of mankind today is rather like toddlers in a kindergarten who have been supplied with acids, poisoned razors or bombs. 13 ‘H. G. Wells a civilizáció megmentéséről’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (21 October 1923).

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Not idealistic dreaming but only the fear of bombers can induce a transformation in the political structure of mankind on a scale equivalent to that which has occurred in respect of its domination of the material world. The borders of the European states were established by horse-drawn carriages. And today we live in the age of aerial transportation. Only one state exists the borders of which were set in the modern age by the steamboat and the railway, and it differs from Europe as the automobile differs from the wheelbarrow. It is the United States of America. Relative to today’s realities, the borders of Europe are narrow; America’s borders are not. If somebody wishes to travel from New York to St Louis, he takes his luggage, enters a night wagon, and the next day finds himself in St Louis where he carries out his business. Recently, when Wells attempted to travel to Moscow, he discovered that it takes three weeks to receive a Finnish visa, and another three weeks to receive an Estonian one. So long as aviation is not deemed to be a pan-European issue, we will not be able to enjoy the benefits of flying in Europe. Today, the benefits of aviation are only fulfilled in war. American man enjoys a high degree of political unity and is only potentially threatened by war at the coasts. For European man it is otherwise. From London to Warsaw, none of the European states are larger than Texas and none of their capitals would be able to escape aerial bombardments by the enemy within five to six hours of war being declared. Only Britain can be likened to the United States, but here too the differences are salient. While the United States is a modern, continental nation created by the river steamer and the railway, Britain is the creation of ocean liners protected by warships. The invulnerability of its warships is the warrant of Britain’s global empire. But warships now face the threat of the aeroplane and the submarine, thus also threatening Britain’s world empire. In Britain, just as in all other European states, the harmonisation of questions of transportation and politics is thus a matter of life and death. Only greater unity can come to the rescue of European civilisation and transform Europe. According to Wells, this unity would not be modelled on the imperfect ideal of the League of Nations. Rather, Europe’s nationalisms can only be superseded by a higher ideal of a world state for the whole of mankind. The relationship between this world state and the League of Nations is, according to Wells, similar to that between God and a heavenly committee comprising Wotan, Baal, Jupiter, Ammon, Mumbo, Suvabo and sundry national and tribal idols. The diverse, petty interests can only be replaced by a single great idea, which benefits the whole world. This world state will not be an upscaled version of today’s governments; instead it will be something different entirely. The ministry of war and the admiralty will be replaced by the ministry of peace, and it will not have a single person as its leader. The United States, after all, only has a president because its constitution was written during the era of monarchies.

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The political unity of the world can only be brought about as a result of thoroughgoing educational work; and through large-scale propaganda, fuelled by the power of this idea. When fighting for momentous political reform, educational associations and the press can transform public opinion. Wells expects marvellous results from the reformation of the education system. The future school system, which would extend from infancy until sixteen–seventeen years, would need to teach children two–three languages in addition to their mother tongue. Well-to-do families already teach their children in this way today. Moreover, he expects the school of the future to teach more and better mathematics, universal history, physics and biology, and, in addition, surveying  and crafts. Given that good teachers are rare, this large-scale transformation will only be achieved when today’s school-factories are replaced with large education centres that will utilise the very best teachers available in order to control, perfect and, crucially, employ new technology in schools. With regard to language teaching, Wells expects the gramophone to bring about a profound transformation, and he expects cinema to have similar consequences with regard to the teaching of natural sciences. But Wells does not expect the development of a new spirit, the spirit of humanity, to follow upon changes in the techniques of teaching. In the second half of the seventeenth century the world was in an equally miserable condition as it is today. Back then, the Czech philosopher [ John Amos] Comenius wanted to unite the world’s nations into a unified state, create a universal language and provide all of the world’s citizens with one copy of the book of ‘Essential knowledge’. We need just such a book, a compendium of knowledge and skills, to guide humanity towards spiritual communion. The Bible has lost its power over human souls, but nothing has replaced it. Modern society is not united by any form of spiritual cement – and it is spiritual cement that is required today. This would, according to Wells, be the new Bible of civilisation. In Europe, the spiritual power of the Bible has survived best in Britain. Thus, in truly British fashion, Wells pictures the modern book which would connect the human spirits as resembling the Bible. The modern history of global progress would replace the cosmogony of the Bible; it would, following the example of the Bible, portray the universal history of mankind. Biblical law would be replaced by a book of the science of rational life, which would be devoted principally to the importance of hygiene, as well as health care and sexuality, followed by questions of property and labour. The psalms, the Song of Songs, Jesus and the Book of Prophets would have the same value as a selected anthology of world literature. And, just as in the prophesies of the Old and the New Testaments, the Book of Prophets ends with the appearance of St John, the Book of the Future would end with the fall of civilisation, in which leading statesmen and politicians would divulge their views of the future. The modern

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Bible would be edited by a committee of distinguished experts, and would be continually revised in line with the development of science. Wells’ witty fantasy, which makes the education of the new man the foundation of the world state, and which expects the world state to arise through educational propaganda, nonetheless leaves one great question unanswered: through what power will the propaganda which is to transform the human spirit be organised? Propaganda of this sort has existed before, but its results have been meagre. Wells does not turn his attention to the weighty class and other interests that have prevented people from being educated in the spirit of the Bible of civilisation. And this is why this beautiful book is, in truth, more akin to the utopianism of the Gospels than to genuine social science.

The defenders of race in Berlin14

At face value it does not appear to be a major affair. It turns out that S­ chlageter, the German assassin who was executed by the French authorities, had been betrayed by his own partners in exchange for 700,000 marks in blood money. The exact amount of the Judas payment remains open to doubt; it is claimed that his denouncers, Lieutenant Schneider and Sergeant Götz, received a much greater sum. With this in mind, it does not sound especially implausible that the same Lieutenant Schneider was also willing to assassinate Severing, Prussia’s minister of defence. In times of world crisis the whole issue may appear a bagatelle. Yet, the reactionary press has already put this minor affair squarely on the agenda. A trifling affair is of course a trifling affair. Just as trifling as the pistol bullets that stopped Rathenau’s heart, or the Morse signals that revealed Stinnes’ foreign currency purchases, or the value of the German mark, to which starving German mothers are desperately clinging. Or as the aperture of the microscope through which changes in the decaying connective tissue can be descried. Those who have eyes shall see. Those who want to see racism will find it here. Racist tactics, racist strategies. Those who found the practices of Budapest’s racists confusing and immature can find in Berlin the haute école of racism. No trickery is on show: please walk straight in! Here you can find the sober businessman and Puritan, Hugo Stinnes, the star in Germany’s racist-protecting corporate firmament. He does not engage in politics. Day after day, his 300 newspapers proclaim that the German government is bankrupt and the German mark is worthless. Yet Stinnes is unaware of this: he does not engage in politics. Just as he is unaware that each day in which his companies turn over a quarter of a billion German marks, the marrow dries further in the bones of the German race. That Stinnes is not aware of this is in part because he is negotiating with the Frenchman Manfred Weiss over the merger between the Schneider-Creuzot arms factory and Austria’s Alpine Montan. He is a true racist: with one hand he defends the race whose pockets he empties with the other. 14 ‘A berlini fajvédők’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (21 June 1923).

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Here you will also find Fuchs and Machlaus, the racists of Munich. Their speciality: Franco-Czechoslovak conspiracy under the aegis of Rupert, heir to the throne of Bavaria. Their coldblooded proposals of high treason even surprised the French colonel Richer. Among other things, they wanted to surrender the entire left bank of the Rhine to the ‘arch enemy’. They too are true racists: they would prefer to create a Bavarian beer kingdom – even if with Latin, Slavic or Hebrew assistance – than a German republic. Here we also find Hitler, the devotee of Mussolini. His idol is gearing up to deprive the South-Tyrolean Germans of their rights. He is a true racist too: his fellow Tyroleans can go to the dogs, so long as his fascists are able to seize Berlin. Heim, the peasant dictator, is not absent from the gathering either. They mock him for being a narrow-minded separatist, yet he is even influential in Sofia! He is an expert on the peasantry, to which he devoted his life; he supports the peasant wherever he is a slave to priests and large landowners, but he hates and persecutes him wherever he venerates the false ideas of peace and freedom. He had a hand in the assassination of Stamboliyski,15 since he knows how to distinguish between one peasant dictator and another. The peasant is either a noble or ignoble race, depending on the situation. As an expert on race, he knows how to distinguish one from the other. Lieutenant Schneider and Sergeant Götz, German racists and French spies, are mere minor figures compared to their masters. But they are ambitious and intelligent. They have understood the essence of racism: to cooperate with all races against the quest for democratic freedom of their own race, and to spy and murder in the service of any race, so long as they can rebuild their own class rule on the ruins of the German republic. Those who have eyes shall see!

15 Aleksandar Stamboliyski (1879–1923), prime minister of Bulgaria from 1919 to 1923, was assassinated in a nationalist coup.

Whites, blacks and browns16

Canada, Australia, South Africa and the other British dominions have gathered in London for a six-week-long conference of politics and economics. Alongside the internal development and common security of the Empire, a major economic topic is set to occupy the centre of attention of this Anglo-Saxon peoples’ parliament: namely, how can the economic unity of the Empire be bolstered by means of subsidies to the dominions. The attempt to solve Britain’s unemployment problems through reconciliation with Europe has, so far, failed; perhaps freeing up the Empire’s internal resources can ease the situation. A different matter, however, is whether a politics of economic subsidies is capable of firming up the loose unity that exists among the dominions. At the moment, this association seems to be evolving in the direction of greater independence of its individual members and a federal solution for the organisation as a whole, rather than in the direction of greater centralisation. Britain’s world empire does not have a constitution, in the strict sense of the term. It has neither a written nor an unwritten constitution. To the ears of a juridical nation it sounds even stranger that General Smuts, the prime minister of South Africa who also frequently interferes in European politics, expects that the conference will not lead to any change to the situation. Bonar Law, during his time as prime minister, expressed satisfaction over the fact that the legal situation of the dominions remained unresolved! This peculiarly British aversion towards any form of artificial state-building makes it difficult for an observer from the continent to comprehend the world politics of the British. It is also true that the extremely complex, delicate and diverse problems of this political cosmos are almost entirely unknown to us. There is of course the question of India. On its own, India is more populous than the motherland and the dominions combined. Despite this, it is not attending the London conference because it does not count as a dominion of the Empire. India is not a British but a Hindu and Muslim country. Australia and South Africa are, however, regarded as dominions. This is despite the fact that the majority of South Africa’s white population, including the country’s 16 ‘Fehérek, feketék, barnák’, Bécsi Magyar Újság (3 October 1923).

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prime minister, General Smuts, is not even British but Boer, also known as Afrikaaner. And both in Australia and South Africa, the great majority of the population is comprised of native black and brown peoples, which belong to a variety of ethnic groups, including Bantu, Kaffir and Bushman tribes. The intellectual niveau of the native population remains far below that of the white man, while the Indian cultures are less different in their niveau, but more so in their character, from ours. So while the Afrikaaners of Boer origin represent their dominions, neither the black population nor the white government of India are allowed any representation at the imperial conference. And while the conflict in Kenya is subject to intense discussion in the upcoming Indian elections, it will not be discussed publicly in London. All the more will, of course, take place behind closed doors. In the province of Kenya, which is a territory belonging to British East Africa, the minority white farmers have fallen out with the long-established Hindu farmers over who has the right to exploit the poor, native black population. Fascist organisations of the white population threatened to massacre the Hindus. After hastily sending a number of delegations, the colonial ministry in London, to which Kenya belongs, determined that it will not give a free hand to the white farmers against the black population but will not accord the brown Hindus fully equal rights with the whites. This decision, which is seriously prejudicial towards the Hindus and to the whole of India, is credited to the influence of General Smuts. This circumstance, seemingly of minor importance, is nevertheless highly instructive. In Europe, Smuts appears as the great champion of the League of Nations. He is famous for his speeches thundering against the occupation of the Rhineland. It was also South Africa that sent Lord Robert Cecil to the League of Nations, in the days when this British statesman was too pacifist for Lloyd George. And yet we see that this very same Smuts is known in his own part of the world as a fascist and propagator of racial supremacy, and recently he even refused the League of Nations the right to hold his own government responsible for the massacre of the black South African Bonzel tribes … What is astounding is not that the British Empire exists despite its lack of a constitution, but that it actually still exists at all. And yet it remains alive, more vigorously than ever. Bruce, Australia’s young prime minister, is said to be dreaming of the day when Australia, not Britain, will be at the centre of the Empire. But even the gloomiest Anglo-Saxon statesman cannot imagine a future in which the dominions would wish to leave the British Empire’s peaceful world association.

The emergence of the Crossman opposition17

In the old democracies, the crucial events often pass by unnoticed. This is natural. The isolated, orphaned voice sounds loudly, while the criticisms that arise from broad-based, new needs are silenced. (It is also because – who knows? – you may shortly have to assume responsibility in government.) The demonstration, through abstention, of over one hundred Labour MPs represents a silent earthquake. Its antecedents are well known. Even after the three-line-whipped decision by prime minister Attlee and the overwhelming majority of the parliamentary party, the forty or so MPs who comprise the 18 Crossman group refused to withdraw their motion of opposition. A public parliamentary debate was held, which called for it to be withdrawn. Two representatives of the Independent Labour Party used parliamentary rules to block this move. However, Crossman and his supporters were wary of this trap; they refused to vote against the government, opting instead to abstain. They acted in unison, imparting tactical unity to their otherwise very heterogeneous group. Indeed, by so doing, they managed to win the support of many fellow MPs who had hitherto only passively expressed their mistrust of [Ernest] Bevin’s politics. The result was apparently a failure: the government won the vote by 353 votes to zero. Where was the opposition? Had it fled? No. In English ‘understatement’ means ‘to not fully express the extent to which something is true’. That ‘zero’ was the acme of understatement. First, because the 353 votes did not solely consist of representatives of the Labour Party, but also included 122 votes from the Conservatives and other opposition parties. Secondly, because the ‘zero’ expressed much more than the rebellion of over 100 Labour MPs. Crossman managed to unite around himself two different wings of opposition within the Labour Party, while at the same time subordinating them to his own, stronger but more moderate, Vanguard Group.19 Perhaps this tactical move will only mature slowly, but it will bring significant strategic consequences. The two extreme positions that Crossman managed to unite, despite their diametrically 17 ‘A Crossman ellenzék felvonulása’, unpublished text (c. 1946). 18 Richard Crossman: Labour Party MP. 19 Socialist Vanguard Group: a centre-right ginger group within the Labour Party.

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opposed positions, are represented by two names: [Konni] Zilliacus and Jenny Lee. Zilliacus advocates unilateral support for Russia. During the Abyssinian War, as well as during the fascist uprising in Spain, he was the champion of a socialist foreign policy. He is a recognised authority in foreign affairs, a polished speaker, excellent debater and an attractive personality. But the group he leads, which on continental affairs advocates a united front of socialists and communists, has lost influence over the last year. None of the members of the five-man group that works under Crossman can be considered representatives of Zilliacus’ line. Zilliacus himself is not a secret sympathiser of the communists, but, as is commonly known, a representative of the Labour Party’s liberal-minded traditions and, as such, adheres to a broad and gradualist interpretation of socialism. The declining influence of the Zilliacus group is merely one symptom of the knot that is developing around the question of national interest, which has manifested itself through Crossman’s action. Its second symptom manifested itself on the opposite side. Jenny Lee was not a member of the Vanguard Group that proposed the motion either. She and her husband, Aneurin Bevan, the current minister of public health, have for many years been members of the party’s left wing, and, as international, ideological socialists, they have frequently and passionately – almost, I would say, blindly – opposed the Soviet Union. In Bevan’s newspaper, Tribune, a harsh condemnation of the Soviet Union’s policies, which has undeniably played a role in the development of the current official position, found a home. This position advocated cooperation with the social democratic parties, against the communists, everywhere, in order that a strengthened Britain could more successfully take up its diplomatic battle against the Soviet Union. This group gradually absorbed the remaining members of the old Independent Labour Party (ILP), the majority of left-wing intellectuals, and it appeared as the gathering point of socialists who opposed the Soviet Union. In the sphere of literature, Gide, Orwell and Koestler were its patrons. As stated above, the Crossman group does not depend on this group either. On the contrary. The new opposition also attests to the demise of the Bolshevik dragon slayers at Tribune. From a bird’s-eye-view, both Zilliacus and Jenny Lee face the same difficulties. Their politics were overly focused upon Russia, a foreign state: anti-Russia in the case of the Bevans, pro-Russia for Zilliacus. Although both positions are rooted in a socialist spirit, for Zilliacus, theory demands that cooperation with socialist Russia be sought, and he even claims that the Bevan line contradicts the Labour Party’s electoral manifesto. Similarly, the Bevans propose the opposite – and, likewise, on the basis of theoretical principles. While Zilliacus’ position would tie foreign policy to Russia, the Bevans would chain it to the United States. The internal contradictions of the Tribune line became apparent when the paper responded to Henry Wallace’s famous speech – in which he

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warned Truman against going to war – by a personal attack on Wallace!20 Zilliacus and his supporters only appear as external members in the Crossman group, while the Bevans appear as internal members of doubtful importance. Of course, under Aneurin Bevan’s potential personal [party] leadership their importance would increase. The six-member Vanguard Group includes members of the Labour Party’s executive committee, the Trade Union Council’s executive board, and the Daily Mail’s editorial board. With the exception of the latter, who can be described as an ideological anti-Soviet socialist, it would be difficult to report anything else about them, other than that they all represent the anti-sectarian and moderate wing of the British labour movement. The well over one hundred MPs who, to the great surprise of public opinion and against official pressure, stood behind them, represent an equally ordinary composition. What, then, does this passive yet tremendously powerful demonstration signify? The victory of the US Republicans coincided in time with the escalation of the economic crisis in Britain. At its centre is the labour shortage, which is well known to be the general cause of all domestic economic problems. It is made worse if the army requires additional soldiers and if general defensive duties need to be extended into peacetime; it is exacerbated when exports need to be increased in order to allow Britain to import raw materials. It is exacerbated by falling living standards, the coal shortage, demand for consumer goods, the housing shortage and the postponement of the decrease of working hours. The country has begun to think in terms of working hours. Anything that endangers the continuity of work, the possibility of exporting, the fluent movement of foreign trade, and in particular anything that evokes the shadow of unemployment, at a time when lack of employment is a problem afflicting the entire British nation night and day, brings the darkest instincts of the population into play. And precisely these problems were engendered within twenty-one hours of the US elections. Every day since then has convinced thousands of the dangers that would follow from a Britain that is chained to a United States that advocates free trade. The broad mass of the British population never approved of the US loans.21 It was in vain that many, even on the left, argued that the gold standard is an innocent institution, that the Bretton Woods agreement does not signify a gold currency, that those who see a solution in expanding regional foreign trade are seeking to limit global trade, and so on. The people’s healthy instincts viewed a return to the ‘improved’ gold currency with great suspicion, knowing full well that it was nothing but preparation of the world for rule by the US dollar. 20 Henry Wallace: US Democratic Party politician; ‘New Dealer’. 21 The loans referred to comprised the ‘Anglo-American Financial Agreement’ of 1946.

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By accepting the Bretton Woods agreement, the late Lord Keynes in effect destroyed his own theoretical oeuvre. However, the reports of political analysts all concur that the working people were not convinced by Keynes’ assurances, or by the Labour Party’s propaganda speeches, or the far left’s tactical palliatives. The common man, who did not understand the ‘blessings’ of the gold currency, understood the dangers of the situation much better than the so-called experts. Since Wallace’s resignation, the US situation is making clear to millions of people in Britain what a return to free trade would signify for them. But until the day of the Republicans’ victory they were merely watching the economic epidemic raging in the US from a distance. However, on that day the winds of the plague caught up with them. As Herbert Morrison22 stated: ‘US foreign trade sets the world’s blood circulation in motion. Yet blood circulation not only spreads the seeds of health; it spreads disease too’. The turn in British foreign policy was caused by fear of the US epidemic. The seeds of the crisis are, of course, to be found in completely different layers of the events. These cannot even be mentioned superficially without raising the question: Which came first in British–US relations, loans or politics? In other words, did Britain depend on the US economically, or did it place itself in a position of dependency in order to avoid risking its political alliance with the US? To this question there are only a few in Britain who dare to provide a clear answer. The reason for this is that the question itself is merely one – albeit perhaps the most important – aspect of the overall situation of the British Empire. In turn, the potential consequences of the Crossman opposition will largely depend upon the correct solution of the ‘loans or politics’ question. Crossman has announced the slogan of an independent British foreign policy. Even if this, which can only be wished for, were realised soon, much will depend upon the ‘independent’ politics’ internal content. This much can already be said: this is not merely another Wallace affair, which served only to strengthen the politics against which Wallace himself was fighting. On the contrary, the Crossman intervention will weaken Winston Churchill’s intellectual influence upon British foreign policy, and thereby hopefully open the way towards a better understanding, around the world, of the new, socialist Britain.

22 Herbert Morrison: deputy prime minister under Clement Attlee.

Part IV Hungarian politics

Radical bourgeois politics1

In the 12 October issue of Világ, Oscar Jaszi argued for the necessity of establishing an independent, bourgeois radical party. To his persuasive argument, I wish to add another perspective. The message that brought radical bourgeois politics to life in Hungary was that the enlightened and progressive elements of the bourgeoisie can only have one task: to support the working class in its fight for the country’s freedom. This message reflected the balance of forces of the time and it is beyond doubt that in addition to its direct usefulness, it turned radicalism into a political factor to be reckoned with. But, in the nature of things, the support that the extreme left wing of the bourgeoisie afforded to the working class faded with the passing of time. For it could not have consisted in anything more than declarations of sympathy by a handful of more or less prominent intellectuals, at a time when – it should be stressed – such sentiments were rare, and a precious commodity. These politics gained a footing in the Free School [Szabad Iskola], the League for Electoral Suffrage [Választójogi Liga] and similar institutions, and they went on to play a significant role in forcing the established political parties to become more democratic. However, from the outset, the political value of such sympathy declarations manifested a contradiction inherent to all sentimental politics: the more bourgeois it is, the duller it is, while the fierier it is, the less it is recognised by public opinion as truly bourgeois. Thus, while on the one hand the working class was unable to enjoy the same support that an independent bourgeois organisation could have bestowed upon it, on the other hand the organisation and unification of broad segments of the oppressed, of disenfranchised intellectuals and petit bourgeois, the peasantry and the nationalities, could not even be initiated. After the beautiful and passionate period of the first demonstrations had come to an end, the historic victory of which is today beyond doubt, what was the Social Democratic Party able to show for its radical-political agenda? Nothing but an augmentation of the labour movement by a few socialists, some openly, others furtively. This was of meagre import, given the numerical size of the working class. Solidarity based merely on moral grounds ultimately lost its 1 ‘Radikális polgári politika’, Szabadgondolat, 3.11 (1913): 347–8.

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importance for the Social Democratic Party when – directly as the result of the above tactics – other bourgeois parties began to accept it and seek its alliance. The proletariat sensed this crucial turning point before we did. It recognised that our support was not so important any more, and that, as a result, we were not performing our duties towards ourselves, or, by extension, to the proletariat. For what the Hungarian working class really needs, is the establishment of an independent bourgeois party that does not rest exclusively on a sentimental basis but besieges the fortress of feudalism out of bourgeois interests and with bourgeois forces. This is why it argued unflaggingly that the bourgeoisie needed to be awoken to its true interests, and why it repeatedly offered its fraternal support for an independent, radical bourgeois party. We can afford no further delay in finding a permanent, rather than a temporary, solution for bourgeois radicalism. This will likely multiply the revolutionary direction and revolutionary power of the working class, to the benefit of the entire country, but it is without doubt the rising middle class’s only means by which to reach the threshold of action; it is only by moving on from the present embryonic tactical situation that it can begin to get to grips with its neglected interests. The time has come for the Hungarian left to begin to march in the direction that leads towards battle. It is not the struggle of the proletariat that needs to be supported by bourgeois forces, but the struggle of the radical bourgeoisie by proletarian forces. The fight for bourgeois democracy is the historical priority, because, even from the viewpoint of the working class, it aims at the necessary minimum. The path of the working class leads through the aims of bourgeois radicalism, and if the working class seeks to surpass these, it will first have to engage in battle alongside the bourgeoisie. It is in the interests of the entire Hungarian left that the intellectuals, the petit bourgeoisie, the peasantry and the nationalities join together into a radical party as soon as possible. With this the working class will gain a genuine, strong ally, instead of a well-meaning advisor. Equally, it will liberate the bourgeoisie, permitting it to follow its true historical course.

Magyar hegemony and the nationalities2

The nationality policy of Hungarian radicalism, it could all too easily seem, entails, in essence, nothing but support for the nationalities’ movements with new arguments and a new theory: the arguments and theory of democracy. But this appearance is misleading and is completely contrary to the reality. But the fact is that this appearance exists, and it sounds convincing to those who argue: ‘Why are you more concerned with the problems of the Slovaks, Wallachians, Serbs and Ruthenians than with our own? The Magyar wishes to remain a Magyar, whether he belongs to the ruling, oppressed or disregarded classes. A nationality policy that forgets, fudges or denies this is dishonest. A nationality policy that, forgetting about these living forces, seeks instead to base its aspirations upon the dead conceptual material of generally dead human beings; which, like a new, sociological Stoic is able to forget about his own pain in order to blithely share the pain of others – is scientifically flawed and would fail in practice too. Consequently, the nationality policy of Hungarian radicalism, which supports other nationalities at the expense of its own, is in reality a conceptual and psychological impossibility, and will never find any echo among the Magyars, whose one thousand year old state it is seeking to construct through a “suicide pact”’. This fear is as honest as it is unfounded, and although the accusation is made in good faith, it is misplaced. In Hungary, the causes of democracy and of the Magyars are intertwined. In this country, it is only the Magyars who have reached the threshold of democratic statehood, and the new, modern Hungary will only be constructed by Magyar forces. This process will be a true manifestation of the cultural hegemony that undergirds the political hegemony of the Magyars, of that true ‘leadership’ which is based not on force and fraud but on economic wealth and intellectual prowess. And the Magyars will accomplish this, the only possible and democratic outcome that is demanded by the organised working class, the ­organised bourgeoisie, and the awakening peasantry, in the only way that accords with the 2 ‘A magyar hegemonia és a nemzetiségek’, Szabadgondolat, 4.3 (1914): 69–71.

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essence of democracy: so that it applies to Magyars and non-Magyars alike, regardless of whether the minority nationalities like it or not, and, if necessary, against their wishes. And with this we have arrived at the heart of the matter. The minority nationalities in Hungary have not achieved the level of economic and cultural development at which a democratic solution freely presents itself, such that voicing ‘open sesame’ is all that is required. Hungarian society is characterised by a diversity of organic forms such that, when sick, it can no longer be treated ‘symptomatically’, and, by the same token, its forms of social existence are characterised by homogeneity, for which no ‘local’ cures exist. While the problems faced by primitive societies can be alleviated through local palliatives (such as pacts, quota norms and appointments), developed Hungarian society can only be cured through a thoroughgoing change in its entire social organisation and functioning, that is, through a democratic renaissance. That this is not merely a theoretical conceit, but is rooted in experience and reality, is demonstrated by the surprising recent turn in the nationalities’ ­question. Tisza is even now preparing to sacrifice Magyar hegemony in order to whittle away at the nascent Hungarian democracy. And the nationalities are happy to sacrifice Hungarian democracy in order to free themselves from the impositions of Magyar hegemony. Each such pact is a federalist embryo from which we can only expect the birth of the Bach era’s ‘Serb province and Bánát [frontier province] of Temesvar’ and other similar dualistic mutations. Like a new Windischgrätz,3 Tisza is searching for a new Jelačić4 in Zagreb and a new Janku5 in Nagyszeben,6 whom he can command against the renewed Hungarian struggle for independence. And Hungarian democracy rightly sees as enemies those nationalities that are allying themselves with the forces of Hungarian absolutism in order to pursue their own particularistic interests. The Tisza approach to solving the nationalities question is in reality to back the nationalities’ aspirations at the expense of Magyar culture. This nationality policy is not based upon Magyar hegemony but upon Tisza bargaining away whatever he is forced to bargain. In contrast to this, the nationality policy of the radicals is based upon Magyar hegemony, both in its motivation and in its methods. But on real Magyar hegemony; the cultural hegemony of the Magyars. For this is what the Magyars embody, in their industry and commerce, in their literature and science, political institu 3 Alfred I, Prince of Windischgrätz, commanded the Habsburg armies that put down the Hungarian Revolution of 1848–49. 4 In his quest for Croatian independence from the Habsburg Empire, the Croat count Josip Jelačić ingratiated himself with Vienna by opposing the Hungarian Revolution of 1848–49. 5 Abraham Janku was a leader of Wallachian rebels in the Transylvania region in 1848–49. 6 Today, Sibiu is in Romania.

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tions and political ideals, all of which are more highly developed than those of the minority nationalities. This is the source and the public voice of the demand for Western democracy and nationwide reform, at a time when the public life of our nationalities remains almost exclusively limited to confessional organisation and manifestations of crude nationalism. In reality, this nationality policy is based on the fact that in Hungary it is the Magyars who have achieved the greatest progress in terms of social development; the most progressive ideas and solutions are found in the minds and hearts of the Magyars; and on the highroad of culture it is they who have taken the lead. As the Greeks used to say, they are hegemonic. Instead of the hegemony of force, only democracy can bring about the cultural hegemony of the Magyars. It is only on the ruins of their superficial hegemony that the genuine and deserved hegemony of the Magyars will be built. The politics that seeks to serve this cause is not afraid of betraying those nationalities that ally themselves with Tisza; it is not a terroristic campaign spun from bigotry nor the chauvinistic prattle that arises when the nationalities, once vanquished by our superior political culture, are annexed; rather, it is a politics that carves its own path, indefatigably, towards the achievement of Hungarian democracy.

Bourgeois radicals, socialists and the established ­opposition7

On the threshold of the establishment of the Radical Bourgeois Party, a number of questions, which had previously appeared only in faint outline, have come to the fore. I For the labour movement this separation represents the realisation of a longawaited process. For a decade, socialists have been declaring that the bourgeois elements will inevitability come to recognise their own self-interests, which lie in the irremediable opposition between bourgeois existence and bourgeois culture on the one hand, and the rule of the large landowners and the Church on the other. Hypnotised under the rule of the nobility and sleeping the hashish dream of corruption, our middle classes have suffered ridicule and contempt, but they have supported the radical elements now awakening to bourgeois consciousness with exhortations and encouragement. They were right to disparage industrialists who left the task of thinking to their workers, and to encourage the bourgeoisie, which had remained under the tutelage of feudalism, to finally come of age, to refrain from devolving to the working class the recognition of its real interests and the burden of fighting for them. Indeed, it is fair to say that one of the points in the programme of the Hungarian Social Democratic Party is being realised with the establishment of an independent, radical party of the bourgeoisie. And as we approach its foundation, this party’s resources, and its independent vocation within contemporary Hungary’s public sphere, are gradually becoming clearer. It is only now that we can see how strongly radical bourgeois ideas have become entrenched within progressive public opinion and that, even before the formation of an independent radical party, radical bourgeois ideas have already become significant. To be sure, the external expression of the situation was bothersome for the radicals: that to a considerable degree their defender, the sounding board for their ideals and the source of their political influence, was located in the organised working class. But the creation of an 7 ‘Polgári radikálisok, szocialisták és törtenelmi ellenzék’, Szabadgondolat, 4.5 (1914): 144–50.

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independent radical party has now shed light on the other side of the coin, which had hitherto remained hidden from public view. It is not only the radicals who can be grateful for the echo that their ideas received within the camp of labour, but, equally, the weight and authority of the Hungarian workers’ movement derives from the fact that, in the last decade, it has campaigned almost exclusively for bourgeois radical goals and with bourgeois radical slogans. The complete hegemony that the Hungarian Social Democratic Party enjoys within progressive public opinion, but beyond it too – including the representatives of the established opposition formations in general, almost anyone with a concern for Hungary’s cultural progress – stems from the fact that it consistently and unambiguously took upon itself the task of developing a bourgeois Hungary. For the class struggle between the industrial proletariat and the relatively small, but uncompromising, industrial capitalists has not yet shaken up Hungary’s feudal public life, and the urgent issues of the modern labour movement have not become integrated into Hungary’s parliamentary system. As a result, the Social Democratic Party represented not the working class but the interests of the bourgeoisie; its struggle was waged not against capitalism but against feudalism. Struggle against feudalism in order to construct industrial capitalism – this was the party’s slogan, and the chief factor that has underlain its practical successes. Undoubtedly, these considerations, which offer an affirmation of the public political tasks that await the nascent radical party, would seem simultaneously to diminish the future importance of the Social Democratic Party, as its most effective role is ceded to the new party formation. In reality, however, the creation of the bourgeois party will drive the workers’ party in a more favourable direction, more appropriate to its specific tasks and, hence, more desirable from the viewpoint of the universal progress of the nation. The first consequence of the separation will thus be that bourgeois politics and the struggle against feudalism will be undertaken by the radicals, while the socialists will represent the labour movement and the struggle against capitalism. But upon closer inspection, the labour movement will also gain a good deal, for in respect of one of its weaker points it will receive effective support. Until now, one of the most pressing issues for the labour movement, inevitably, has been the creation of socio-political institutions for workers. Attesting to the political dilettantism of Hungarian feudalism, it introduced health care and personal accident insurance for sick workers partly for specific, political reasons. It was rightly presumed to be so ruthless that when these reasons passed it would rescind the reforms, leaving stricken workers without medicine or welfare. With the welfare institutions of the working class at stake, the party fighting for them was obliged to weigh up the possibility of violence, which, in the political struggle, does not even bend before the flag of the Red Cross.

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Meanwhile the code of honour of the bishops and counts of the coalition and the National Labour Party8 deemed it acceptable to keep the sick worker as hostage for the behaviour of his healthy comrades, and to play welfare institutions – supposedly designed to care for those who have suffered work-related misfortune – as a trump card against the labour movement in its struggle on behalf of the entire nation’s welfare. It is in this way that welfare institutions became not a fortress for the labour movement but a trap; the persistent Achilles Heel of its tactical location, the Road of Ephialtes9 of its strategic deployments. However, given that a bourgeois radical party offers to unconditionally protect the provision of healthcare to workers, welfare comes to be viewed in public opinion not as a social democratic party concern but the essential precondition of industrial peace and bourgeois culture. Hence, and suddenly, the anomalous situation whereby the Social Democratic Party has been obliged to tailor its behaviour to the public interest and not to its own party interests ceases to exist. Hungary’s labour movement gains a defence at its weakest point and, here too, the establishment of an autonomous bourgeois party gives it a free hand to turn to the tasks of its own class. There is no need to explain separately that this is not only in the interest of the working class but also serves all the progressive sections of the nation. For it strengthens the conviction that a tremendous effort will be required to break feudal rule in Hungary. Forced on to the defensive, feudal power does not hold back from employing even the most desperate means. This was shown when, ignoring its own programme, it took the reins of government in the form of a coalition, in order to circumvent the introduction of universal suffrage, and, secondly, when the latifundist regime faced bankruptcy, Tisza used force to block the victory of universal suffrage, thus placing the country in a state of siege. When the forces of progress and reaction will confront one another for the third time, we can expect Hungary’s landowning class to fight its life-anddeath struggle with even more extreme ruthlessness than the coalition and the National Party of Labour. The working class needs to be prepared to wage a revolutionary struggle. The time has also come for radicals to show in deeds that they are the workers’ comrades in this great struggle. Clearly, the number of fellow travellers who vote for socialist candidates is very substantial. But the number of fellow 8 The National Labour Party was established by István Tisza in 1910, as the party of large and medium-sized landowners, industrialists and the state bureaucracy. The NLP opposed the introduction of universal suffrage and the granting of rights to national minorities. It won a majority in the 1910 parliamentary elections and governed until the outbreak of revolution in 1918. 9 Ephialtes of Trachis betrayed the Spartan army’s intended march route to the Persian enemy.

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travellers who are persuaded to support the workers’ party thanks to the agitation, organisation and sacrifice of radicals is particularly striking, and in many districts this tips the result in favour of the socialist candidate. As we can see, the bourgeois radicals’ separation from the workers’ party will be a liberating salvation for both sides, enabling each to serve their own, separate interests. The Social Democratic Party will transform itself into a straightforward workers’ party, while the bourgeois radicals become the diligent rank-andfile fighters of Hungary’s struggle for independence. II In and of itself, the establishment of the bourgeois radical party represents a declaration of war against the established parties of opposition. We do not mean this in respect of the current political situation – which ought to bring every progressive person, indeed every self-respecting individual, together into the struggle against the government, in order to expose, overcome and then send this nefarious clique to suffer the sword of popular judgement – but, rather, in abstraction from reference to any particular organisation or c­ onfiguration of forces. That said, even when viewed in terms of the narrower goal of overthrowing the present government there is a burning need for a separate bourgeois radical party. For the established opposition is not able to, and does not know how to, topple the government. Although courageous, and aware of the mines that need to be detonated in order to demolish the enemy’s fortifications, it does not dare to light the fuse. For, once they have exploded, and in one push the government’s seemingly unassailable bastions are taken, the battle positions of today’s opposition parties will be in disarray. It is rare for any political party to adopt the role of Titusz Dugonics.10 That is why the opposition, in its struggle against the government, is doomed to select ineffective weapons – for the effective ones cannot be deployed without committing political suicide. Why, for example, was the opposition unsuccessful in its fight for democratic suffrage? We need to acknowledge, unequivocally, that it was not Tisza’s might but the internal weaknesses of its position that led to the defeat. For the opposition’s campaign did not, not for a single moment, direct its demands to the destruction of feudalism, the separation of Church and state, progressive taxation, secular public education or the provision of equal rights for the national minorities – in a word, the revolutionary transformation from which a unified, free, working Hungary could arise. The deeper reason and justification, the true evidence was missing from the struggle for universal suffrage. István Tisza is right: in contemporary Hungary, feudal rule can only be upheld thanks to restricted 10 A mythical Hungarian soldier of Croat/Serbian origin who, according to legend, died a hero’s death in battle against the Ottoman forces during the defence of Belgrade (1456).

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voting rights, clerical support, the abuse of the government’s powers, corruption and force, and – he is right – the constitutional pillars of the Hungarian oligarchy should only be rattled by those who also seek to destroy the rule of the latifundia, the power of the Church, and the world of the nobility, replacing it with the rule of the popular working classes. Tisza is indisputably correct in his assertion that they who wish to topple him by means of the introduction of universal suffrage would in the process overthrow Hungary’s landowning autocracy. This is why the opposition was only ever able to conduct shadow boxing against Tisza, and this is why Hungary’s entire opposition is nothing but a phantom. It is a phantom because behind Tisza the true rulers of the country are the landowners and the Church, and they face no real opposition in parliament! The oppression of the popular working classes is the landmine on which today’s Hungarian political bodies are walking a death dance. We shall light the fuse without any fear, and in the great eruption all of Hungarian feudalism will disappear, together with Tisza. But by the time the horizon clears of the raining ash and clouds of smoke, the established opposition will also have vanished. Furthermore, the existential basis of the bourgeois radical party, the reason for its creation, the framework of its programme, and the root of everything that it says, is the recognition, that it, like ‘Sesame’, only needs to say in order to open the door to a new Hungary: that what we have been suffering under, our tragic poverty which fills our hearts with the pain of the beggar and of the poor, that dusty greyness which envelops us every time we take the train through the trapdoor to Devín,11 the envious rage that consumes us when we read the foreign affairs sections of the papers in which short bulletins bring reports from civilised worlds – where for example a finance minister named Lloyd George can enunciate the vocabulary of freedom and welfare, in a country where even the most benighted citizen would turn away in contempt upon hearing the name of a politician such as Tisza or Lukacs.12 But it is not only all the pain in our souls, it is also the unforgiving vivisection of emigration, the torture not of rabbits and dogs but of living people: an entire nation convulsed under the knife of hunger, Hungary’s blood draining out of it, only to wash away into the black depths of the Colorado mines – and inflation, which, like an enemy city, surrounds our starving masses until they are reduced to begging the landowners for work in return for crumbs – and the merciless taxes which they collect to the sound of the merry drumbeats of a dance of death, siphoning the revenues to those who already hold tens and hundreds of thousands of acres of land, subsidising their foreign jaunts – and the ignorance that our poor, beloved 11 A town on the Danube, traditionally seen as the western gateway to Hungary. 12 László Lukacs, a mine owner and leading member of the NLP, served as prime minister immediately prior to the Great War.

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nation’s people continues to suffer, its poverty blighted by underdevelopment, impotence, tuberculosis, drought and floods, everything that turns the weak half-hearted and opportunistic but makes the brave bitter and revolutionary – all this accursed misery and injustice is the result of a single schema of class and power; it is the product of one single system. But this is not all: what makes the system truly universal and omnipotent is precisely the fact that it is not possible, either in parliament or in civil society, to counter its effects by isolating it as a determinate whole, in its bare nakedness, and excluding its associates from community membership. The entire Hungarian political order, together with all parties, press and public institutions, belong to the system. It includes within its folds the right of association, the primary school – which the future voter either does not attend because he is working in the fields for hunger wages, or, if he does, finds his brain moulded by priestly hands which apprise him of his future electoral obligations – as well as the nationalism, chauvinism and clericalism of the opposition parties, in addition to the basis of all of this: the class rule of the cannibalistic latifundia, the parasitic gentry and the avaricious clergy. For the coalition and the Lukacs regime were at one when it came to the practical adulation of political corruption; Günther and Balogh13 found one another in a press law, over which both of their hearts rejoice, because for them the bottom line is fundamentally the same: the defence of the rule of the landowners. And that the morbus latifundii14 was utterly untreatable was proved during the nightmare of Tisza’s administration, when no matter how desperately the opposition cried for help – ultimately even turning to d­ emocratic slogans – even when it faced complete destruction it did not really or seriously use the weapon that had fallen into its hands; even when it was staring self-destruction in the face, its class training was stronger than its instinct for survival. The government and the established opposition are the products of a single system, and it will take only a single storm to bring the rotten tree down, together with all its unpalatable and poisonous fruits. Nobody can say that these are abstract truths; yet, in practice, the road towards the realisation of our principles must pass through the government or the opposition. To be sure, neither today nor in the near future will we succeed in winning the majority of the electorate to our position. But it does not follow that we need to resign ourselves to the conditions of today’s two-party system and approximate ourselves to today’s opposition. On the contrary, it means that we need to unite the progressive forces on the basis of our own integral programme. If even a small group with a mission of that sort were to succeed in 13 Jenő Balogh, Hungary’s minister of justice, 1913–17. 14 The bourgeois radicals’ term to denote Hungary’s fundamental sickness: the rule of the large estates.

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entering parliament, its influence would exceed its size. When it comes to ideas, Werbőczy’s principle applies: non numerantur, sed ponderantur.15 The power of argument and the clarity of viewpoint give weight to the small group that proclaims them with courage and without opportunism, amidst the cacophony of political slogans. Instead of the current government-opposition type of duelcodex parliamentarism, the radicals, with support on all points from the socialists, will catalyse a ruthless struggle between vital forces. In the final analysis, the sort of lordly, dilettantish display that is performed in parliament today is nothing but a pastime, and, even when it does take on a serious edge, it remains carefully bandaged, with the arteries of class interests cushioned by the gauze of mutual agreements. The parliament of conventional lies will be converted into an arena of inexorable vital interests. And before long the axis of public life will turn: politics will no longer consist of confrontations between duelists’ assistants, but will revolve around the global axis of progress and reaction. Our hope is that we will be able to win for bourgeois Hungary a little piece of land on the oligarchy’s terrain, and that from this single point we will be able to lift the globe of Hungarian class rule out of its orbit!

15 ‘They are not counted but weighed’. István Werbőczy  was a sixteenth-century Hungarian scholar. The irony in Polanyi’s usage derives from the fact that the phrase was in currency to refer to elections to the Hungarian parliament in feudal times, in which votes were not counted but weighed. 

The programme and goals of radicalism: an  address to the general assembly of the Radical  Party16

Dear fellow citizens! I am honoured to greet you in the name of the National Radical Party! In the name of the party, whose leaders, as leaders of the only bourgeois party in the old Hungary, have fought continuously and unswervingly, for half a man’s lifespan, for the new bourgeois-democratic Hungary. What gave us the strength for this struggle? The unshakeable conviction that under the rule of the large landowners and banks this country would suffer depopulation, economic underdevelopment and, compounded by social and national oppression, domestic political weakness; it would not be able to keep up with the developing democracies that surround us. Further, we gained strength from the conviction that we had to protect the country from revolutionary shocks, lest the operation kill the patient. Those truths, which were proclaimed only by the Sociological Society, the Hungarian Association of Free-thinkers, the Reform Club and the Galilei Circle, are no longer to be found in sociological works alone but are today written in bloody letters on the world-historical firmament! Our theories and ideals can no longer be discarded in the name of the realpolitik of the Hungarian cosmos, for behold, the so-called realpolitik of militarism and feudalism turned out to be a bubble – one that vanished as a result of the victorious Entente’s democratic and pacifistic ideals. Where, today, are those who high-handedly proclaimed that ‘due to our particular domestic conditions’ democracy will stop at the borders of Hungary – the borders that its armaments could not protect? And where are the experts who claimed that the ideas of radicalism are incompatible with the nature of Hungarian men? They were swept away forever by the first free manifestation of the popular soul! The history of the new Hungary is one and the same as the history of ­radicalism. Who were they who, alongside the hidebound mentality of the traditional classes and the indifference of the industrial working class, alone proclaimed that Hungary’s future stands and falls on the land question? That neither the rule 16 A Radikalizmus Programmja és Célja, held in Szeged, 1 December 1918.

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of landed estates nor the socialisation of the land can create a unified peasant democracy, surplus production and a vibrant agriculture? That the land, above all, should be given not to those who already have it but instead to smallholders and to the landless, in the form of private property? This was the programme of the Radical Party, and it remains its programme today. My fellow citizens, who were those ridiculed, persecuted politicians, who were called traitors and stoned, and who, amidst the arrows of the traditional parties and the indifference of the social democrats, proclaimed that this country was being destroyed by a false, hypocritical and unjust nationality policy? Who were they, who, by way of an incessant flood of assemblies, books and pamphlets, agitated for the provision of rights to our national brothers; rights, which the wise laws of József Eötvös and Ferenc Deák had granted them but which a selfish and narrow-minded gentry had negated in its own interests? Today, now that we – alas – have seen the bloody fruits of this criminal regime ripen, the Radical Party’s existence bears witness before Europe to the fact that the violence and hypocrisy of this suicidal national politics was not carried out on behalf of the Hungarian people but was instead the creation of a narrow and privileged strata dedicated to preserving its own power. And our position on domestic peace also turned out to be correct with regard to the question of international peace. Which party was it, my fellow-citizens, that, terrorised and persecuted by the traditional parties, from István Tisza to Vilmos Vázsonyi, and facing the indifference of the Social Democratic Party, proclaimed – alone in this country – that only the federalisation of the monarchy could save the co-habitation of the Danubian peoples? And who is the man, who, as a new Széchenyi,17 sketched out, with visionary eye, a scenario of his fatherland among the family of nations; whose influential works seem to us today as if they were not brave prophecies for the future but the notes of a historical writer surveying the past; who is this man, whose determination today will be capable of transforming the conscience of an entire nation? This singular and exceptional man is Oscar Jaszi! Which party was it, which, in face of belittlement from the traditional parties and indifference from the social democrats, pointed out that a new social stratum was emerging alongside the capitalist bourgeoisie and the industrial working class: the middle class, encompassing not only numerous groups of intellectual workers and the gigantic camp of private and public officials, but also all those who do not live off the interest of their capital or their land, but from their own work, whether in public or private offices, their own shops or in their enterprises? Who was it that pointed to this new, decisive social stratum, 17 Count István Széchenyi: nineteenth-century Hungarian liberal politician.

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the interests of which are antagonistic to those of the large landowners and the banks, and who will have to fight their struggle for a better world order together with, but, at the same time separate from, the industrial working class? Once again, it was the leaders of the Radical Party who embraced this stratum, which is ground between the working class and capital, and constructed the National Radical Party upon its basis. We were the first representatives, both in theory and in practice, of this broad and rich stratum and when the others will yet again let it down, we shall remain its ultimate representatives! Thus, it was the Radical Party that in Hungary raised and brought to victory the land question, equal rights for nationalities, the Danubian confederation and the ideas of pacifism, and it is it that originated the programme of organising and leading the middle class, i.e. the clerical workers, intellectuals, industrialists, merchants and peasant smallholders. And what differentiated us most from the parties of violence, both on the right and on the left: the Radical Party never believed in political quackery. We rejected both the placebos of the reactionary regime as well as the rough techniques of revolution. We held no belief in the ‘strong hand’ when threatened by István Tisza, or indeed by the oppressed. The introduction of radical reforms: this was always the programme of the Radical Party. We never believed in the nitrous gas of quack slogans, nor in the quackery of violence. We believed only in the hand guided by rationality, the heart infused with responsibility and the timely intervention by those who are called upon to conduct the lifesaving operation. Our prophecies have – alas – become reality. The forces of reaction have betrayed the country, driving it to ruin; revolutions have raised the threat of anarchy. The sun is shining upon our momentous truth, but – alas – too late. There is only one element of the past that has been ripening for the Radical Party, and it will provide our power in the future: among the struggles, a new generation has grown up, one from whom political consistency is not only part of its politics but is itself the programme; a new generation for whom moral conviction represents not merely the pinnacle of political commitment but also the only road towards its realisation. The present juncture finds the Radical Party in government, but our tasks remain the same. Once again, society faces grave dangers. On one hand, the external enemy; on the other, the revolutionary movements of right and left that threaten anarchy. The party will once again carry out its historical vocation. The solution to the crisis facing the fatherland and humanity lies not with the futile quackery of violence – whether from without or within, from the right or from the left – but in the methods of radical reform.

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Before the revolution, the difference between socialism and radicalism was irrelevant; in practice the demands of the two parties differed only in emphasis. This situation has now swung sharply. Today, the creation of democratic institutions and, even more so, the democratic transfer of power, have become realised to a degree that even recently was beyond imagination. As a result, all ‘transitional programmes’ have become outdated. The socialists are reverting to their basic programme, in two different ways: one camp adheres to the Marxist conception and seeks to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat by revolutionary means and to achieve in one push the socialisation of the means of production, while the other remains on the ground of democracy and seeks to achieve the same thing gradually. However, both groups agree that it is no longer possible to avoid the realisation of the basic programme. Socialism’s end goal is now due. Radicalism and socialism both agree that society’s contemporary organisation is unjust and irrational, and that it needs to be replaced with fair and rational arrangements. They also concur that a just distribution of income is one that eliminates rentier incomes and that a rational order would exclude ­material and moral profligacy. Hence, both parties want to change contemporary society politically and economically along lines of fairness and rationality. The transformation of contemporary society: this is the negative goal upon which they agree, but they disagree markedly on the forms that the positive solutions should take. While socialism aspires to a just society through the socialisation of the means of production, to be implemented exclusively by the industrial proletariat, radicalism does not entrust the fate of mankind to this method, or its operation to the proletariat, but instead expects fair and rational arrangements to arise only within a society that is placed under the overall guidance of rational forces. This higher-order society needs to be brought about by a series of radical reforms. As a genuine idea of an era, orthodox Marxism conquered the leaders of the bourgeoisie for itself too. It sees in human society only a system of production; in human history only the automatic functioning of economic factors – the leaders of the bourgeoisie adopted this construct from the theorists of the proletariat. The two bitter enemies, the working class and the bourgeoisie, stand together against radicalism, as holders of the same outdated conception. Their common illusions are those that deny the historical vocation of the intellectual forces, proposing instead, as inescapable fate, the dominance of material labour over intellectual labour. Marxism, irrespective of whether its teachings are conveyed by workers or by the bourgeoisie, views society from the vantage point of the manual worker, while radicalism views it through the eyes of the intellectual worker. The former sees the world from the outside and for him social development appears to be

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automatic, while the latter sees it from within and recognises his own work in the development of humanity. The intellectual worker needs only to think in order to assume the leadership of society, on the basis of the right of the intellect, which has always been society’s hidden leader. As a political and economic movement, radicalism aims at the complete transformation of contemporary society. As such it has eliminated from its thinking the religious notion of the Zukunftstaat.18 Its programme is not to be realised in a future state, in another society, only by way of a violent or revolutionary leap, but, on the contrary, it seeks to begin and accomplish the great work of reform here and now. It believes neither in the necessary coming of the Zukunftstaat nor that the proletariat’s exertions represent a magical wand that will summon it. Above all, it does not believe that the radical transformation of society and man ought to be postponed to the after-life of society, to a nebulous Zukunftstaat, but instead it proclaims that there is only one society, the one in which we live, and that the fulfilment of all social obligations is due in the here and now. From this it follows that radicalism does not share the socialist belief in the decisive importance of private property. It does not accept that a society in which the institution of private property exists cannot be r­ adically improved, nor does it accept the practical consequences of this idea: that all radical changes to contemporary man and society must be postponed to the future, which will begin only when the institution of private property ends. In contrast, radicalism believes that social development and progress is impossible without private property, and that ‘the society of the future’ is already present today: it needs only to be unpeeled from people and their relationships. The third main difference between the teachings of the socialists and the radicals follows from the first: while they invest the proletariat with the task of creating the Zukunftstaat, we neither recognise this task nor do we hold that the industrial working class necessarily represents its exclusive executor. Furthermore, radicalism cannot abandon the road of democracy; if we wish to serve the public good we have to remain on the moral ground of human equality. For us, democracy is not a regime of domination but the ideal state of social being. Just as we reject the dictatorship of the ruling classes, we will never accept the dictatorship of the proletariat. In a democratic society the minority should not be allowed to rule over the majority, even as the majority should not be allowed to tyrannise the minority – this is what has to be safeguarded by those who wish to ensure humanity’s democratic future. Radicalism seeks to accord to the intellectual workers leadership of that gigantic movement which, through the assistance of every social layer pursuing its own work, sets as its aim the transformation of society through radical 18 Future state.

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reform. The ideals that Marxism has sequestered for the proletariat, the fulfilment of which it projects to a future state and the realisation of which it makes dependent upon the industrial worker’s abolition of private property – these ideals are resurrected in their pure and original form by radicalism: as the selfconsciously executed reform project of society as a whole, under the direction of intellectual labour. The army of this reform project is based upon the hierarchy of labour. Denying the manual worker’s illusion that physical work is the true and authentic labour, it places the most exhausting, most excruciating and most productive labour, the work of all work, at the top of the pyramid: intellectual labour – the organiser and director of all other kinds of labour, the originator and guarantor of the productivity of all other forms of labour. In a society in which labour receives the full reward for its exertions, it is necessary for different labour values to be distinguished from one another, just as today’s society differentiates between commodity values. Social inequality is unfair, whether it is based on birth, race, religion or wealth; but any social arrangement that does not recognise the different values of different forms of work, and instead seeks to impose equality between them, would be just as unfair. For this reason, everyone needs to have the opportunity to pursue his work according to his abilities, this equality being ensured through radical reform. The reform ideas that, through power of reason, will raise humanity from today’s anarchic state to the level of organised functioning originate from the greatest thinkers of our age, the heirs of the great utopians: Henry George, H. G. Wells, Popper-Lynkeus, R. Goldscheid.19 For so long as the organisation of public life remains the territory of passions, the economy as a blind struggle between profit-seeking individuals and groups fighting for their interests, and society the battlefield of class struggle, with the state merely the passive product of these loud, raw antagonisms, it will be impossible for humanity to avoid future catastrophes. And what liberalism could not achieve through the complete freedom of political struggle, socialism will be equally unable to achieve through the method of class struggle, because in their essence both methods are the same. This common method is not only rough and primitive, because it portrays the brutal and merciless mutual destruction as inevitable, but it is also completely hopeless. The result is a freely developing process, the indicated direction of which, however, does not correspond to the interests of anyone and drives all to destruction. Hence the universal question of the age is: how can the method of aimless struggle be replaced by the conscious cooperation of human society? If the conflicting 19 Rudolf Goldscheid: Austrian monist sociologist. Josef Popper-Lynkeus [in the original text, ‘Popper, Lynkaus’] was an Austrian philosopher and engineer.

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i­nterests cannot be stopped, how can the common interests of humanity be made independent from them; how can the decision over our common fate be separated from their fatal consequences? The radical reforms, through which the great thinkers of our age seek to ensure the leading role of the intellectual forces in all areas of society, need to be realised: there is no other way. This does not mean the leadership of the intelligentsia as such. The values of Hungary’s intellectuals had become the most atrophied and baleful under the regime of violence and corruption. In this struggle, the world’s intellectuals showed that the intellectual forces from which they live do not reside within themselves; it was the intellectuals above all who acted to heighten and to poison the selfish interests of the social classes and the blind, irrational passions of the mob. Instead, the leading role of the intellectual forces means that directing and constructive ideas, and not the destructive agitation of self-interest and passions, have to become the leading ideas in society. Interests are blind, passions are deaf: only rationality is receptive and reasonable. The order of selfinterest and the passions has steered humanity into hopeless difficulties; only the power of the mind will be able to guide it to safety. But intellectual workers have never embodied the intellectual forces of society. The camp of intellectual labour is not only constituted by workers in intellectual occupations. Most intellectual work is carried out, for the most part intuitively, by people in the economic professions: entrepreneurs, industrialists and merchants direct the production and distribution of goods. Although capital and land is indispensable for the work of the two other factors of production, they live neither from the annuities of capital nor from land rent but primarily from the remuneration of their i­ntellectual activity in risky areas of economic organisation, administration and enterprise. It is a mere illusion which confuses the industrialist and the merchant, in the impression that they do not also live from their own work. They do not carry out this work in the belief that they are engaging in an activity that benefits the public, but in the belief that they are merely obtaining profit from it. If we also add to this imperfect economy the fact that the direction of production does not necessarily benefit the public and that the profit derived from distribution (trade) is often the result of speculative differences, we can understand why the industrialist and the merchant cannot see that they do not live from some mysterious income but from the intellectual work that they perform. Within the system of revenue distribution the bourgeoisie, situated between capital and manual labour, stands primarily on the basis of its own intellectual activity. The age of rentier income is over. It will not be re-installed in its old form, but even if it

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could be, the Radical Party will never ever undertake this! Production has to be guided and organised such that occupations simultaneously advance profitability and the common interest. In so doing, the industrialist and the merchant will recognise that they do not live from profit, but that it is through their intellectual work that they carry out activities that are indispensable for society. And for this to be performed in the common interest, the means of production have to be left in private hands, for the production of surplus value is impossible without individual initiative and risk-taking. We expect leadership of the intellectual forces to come first and foremost from the awakening of the intellectual workers; they will no longer associate themselves with the privileges of the failed bourgeoisie, from which they have only received crumbs, and with heart and soul they will join the society of labour. In this new party the camp of labour, without which the fate of the world has never been decided, will unite with the victorious camp of intellectual work, which alone can take upon itself leadership of the new world. Public and private officials constitute the bulk of this camp. The manual worker and the intellectual worker are brothers. In public life they have to stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight for the society of labour. They fight for one goal, but with different means. To the manual workers the intellectual worker is weightless; he appears as a foreign element, for while in the eyes of manual workers the intellectual is a proletarian, he is not a true proletarian. The worldview of the manual worker is necessarily materialist. For him, only concretely material work has any material result. Hence, he only considers manual, physical work to be real. For him, all other work is unreal, merely an easy form of effortless, unproductive occupation. For the intellectual worker his own work is the truest and most authentic: the only work. Upon mechanical dexterity, the mind has little influence; and uniform, mass production is work that lacks meaning. Hence, the philosophy of intellectual labour is necessarily idealist. The two great camps of manual and intellectual labour are united by their common interest. Their great enemy is the employer, even when this employer is the state itself. But unified organisation is excluded due to the fact that the two groups value the worth of material and intellectual work differently. A worldview separates them, and this emanates in each case from their labour. The opposition can only be resolved in practice through separate organisation. In practice, the interests of labour can only be defended on the basis of class struggle. And it is from the viewpoint of class struggle that the Radical Party directs the intellectual workers’ trade union, under the leadership of a Trades Union Council. However, while such economic organisation exhausts the

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worldview of the Social Democratic Party, which believes that all problems of humanity can be solved through class struggle, the Radical Party is aware that, in itself, class struggle cannot solve the great problems of our age. Class struggle cannot solve the problem of material destitution – and less today than ever – because the equitable distribution of goods today means little, in comparison with their abundant production. Hence, although today the equitable distribution of goods is first and foremost a demand for justice, we cannot fool ourselves with the idea that it would at the same time ensure universal welfare. Today the main problem is not the distribution of goods, but the production of whatever is to be distributed. The question is not the distribution of income, but surplus production. Class struggle cannot solve the nationality question either, which consumes the human body like a feverish inflammation. It is not true that in Macedonia the Serbs, Greeks and Bulgarians murdered each other for decades because of capitalism, nor was it capitalism that caused the Armenian-Turkish massacres, and it was not capitalism that, in the name of national sovereignty, demanded the recognition of nationalities as a precondition at Brest-Litovsk, but Trotsky, the foreign minister of the Russian Soviet government. Class struggle cannot solve the question of peaceful cooperation among peoples either. The millions of people who were organised in the International did not stop the outbreak of the world war; in fact they did not even attempt to do so. Nor did they provoke the outbreak of the world revolution that followed upon the war; in fact it occurred without them. The camps of class struggle constituted the backbone of the British, German, French and American armies; it was their support and their organisational power that fuelled the most senseless and bloody war in the history of the world. Prior to its outbreak, class struggle had rejected the idea of pacifism, ridiculing it, and now it would be pointless for the realisation of pacifism to be attempted on the basis of class struggle. Class struggle can only guarantee material interests and can only serve as the directing principle of economic processes. It cannot guarantee the resolution of the great and fateful questions that confront humanity, nor can it solve the questions of surplus production, peace among nationalities or the harmonious cooperation of peoples. Further, the material welfare of labouring humanity depends not only on the question of peace, but also upon ensuring that humanity will not be devoured by catastrophes and internal fevers. Class struggle cannot be the directing principle of politics. As with the struggles of peoples and nations, the struggle of classes is legitimate and salutary; it is the bearer of positive life opportunity, against oppression; but it becomes an alldestroying, fateful prejudice whenever it is transformed into a fixed idea that becomes a goal for itself. Today, class struggle serves to protect labour rights, but it should not be allowed to become the pivotal point of politics. As necessary as

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it is with regard to matters of survival, it is harmful when it serves as the basis of a worldview. The struggle of radicalism is not the struggle of classes for the interests of classes, but the final effort of humanity to redeem itself. Radicalism, as the movement behind a worldview, sets as its goal a struggle beyond classes. The series of catastrophes that world wars and world revolutions have caused must be stopped. Humanity needs to awake and take its destiny into its own hands, or else it will be destroyed in the succession of catastrophes. Popular power, which all the parties of the revolution have accomplished together, can turn into mob rule, threatening to destroy all society’s material, intellectual and moral values. The blind struggle of peoples and classes has to be replaced by the conscious cooperation of humanity. A new worldview has to be created which, on the basis of democracy, ensures the leading role of reason, and recognises merit. In the firmament of a work-based society, the fraternal constellations of knowledge and merit ought to shine, and at that moment we shall lead this tormented humanity towards a fairer and more human society, one that is guided by intellectual forces. Under this banner we shall win!

Radical Party and bourgeois party20

In theory, the Radical Party (RP), broadly conceived, represents the interests of those who live only on the fruits of their own labour. In practice: just as the Social Democratic Party considers industrial workers, as a group with particular living conditions, to be its true organisational and operational sphere, so the RP perceives those wide and rich layers of society that live off their own labour but which fall outside the industrial working class as its essential organisational terrain. The trade union and political movements cannot ever overlap; indeed, in its intellectualistic demands the RP excludes this. However, it also distinguishes between members’ economic interests that arise from their distinct professions and their interests as political subjects. Economic interests, whether material or moral, ought to be represented by representative bodies, while the political party represents these aggregate interests against the state. From this follows the general thesis, which corresponds to the alpha and omega of realpolitik: the ideas and the interests of the party must coincide. To begin with, success of the ideas of radicalism must be secured by identifying those as their bearers who have an interest in its realisation. These are the myriad groups of intellectual workers, including certain types of qualified manual worker whose profession has transformed them into intellectual workers, and that extraordinarily intricately structured camp of private and civil servants which ranges from commercial employees through clerks, teachers, bank employees, priests, commercial salesmen, journalists, artists and railway workers to the pharmacist, the bailiff, the midwife, the manager and the janitor. But there are sections of almost every part of society whose interests converge with those of the party. As consumers, all segments of society are interested in fighting monopolies, whether in agriculture or in industrial production; everyone is interested in the battle against usurious price rises, whether caused by agricultural tariffs or by the shortcomings of wholesale organisations. Equally, the institutional realisation of an international free trade system is in the interest of broad layers of people, as is the establishment of cooperative organisations. On some issues the party’s agenda speaks to the interests of classes with which 20 ‘Radikális párt és Polgári párt’, Szabadgondolat, 8.9 (1918): 198–204.

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it is not in other respects aligned. This is primarily the case with the commercial class, which, unable to find its natural home in feudal conditions, strives for the development of advanced capitalism. The interests of this layer broadly coincide with the current operational direction of the party, on the main front of opposition to the current regime. The interests of the entire peasantry of Hungary also run essentially in parallel with the aims of the party. In fighting against the political and economic dominion of the large estates, it serves the peasant’s hunger for land; it opens access to public administration to the wider citizenry; but most of all, it compels the administration of agriculture towards surplus production. By the same token, the party cannot serve the interests of groups that stand in opposition to these. The battle between mercantilists and agrarians is of no interest to the consumer, who is preyed upon by landowners and commercial capital alike. Attaching the party to special interests of that sort would amount to committing its programme to antithetical goals. In principle there can be no doubt that the radical party and the bourgeois party are distinct political formations with different aims, different social bases and representing different interests. As a political and economic movement, radicalism aspires to the comprehensive transformation of contemporary society. Accordingly, it has expunged the notion of the Zukunftsstaat, with its hint of religiosity, from its philosophy. Its programme is not destined to mature at some future date, in a different society, which can only be arrived at through the use of force and the revolutionary leap, but, on the contrary, it seeks to initiate and carry out its grand reform projects in the here and now. It does not believe in the inevitable arrival of the Zukunftsstaat, nor does it hold that the proletarian vanguard possesses the magic words with which to usher it in. Above all, it does not believe that the radical transformation of society and humanity should be postponed to a societal afterlife, the nebulous ­Zukunftsstaat. Instead it proclaims that there exists only one society, the one in which we live, and that the only social obligations that matter are those of the present. From this it follows that, in contrast to socialism, radicalism does not accord central importance to private property. It does not accept that a society in which the institutions of private property exist cannot be radically improved, nor does it hold to the practical consequence that follows from this, namely that any radical improvement needs to be postponed to the future, and that the transition begins where the institution of private property ends. In contrast, radicalism considers private property to be essential for the future development and progress of society, and sees ‘the society of the future’ in present circumstances – all that is required is to peel it off from existing people and conditions. The third key difference between the teachings of the radicals and the socialists follows from the first: while the latter see the proletariat to be essential

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for the creation of the Zukunftsstaat, we do not recognise this task, nor do we consider the industrial working class to be its necessary executor. Radicalism seeks to place under the leadership of intellectual workers that momentous movement which, through the assistance of and for the benefit of all working layers in society, aims for the transformation of society through radical reform. The ideals which Marxism has appropriated for the proletariat, with a due date set for a future state, the realisation of which occurs through the abolition of private property by the industrial workers – these ideals are resurrected by radicalism in a purified and original form: as the self-conscious reform project of society as a whole, carried out under the guidance of intellectual labour. The troops for this reform mission are provided by the hierarchical division of labour: denying the manual worker the illusion that physical labour is the true and real work, it places the most exhausting, excruciating and productive work, the labour of labours, at the top of the pyramid: intellectual labour, which is the organiser and operator of all other forms of labour, the source and the manager of the productivity of all. A society in which labour receives its full reward needs to differentiate among the values of individual acts of labour, just as today’s society differentiates the values of individual goods. Social inequality on the basis of place of birth, race, religion or wealth is unjust; but a social equality that does not recognise the value of different forms of labour, but instead forcibly unites them, would be equally unjust. For this reason, every person needs to be allowed to work according to his or her abilities, and this equality of rights needs to be ensured by radical reforms. This set of radical reforms constitutes the true meaning of radicalism. It separates radicalism from the socialist parties, which support reforms in theory but either do not consider it their role to implement them or postpone their realisation to a future state. It also separates radicalism from the parties of the bourgeoisie, which only agree in part with these reforms and hence do not wish, on the whole, to implement them at all. They include: 1. Radical land reform, which dismantles the large-estate system and ensures that agricultural workers receive the economic benefits of the land; 2. Radical property reform, which provides land to everybody who is able to, and wishes to, work on it; 3. Radical tax reform, which, breaking with previous tax systems, seeks to raise taxes through partial appropriations of land and capital; and 4. Radical reform of government, which not only gives the population the right to vote but also enables it to directly control and partially carry out the administration of the country. In addition to these are the great reforms that are essential to modern

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d­ emocracy, including: the institutionalisation of minority rights (which, at present, can only be truly solved within the framework of a Danubian Confederation); separation of state and Church (which, in this region, needs to proceed hand in hand with secularisation); and, surmounting these, the creation of institutions that will flow from our accession to the new organisations of international affairs: the League of Nations, a binding arbitration system and an international free trade system. In addition, numerous other far-reaching proposals belong to the radical agenda of development. In contrast, the programme of the capitalist development path is based on the concepts of orthodox Marxism, and hence will not fully embrace any of the above-mentioned points. It is based on the historical materialist claim that society and its prevailing economic system – capitalism – are exhausted, which insists upon the central role of private property and, on the basis of the theory of class struggle, divides society between capitalists and workers, and, above all, adheres to Marxist doctrine when, with the path of social change held in its hands, it then seeks to mark out the route for its own politics. The need for such a bourgeois party is obvious even without recourse to Marxism, and its programme derives from the peculiar situation of the big bourgeoisie. As long as the interests of such a party remain focused upwards, against feudalism, it does not come into open conflict with the aims of radicalism. However, when matters turn to the role of the big bourgeoisie, conflict becomes inevitable. Its interests incline towards comprehensive reforms so long as the feudal order does not recognise or actively seeks to hinder bourgeois rights and their corollaries (the freedoms of labour and trade), but beyond this critical point it only advocates and supports those reforms to existing property rights and social institutions that are compatible with its own peculiar nature. Naturally, its interests only partially overlap with those of the great majority, and in this respect they do not require separate representation. The need for the bourgeoisie to organise itself arises precisely where a conflict exists between its interests and those of others. Against the interests of consumers: on nearly every policy regarding prices, duty and cooperatives. Against the interests of labour: wherever the bourgeoisie plays the role of employer. And against the interests of social development: wherever these interests demand a radical transformation of present estate and property rights – that is, on nearly every question regarding policy in the areas of land, estates, property and taxation. However, the fine mechanism of political movements only ever operates if both their theoretical axes and the driving force of interests, if the mass spirit’s torque and the innumerable small cogs – every slogan, argument, image and gesture – connect without friction, adhere to a common plan and head towards a common goal, combining with one another with the utmost ­precision. It is also for this reason that, judging from their programmes, the two parties cannot

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be melded into one. For the goal of the Radical Party is necessarily idealistic; given that its basis is social solidarity, its worldview stands for the primacy of intellectual forces, while a bourgeois party, because constructed upon the separate interests of the bourgeoisie, i.e. on the terrain of class struggle, necessarily represents a materialistic worldview, committed to the primacy of economic forces and the adaptation of individuals to social structures and their automatic development. From this follow important differences regarding emphasis, direction, tone and approach which, even where points of agreement between the two programmes exist, render impossible any cooperation, any true harmony. Even when working together, the starting point and the end goal, the worldview and the measure of virtue, the different sense of spirit and of sequencing, direct the political work of the bourgeois party and the Radical Party on to separate paths. Even when they say the same thing they mean something different by it; when they struggle side by side they are fighting against different enemies. For while the goal of the former is the radical transformation of the individual and society, and it thus finds itself confronting every element in the present order, of each individual as well as society, and every interest group privileged on grounds of history, race or property, the latter, fighting to create in this country the necessary conditions for Western capitalism, finds itself struggling against only the historical forces of feudalism, its political and social prerogatives, its economic monopolies and quasi-feudal banks and big industrial capital, which have risen to become its allies. While the task of the former arises from an inherent need for a universal social worldview, a worldview that derives unconditional demands from its understanding of human dignity, the latter pits the theory of class struggle in sharp opposition to social-scientific theory. While the former appeals to the potential of social progress in order to justify the internal necessity of its task and, in the name of the absolute primacy of universal ideas, tailors its methods and tactics of movement and struggle more strictly and closely to its central ideals, the latter justifies its methods and techniques with reference to the automatic laws of social development, determining its tactics and methods not merely according to what an optimistic survey of the terrain of the social battlefield prescribes at any one moment but, based upon its peculiar perception, it interprets this view of the current conjuncture as the very justification for its theories. While the former holds everything, except its own ideals, to be open to change, and therefore aspires for its ideals to become universal, even in respect of its efforts to transform each individual, the latter merely sits back and waits for the individual’s power of social transformation to arise from its materialistic coils; it does not see any realistic possibility of power arising from qualitative changes but only from quantitative aggregation. While the former considers sacrifice to be the basis of politics, which citizens

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are forced to undertake, each according to his spirit, internal needs and external solidarity, and by the degree of this sacrifice judges the need to intervene in society, thereby repositioning the movements of the masses upon an idealistic foundation, the latter equates the public interest with the conflictual terrain of private interests, which are thus only legitimised by interests, such that groups and individuals alike only have the right to a voice and representation commensurate to the weight of their interests. While the former, as a result of the foregoing, represents the rights of labour in general, considering not only the entire value produced by the individual’s labour to be his right, but likewise at the societal level, such that the distribution of income is regulated only by labour, the latter defends the rights of those who work against those who do not, even though the entire labour of these working men, if they happen to be capitalists, big industrialists, big landowners, big bankers, is often nothing but the ‘things’ with which the collection, insurance and interest-bearing of their non-working income are associated. It also protects those employees whose ‘labour’ is so overpaid by society that it hardly deserves to be called work, rather than the laborious spending of their untold wealth. While the former places intellectual work at the forefront of the hierarchy of labour, the latter, staying true to its materialistic worldview, considers only manual labour to be work, with intellectual labour not conceived as genuine work. And, finally, while the former seeks to place the social order under the direction of intellectual labour and to see its destiny determined by the laws of intellectual labour, the latter wishes to set out the role of intellectual labour in society from its specific view of social progress and seeks to submit its destiny to the perceived laws of society. The list can be greatly extended, to include those areas where the parties’ programmes converge but where each prescribes different slogans, strategies and tactics. Nonetheless, we repeat, the contents of the two programmes are fundamentally different, and any coincidence between them is merely occasional and temporary.

Manual and intellectual labour21

Part one During the war, the intellectual class demonstrated that the intellectual powers upon which it thrives do not reside within it. Everywhere it was the intelligentsia that sharpened and aggravated the selfish, blind interests of social groups and the deaf, irrational passions of the mob. And the industrial working class showed during the war that it alone cannot be entrusted with the cause of human progress. Deceived by some well-chosen slogans and bribed by some ample wage increases, the organised millions throughout the world failed to fulfil their vocation. Human society can only be transformed by a rejuvenated camp of manual and intellectual labourers, united and working together. 1. The blind, materialist faith in automatic progress was broken forever on 4 August 1914. The explanation for this great disappointment lies in a very simple mistake that was made, not by the proletarian masses but by us, who had expected them to behave differently. Socialist critique has shown that the interest of the ruling class in national culture is not only theoretical and moral but to a large degree also material. The capitalist’s country is not only dear to him because he imagines that the language that he loves, the history in which he was taught to believe, the customs and the scenery that he can recollect from his childhood memories, can live on undisturbed in their original glow, but also because the state, which provides him with all the means with which to exploit the proletariat of his country, bases itself upon this national culture. Following this correct thesis, it has also become clear that the antagonism between states is not only based on prejudices of power, tradition and emotion, but also upon the perceived material interests that the ruling classes of these nations consider to be able to pursue by means of war. 21 ‘Fizikai és szellemi munka’, Szabadgondolat, 9.1 (1919): 9–12 and 9.2 (1919): 30–4.

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The mistake originated from the conclusion that we had drawn from this thesis regarding the situation of the proletariat. Our reasoning went like this: ‘Where there are no material antagonisms, no antagonism exists. Thus, there is no antagonism between the proletarians of different states, since there exists no material antagonism between them’. The correct conclusion, however, would have been the following: ‘Since the proletarian has no material interest in the national culture of his country – since it is irrelevant for him whether he is exploited by a German or French capitalist – his interest in his country’s national culture is purely theoretical and moral, thus it is exclusively an emotional interest. While the capitalist has only a partial theoretical and moral interest in his country’s and nation’s ideology (because he is partially interested in it for material reasons), the proletarian possesses nothing but this; he owns nothing but the people’s song that he whistles, the magazine that he reads, and the social democratic party of his country, of which he has been taught to be proud’. If theory had recognised the error to which it had fallen victim in time, it would not have been defeated by the efficacy of national ideologies on 4 August 1914, and it would not have recognised this – belatedly – in Brest-Litovsk but, instead, continuing to carefully build on the facts, it would have succeeded in creating, and instilling into the working class, an emotional and theoretical world of internationalism based not on denial and materialistic illusions but on their real transcendence. This internationalism would not only have emphasised the international solidarity of interests in opposition to capital – for this is not enough – but would have placed the emphasis upon ensuring that national language and culture could never be brought in opposition to the ideals of the International. Proceeding by this route, social democracy would have established international institutions which, in the case of a threat of war, could have ensured a truly united approach. 2. Again, the proletariat of the world stands before a fateful disappointment, which will once again bring immeasurable suffering to mankind. And, again, the cause of this disappointment is a stark theoretical error; namely, the same materialistic illusion that led to 4 August 1914. Today, too, this catastrophe can still be avoided, if we recognise its danger in time. One section of the industrial working class has begun a struggle for the immediate realisation of a communist society. This struggle is, of course, based on the solidarity of interest of the working class. The material interest of manual and mental labour is the same: the overthrow of capitalism and the attainment of a socialist economy. The fatal mistake lies in the conclusion that is inferred from this: that no

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opposition can arise between manual and intellectual labour, as if the absence of a material antagonism entails the absence of any kind of antagonism. In reality, precisely the opposite is true: theoretical and moral antagonisms come to the fore, and these, during the common struggle against capitalism, will establish the relationship between manual and intellectual labour. This opposition of worldviews, this theoretical and moral contradiction, can only be overcome if we recognise and transcend it. If it is denied, it will reappear later, when it could prove fatal to the common cause. Here we are not concerned with the intelligentsia, which betrayed its calling in the world war, as did the industrial proletariat on the 4th of August, but with intellectual labour – which, independently of all historical categories, is the basic and eternal category of human labour. Manual and intellectual labour are separated from one another according to their worldview, and this separation is necessary because these worldviews derive from their labour. 1.  For the manual labourer only physical labour is real work; it alone has the ability to transform the world. Intellectual work is just an easy form of occupation. For the intellectual worker only mental labour is real work; it alone has the ability to transform the world. Physical work turns the human body into a machine, and such work ought not to be idealised, but abolished. 2.  For the manual labourer the value of his labour consists in the tangible result of his production: in the physical result of manual labour. In return, he demands the product of his work, the product that he has created. For the intellectual worker the value of his labour consists in the intangible benefit that it brings for the productive system or for society in general: in the intellectual accomplishments of mental labour. In return, he asks for the value of his intellectual labour to be recognised: he demands authority and responsibility for himself. 3.  The manual labourer measures the value of his labour, as well as the product that he has created, in working hours. The intellectual worker measures the value of his work neither in working hours nor in any other physical measure; instead, he measures it in the sphere of authority and responsibility required for him to perform it. In return, he seeks an appropriate sphere of authority and responsibility. 4. The material compensation of the manual labourer may be lower or higher than the value of his work, and his attitude towards society will depend on this. Some sphere of authority and responsibility is inseparable from mental labour; hence the intellectual worker is less interested in the economic organisation of society than the manual labourer. The payment of his labour is already guaranteed in the requirements of his work.

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These differences in worldview, which derive from the value and conception of their work, inevitably dictate the relationship between the intellectual and the manual worker. In respect of struggles between groups, these are more inexorable than any material antagonism, because material questions are only questions regarding quantities: there a middle position can always be found. However, the question of evaluation is also a question of direction, and two forces can only travel together along one vector, otherwise they will collide. All workers have as a basic conviction an ideology concerning their own work, whether it is physical or intellectual. It is their faith; their religion. There is no middle way between a materialistic and an idealist theory of labour – this opposition can only be overcome by a higher understanding. The contours of a new global dilemma can be made out on the intellectual horizon; it is a problem that must be solved by the new forces that constitute society, or else human society itself will perish. A struggle between physical and intellectual labour would be the most stupid and criminal fraternal combat known to history. All the horrors of the religious wars would be repeated. Only unvarnished truth and a willingness to find a solution can save us. Part two ‘Only the rejuvenated camp of physical and intellectual labour, united and working together, can transform human society’. ‘A struggle between physical and intellectual labour would be the most stupid and criminal fraternal combat known to history. All the horrors of the religious wars would be repeated’. ‘Only unvarnished truth and a willingness to find a solution can save us’. This is the enterprise to which we seek to contribute. 1. The intelligentsia must break definitely with capitalist production, both outwardly and inwardly. Those that are not capable of doing so, either because of their individual interests or their intellectual position, should be disowned and excommunicated from the ranks of the intellectuals. Our main thesis, that intellectual labour is materially less interested in the economic organisation of society than manual labour, will only form the basis of a vocation for the camp of intellectual labour, and will only legitimate itself as the representation of the intellectual forces, if they do not, either as individuals or en masse, allow themselves to be utilised for the defence of capitalism, but, instead, in heart and soul, stand in solidarity with the struggle of their industrial working-class brethren. This is the first step towards rejuvenation. The second step is for them to finally cast aside or defeat the illusion of

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­ aterial interest, as it is held by right and left alike; not merely to support m the camp of manual workers, to whom their numbers make little impact, but instead to realise their own specific weight – as does the manual working class – and assume responsibility for their calling in society. The intellectual workers’ self-organisation is a duty that they cannot neglect without simultaneously surrendering their social role, which is the essence of their labour. Those among them who believe that their task is to demote their role to the manual level are betraying their highest duty, which they cannot repudiate without repudiating their essence: intellectual labour’s spirit of responsibility and expertise, its commitment to interpreting the world, its belief that real labour is intellectual labour, that the true struggle is inner struggle, that the automatic development of society, to which the manual worker refers, is merely an outward appearance that veils the intellectual labour of conscious and incessant progress. The third step: that this mass, which, in the capitalist order, is materially disinterested but morally antagonistic to, yet separate from, the manual workers, would put its combined theoretical and moral strength behind the economic transformation of society. Their specific power is also the power of reason; in this lies their superiority over blind force and deaf passion. The first step emancipates from capitalism, the second places it alongside the industrial working class, and the third renders the rejuvenated camp of intellectual workers self-conscious about its role in history. Together with the industrial working class, this self-conscious camp can lead the righteous and legitimate cause of labour to victory, without it having to risk the destruction of the acknowledged values of human society. 2. There is no other solution. For there is no other way to prevent the mass of intellectual workers from becoming marginalised by the mass of manual workers, thereby allowing their accumulated human capital to shrink to a weightless, insignificant corpus of intellect and self-discipline. The leaders of the manual workers can only be individual intellectuals; the masses of intellectual workers cannot act en masse at the forefront of a movement whose pace and direction is necessarily determined by the industrial workers, for they: 1) are more homogenous and uniform; 2) are more easily convinced, because they are less pretentious; and 3) have more weight. And if they are not at the forefront, then they are nowhere, for if those that stand at the forefront in the hierarchy of labour lag behind in the hierarchy of politics this contradiction reduces them below the average in their importance and self-esteem alike. This is the reason why the mass of intellectual workers can never resign themselves to being placed alongside the industrial working class, for, with this, they do not become emancipated but

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instead downgrade themselves both absolutely and relatively. And where there is no material antagonism, as in the case of the manual and intellectual workers, these ideological contradictions inexorably determine the relationship between different groups. We attempted to demonstrate this thesis in the first part of this essay. Furthermore, there is no other way to ensure that the industrial working class’ grasp towards dictatorship, which results, essentially unconsciously, from the above contradiction, will not also steamroller and destroy the entire camp of qualified intellectual labour. This is not a situation of two sides positioning themselves politically, nor of good or bad will towards one another; it is not a question of intentions in general. It would be pointless for the industrial working class to set, with unbreakable resolve, the liberation of intellectual labour as its final objective: its path, if it treads it alone, can lead only through the annihilation of intellectual labour. We do not wish to refer to painful examples: such examples mean nothing, for if they were seen as inevitable, then from where would we gather the strength to reason, reconsider, advise and appeal? Hence, we shall not cite examples but instead reiterate what we demonstrated above: that what separates manual and intellectual labour is the worldview that derives from their respective work, and that if this internal contradiction leads to the annihilation of intellectual labour this would leave an ineradicable imprint upon the development of any future society. There is no other way to ensure that the regime of labour discipline – which, in the factory, continues to be organised from top to bottom, and the eradication of which has to be the most important task of any proletarian dictatorship – does not enter into irreconcilable contradiction with the political discipline of the proletariat, which, according to its nature as a mass movement, can necessarily flow only from bottom up and therefore would not come into an unpredicted internal confrontation, against everyone’s wishes, that would eventuate in disappointments in respect of the cause of human progress on the scale of August 4th.22 Ultimately, the divergent theories of value of the manual and the intellectual workers will lead to religious war between them. As we have seen, the manual worker is necessarily materialist while the intellectual worker is necessarily idealist. Yet the manual workers strive to organise the future society, together with the intellectual workers, in an idealistic way – however, to the latter their proposals necessitate material sacrifices, which in turn require an elevated understanding of their calling: ethical idealism. In itself, the reason behind the manual workers’ acts, the legitimation of every task and the final cause and meaning of every historical act, remain mere materialist interest, 22 4 August 1914: the outbreak of the Great War.

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financial advantage. On this basis, the self-consciousness – the material selfconsciousness – of the masses is awakened; on this basis, the masses are called upon to fulfil their vocation – the calling of their interests; and, for these material interests they march into battle, even though it entails the sacrificing of all acknowledged common human interests. When they advocate the ideal society, truth and justice are hailed, but this is done without any vocation. In contrast, the intellectual worker, who is organically an idealist, will never accept idealism if it is generated by external coercion and advanced by a class whose theory and praxis are built upon its own material interests. * Let the leaders of the industrial workers take note. There is still time. Only the rejuvenated camp of manual and intellectual labour, united and working together, can transform human society.

The Galilei Circle: a balance sheet23

In an issue of the Budapest periodical Századunk [Our century], László Rubin views the history of the Galilei Circle, to which he once belonged, from a particular vantage point: the ninth year of the counter-revolution in Hungary. The fact that he perceives it in this way is also history. There may be disagreement in our assessment on two significant points: 1) Whether the Galilei Circle at the end of the war, the one that participated in the revolutions, was the old one; and 2) Whether the experience of the Galilei Circle is more analogous to the French Gironde or the Russian student movement. The two questions are in fact one. He who closes the history of the Galilei Circle in 1914 sees in it a young Gironde, while he who closes it in 1919 sees in it instead the younger brother of the Russian student movement. Which is closer to the truth? It is a fact that personal connections between the two periods were completely severed. It is also a fact that there existed the sharpest objective antagonism between the founders of the Circle and the 1917–19 generation. (It is embarrassing to admit this in contemporary Hungary, where one receives honorary medals for Bolshevik bashing, but it has to be said.) As an editor of Szabadgondolat, I fought vigorously, in a series of articles, against the Bolshevik mentality that was bursting out with such tremendous force. In the domed hall of the university a passionate war of words was fought for two weeks. At the memorial service for Endre Ady, which took place in the same venue, Georg Lukacs celebrated the memory of Ady in the spirit of Bolshevism, while I hailed him as an anti-materialist rebel. Not even there, during these moments of shared mourning, did the battle cease. This is the reality and the truth. And yet both debates, although intense, were organised by the Galilei Circle – and not only in name, or in the fact that the organisers were all members of its leadership, but also in spirit, in the old spirit of the independent search for truth! The social status and sentiment of the masses that had gathered together in the Galilei Circle was so instinctively proletarian that even the ‘better’ petit bourgeois elements stayed away. But the leaders of Hungary’s labour ­movement 23 ‘A Galilei Kör mérlege’, Korunk ( June 1929): 416–21.

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were not willing to accommodate this intellectual workers’ camp. Exiled from the bourgeois world and the working class alike, the Circle was obliged to be independent, and it made of that enforced independence its vocation. The Galilei Circle guarded its independence jealously. No political party or group was permitted to exert any power over it and its leaders set out their stall and carried out their actions autonomously. And this staunch independence was one of the reasons why the Circle did not allow any room for politics. It was in this that it perceived its strength. No party political issue could be raised in the Circle; it was out of bounds. This was the pattern already in the 1908 to 1914 period, when numerous social democrats belonged to the Circle and others were linked to [Vilmos] Vázsonyi. Perhaps, this is why the principle of political neutrality ruled so inexorably. Individuals’ political views were strictly separated from the Galilei Circle. Without reference to this very particular intellectual attitude the entire role of the Circle between 1917 and 1919 would be incomprehensible. Why the Circle sided with the October Revolution would be incomprehensible. And why the Bolsheviks relentlessly attacked the Galilei Circle towards the end of 1918 would be incomprehensible. Why there was talk of disbanding the Galilei Circle during the early days of the dictatorship of the proletariat would be incomprehensible. And, perhaps most incomprehensible of all is an event that played out in early May 1919, when the dictatorship of the proletariat was suddenly in peril, to which I myself was witness: while we were gathering for a meeting at the Circle’s premises in Sörház Street, a student sent by the Peoples’ Commissariat for War arrived with an urgent mandate. The chairman introduced the agenda but when he then attempted to give the word to the recruiting student, heckling was heard: ‘The Galilei Circle is not an institute of the government! Close the meeting!’ Following the closure of the meeting a brief recruiting speech was given. All the students present, including those who had previously raised their objections, signed up for the front. The Circle did not contain one single member who was not prepared to unconditionally offer themselves for the dictatorship, yet still, it maintained its independence to the very last. What the military authorities could not believe in 1917, for it seemed inconceivable – that the Galilei Circle was not the organiser of the demonstrations for peace, the anti-war actions, the breakout of the general strike – was indeed the truth. They were correct in their assumption that the factory workers together with the Galileists led these revolutionary actions, but the Circle itself genuinely did not participate, nor could it have done. It was not only hindered by the compelling force of its own traditions but also by the political differences among its own members. The Circle’s support for peace operated strictly at an intellectual and cultural level, not out of ‘moderation’ but because of the antipolitical stance that it had inherited. Was this an extreme improbability? Or

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the accumulation of contradictions? Yet since when is the truth probable; since when does historical truth arrive shorn of contradictions? No: despite the severing of personal connections, the two Circles were one. The spirit of the independent search for truth was what stimulated us to learn and to teach, to engage in mass education – which resembled the Russian student movement in its professionalism – and which drove the wartime generation forwards along the road that never ends. The search for truth. From its very first moment, the Galilei Circle preached the centrality of spiritual life, the obligation to live in truth; it turned against the superstitions not only of the past, but also of the present. Rubin describes how the students abandoned the coffee house monism of the worthy Samu Fényes, and how the epistemology of Ernst Mach and the psychology of William James offered new roads. To walk the new roads – this is how we, the youth, saw the ‘the search for truth’; in contrast to the deterministic materialism that characterised socialism, we represented the activist idealism that was newly emergent in Europe. (After the war, it was once again imported into Hungary from the West, but in a lower-grade version.) With regard to religion, we did not deny the value of faith; the Galileist generation was perhaps the first in Europe to affirm the need for faith – but also the imperative of open-mindedness. The search for truth is not an enlightenment project of unveiling, one that seeks to uncover the supposed secrets of the creation. Today, with hindsight, we can see that what was labouring within us was the birth of new ideas. But were later generations of Galileist also driven onwards by the same, relentless search for the truth, on that road which permits no halt? Can they be held responsible if the morning, their dawn, was smeared in blood, their blood …? The search for truth was not undertaken for its own sake. We proclaimed the binding nature of ideas. We denied the isolated intellectual quest to ‘understand everything’. Views that are not convictions – the view which is ‘merely a view’, which does not oblige, which we do not take responsibility for – are prohibited. Today we know that we were the pioneers of a Europe that was discovering the world of values. But were the younger ones not also dedicated to their views, did they not also take responsibility for what they thought – even when it was more difficult than it had been in our day? The balance sheet of the Galilei Circle cannot be drawn by a parsing of its periods, such that 1908–1914 is associated with the revenues, while 1917–1919 is omitted in order to not leave the balance in the red. The balance sheet must be written in such a way that we take full and lasting responsibility for what we began in 1908. It is not the case that one period was positive while the other was negative. Our work as a totality was both good and bad. The Galilei Circle created something great, but it also destroyed (and made omissions as well). For generations, it had not been customary to maintain moral standards in Hungarian public life. The representatives of the

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labour movement, who were the last to be bitten by the Magyar bug, had, by the first decade of the century, also sunk into a business-minded, or, at least, comfortable, opportunism. The Galilei Circle bequeathed what was necessary for life not to be dishonourable: the obligation of selfless devotion towards the rights and the truth of others. Only simpletons will smile when we recall that, among the Galilei Circle’s numerous fluctuating members, who – with very little supervision – collected the Circle’s money while living in crushing poverty, there were, perhaps with one or two exceptions, no cases of corruption, so great was the discipline and the energising effect of the environment. And what is more: careerists, and those who instinctively seek to prevail, avoided the Circle. Working anonymously became the fashion. To engage in personal self-aggrandisement – and let us not forget, we are talking about young people, especially students, here – was unacceptable;  impartial, impersonal, pedantically precise activity was demanded, without personal gain, vanity or pretence. It is my conviction that the unblemished brilliance of [Hungary’s] October Revolution [of 1918], but even more – because its temptations were disproportionately greater – the essentially pure and human character of the commune (when set against its other faults) was due to the existence of Galileist elements within it. In Russia, the many decades of the student movement gave rise to the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary Puritanism. Here, the troglodytes of a horrific war broke out in their hunger, in their rags, and on to the stage of the revolution. Had there not have been Galileists present, who knows what kind of shameful deeds the history books would be filled with today. The Galilei Circle’s positive contribution was moral. Just as the only contribution of the Hungarian revolution was also moral. It was politics that turned them into negatives. There is probably no need to explain how momentous these shortcomings were. The October revolutionary government collapsed due to the fact that it had not developed a clear and feasible political programme. But even if it had had one, there existed no politically educated generation capable of transforming the programme into reality by campaigning for it and carrying it out administratively. Both in theory and in practice, the Hungarian revolution was borne by political novices. A quite different question, however, is whether, at the time of the collapse, it was possible to follow another path. In the absence of an intellectual stratum educated for its political duties there was no alternative! And this is the Galilei Circle’s failing. We have highlighted the positive aspects of the apolitical approach; let us now expose the other side of the coin. Today, it is recognised as indubitable that Hungary could have been saved only if the revolutionary intelligentsia had established organised, purposeful relations with the national minorities, the working class and the peasantry. The Circle could have won the trust of the nationalities in a fraternal manner, cooperating with them

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and organising them effectively while, at the same time, maintaining a leading role for the Hungarian left. Moreover, with its long years of dedicated service outside the framework of the Hungarian Social Democratic Party, it could have grown roots within the working class and won its confidence. No bureaucrats could have prevented this. By these means it would also have been possible to draw closer to the peasantry (or at least the various nationalities within the ­peasantry). Perhaps it would even have freed the Social Democratic Party somewhat from its fateful estrangement from the land. This alienation from the land, we know today, was the most flagrant weakness of the October Revolution. The Social Democratic Party did not even have an agrarian programme. When it came to action it was already too late. Only land distribution could have saved the revolution. This was opposed by the social democrats, and, later, by the Bolsheviks too. It was as if they were standing by, to help the latifundia to pass safely through the chaos. We cannot know whether the Galilei Circle, in the space of ten years, could have established that nexus with the nationalities, the working class and the peasantry, which would have been so inestimably valuable at the moment of collapse. It is a fact, however, that it made no attempt to do so. Oscar Jaszi’s nationalities policy, his ideas for agrarian reform and his liberal sociology, did not lead to practical initiatives from the youth. It is true that Jaszi never took the Galileists seriously. He never took them into account, even though they were seeking, successfully, to develop connections with students from the national minorities; were attempting, during their summer holidays, to study village life; and made great progress in workers’ education. But these initiatives lacked the connective element: a political conception. ‘Mea maxima culpa’.

Concealed foreign rule and socialist economics24

The proposed study is based on the idea that one of the causes of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was anomalies that can ultimately be traced back to Hungary’s relationship with the Soviet Union. Here we shall emphasise one aspect in particular, namely the form of internal government, which we shall describe as ‘concealed foreign rule’. On the face of it, both words, the adjective as well as the noun, can create false impressions. Concealment did not arise out of cowardice, vanity or selfishness but was ultimately due to the regime’s loyalty towards the Soviet authorities; it was always ready to blindly assume unlimited responsibility in the interests of the cause, including with regard to the question of independence. And when we speak of foreign rule, it seems natural to think of economic exploitation, or other forms of interference that are detrimental to the country’s sovereignty, or other means by which the rights of sovereignty are violated. This is not primarily what we are dealing with here. Instead, we are dealing with the fact that the governance of the country does not depend on its own government but on the powers of another. It is only possible to speak of concealed foreign rule under these circumstances: when a country’s fundamental right to exercise its internal powers is not allowed to be expressed. The consequences are grave. While the domestic government, with conviction, carries out the policies – whatever they might be – assigned to it by the foreign power, when it comes to their legitimation it is incapable of presenting them as being in the interests of its own population. This, however, is an essential requirement of any form of politically based governance. The airing of false causes, which are not only unconvincing but can also raise doubts over the rulers’ good faith, is thus unavoidable. When difficulties arise, the government then has no choice but to conjure up excuses, perhaps also to suppress or distort well-known facts, and if any criticism is raised, it is forced to turn to terror. A chasm opens between the party and the population. A state of mutual distrust arises. The abyss between the two becomes unbridgeable, since the domestic government itself may only be able to guess the rationale behind the 24 ‘Leplezett küluralom és szocialista közgazdaság’, draft article (1956).

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decisions that are decreed from outside. Behind these decisions stand external objective necessities, external regional spheres of influences, and fractional and power struggles, which are perhaps not even clear to the foreign state. As a result of decisions made abroad (or even independently of them), changes in the party line take place the domestic implementation of which are seemingly pointless (and definitely incomprehensible) in the eyes of the population. Crucially, not even the domestic government has a true understanding of the changing situation. As a result, the hesitation and disorderly lurches that accompany the government’s measures cannot be explained to the population, since not even the government itself knows the causes, and neither can it achieve an overview of the connections between the phenomena. It is no exaggeration to say that the population’s distrust generates a state of apathy, one that is accepting of the extremist view that the rulers are not only incompetent and helpless but also, on occasion, betray signs of insanity. The authorities are left with only one option: to beef up the means of power and authority. It is an elementary fact that the authorities need to keep the true reason for their helplessness secret at all costs, namely, that they themselves do not know why and with what justification they are taking the measures that they take, or what kind of problems they are attempting to stave off with their policies. They avoid the people because they do not know the answer to their questions. The phenomenon of ‘concealed foreign rule’ is first and foremost political; that is, it belongs to the sphere of the formation and practice of power. In a market economy it does not directly influence economic life and the minutiae of everyday affairs (the life of the housewife and the wage-earning husband). But in a socialist economy it is otherwise. The vital element and driving force of such an economy is the centralised government and its organs. Hence, we are here dealing with a peculiar phenomenon, since concealed foreign rule creates organic and functional disabilities in the organisation and exercise of authority, different from those occasioned by either foreign rule or its concealment considered separately. Here we are stepping on to a lesser-known territory of political science. While foreign rule was popularised in the literature under the heading of constitutionalism between the eighteenth and nineteenth century and colonialism in the twentieth century, its ‘concealed’ form, as we understand it here, has hitherto been unknown. The aim of the study proposed here is, however, narrower. It looks only at economic aspects. It does not seek to explore the harmful effects of concealed foreign rule on national life in general, but looks solely at its effects on a socialist type of economy. Hence, we are not examining the problem of socialist economics. We can only do this if any possible complications are ignored. In Hungary, these complications primarily stem from what we have defined as concealed foreign rule. The present study thus represents a preparatory work for a socialist analysis of Hungary’s experiences.

Part V Correspondence

Letter to Georg Lukacs, Budapest, 18  August  1908 Dear Gyuri, You are so good and kind. I know that better now than ever. In this regard, your correspondence is clearer than your literary work, but both tackle the same subject. The letter consists of dialogue in which one party remains silent. Literature is a monologue in which two people remain silent: the two positions are its sharp-eared combatants. What you create is always a ‘thing’, and not ‘its two sides’. This is dialogue, in an all-encompassing sense. But, I say, it is not a dialogue of conversation but of listening. Both discuss the same reality: life and its beautiful difficulties; the Anything and the Something, or, as Rilke put it, the thing we defeat and the thing that defeats us (‘was mit uns ringt, wie ist dass gross’ [Rilke]) – and the image could be extended in this way, to eternity, mediated by the camera’s pale and flickering imagination – for there is no creation that would not be both of these; and none exists that, from its first breath, is not born into this fundamental paradox. Life and Art, so they say; and if you write about them in fabricated, systematic prose then your labour and work are seen as objective and upright, your stance is honourable and commanding; you make judgements. But I say, the dialogue of listening is the music of the spheres: it too is objective – but in a way that appeals to me. You contemplate the thing, you like it, you think with it, and in this way the writing process develops. And the light that shines from the depths of the listening world brings shadows and light to the reality created in the mind. You are not commanding: light, your place is here! You are not presenting reality as the shadow of your material, corporeal perspective, but rather you create through the power of thought, with the process nourished from the sap within. And what has been created are those two gigantic modes of appearance, brought forth as living realities. This is how you write. This objectivity is not the antithesis of the subject. Its antithesis is that which actively aims towards an end, to pass a final judgement, evaluating, the will to think a final thought. It is metaphysics. You avoid this beautifully, with confident truthfulness. And thus it is that what your gentlest and innermost desires believed were born by feverish metaphysics; the same for me is in reality material and simple. This is why your prose is so concrete. Sometimes I do not know where it comes from, where it is going and why it exists. Nonetheless, I always and unfailingly apprehend it as a concrete event. In many ways, the above indicates the basic state of mind pertaining to this phenomenon – so difficult to dissect

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and utterly particular. At the same time, perhaps it is this that provides the most profound summary of everything of which you are afraid. Why Fenyö and not the others?1 This explains it. Oh, the men of questions, dual-edged and multifarious: those that conflict and those that converge; the slender and the stocky, but always questioning, sceptical, humble men. And they define and conquer reality through their questions: for them this is the ‘totality’. They ‘write’, and they are able to analyse questions that arise in terms of gender, work and love of humankind, but as soon as they sense something beyond these ‘questions’, they wobble. The speculative and mendacious reality that is constructed through the hubbub of ‘questioning men’: this is echoed throughout metaphysics and journalism, and by a multitude of nitwits. The upshot is that those who believe that alongside such ‘questions’ there must be some truth somewhere, which, as it were, is the terrain of those who seek to listen, and indeed to perceive this more realistically, see them as prigs – as old-fashioned and shallow quacks. It is has long been untrue that the question is the stepping stone of science. In good old Ancient Greece, even that science which took the form of journalism did not formulate its answers in questions. He who wants to ask something novel today needs to clearly know the cheap answers ‘that are the most burning questions of today’s intellectual and material culture’. Don’t forget, the reality that has dissolved into a ‘question’ is the achievement of ‘penny-a-line’ writing that is in such public demand today. What makes you shudder is the world of ‘questions’, ‘understanding’, ‘apprehension’ and ‘achievement’. You know it all too well by now: who wins the pseudo-combat of metaphysics is decided by the editorial boards. But you, and I too, seek to penetrate the essence of things: this is all. Hugs, your faithful Karli.

Letter to Georg Lukacs, Budapest, 9 December 1908 Dear Gyuri, On Sunday afternoon, at 6 p.m., the ‘Galilei’ scientific circle (which is what they now call it!) will be holding a debate at the T.T.,2 on the topic of ‘What is scientific truth?’ I hereby solemnly invite you to this event. The main points of the debate (if they interest you) can be obtained from me or from the T.T. I beg you, please come: 1. It will be interesting; 2. many friends will be present; 3. I would like there to be a very good audience; 4. please bring everyone who you think will be interested in the topic. (I should point out that the topic will 1 Miksa Fenyö: founding editor of Nyugat. 2 ‘Sociological Society’ (Társadalomtudományi Társaság).

Endre Ady, 2 February 1909

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be debated from the viewpoint of modern epistemology.) Also, I would gladly accept an additional speaker, if he has expertise in the field. Furthermore: send me the addresses of those who should be invited; I shall send them an invitation. Perhaps you would like to make a contribution to the first point of the debate? It will be along these lines: ‘The criteria of scientific truth in comparison to other ‘truths’ (e.g. moral, artistic, etc.)?’ This is the first question; perhaps you would have something to comment with regard to scientific and artistic truth: it would be very interesting and I would be very grateful. You will learn how to debate in public, for (until now) the blamage with regard to you is that you focus on aesthetics, etc. … Hugs, Karli.

Letter to Endre Ady, Budapest, 2 February 1909 Dear Ady, Once again we are preparing some form of great March celebration.3 Everyone agrees that there is only one honourable, worthy and perfect way of doing this: Endre Ady has to address the Hungarian youth. The celebration will take place in the great hall of the Vígadó Concert Hall. Károly Kernstok will draw up the invitation card and Endre Ady will hold a speech. You can give a short talk, or read a poem; new or old. Will Ady be here then? People want to see you, to hear you speak; they want to love you with a love that no one here has experienced since Petőfi. What you will see here, what you will feel if you come to us, to your country, will be enough for a lifetime, for Ady’s lifetime. Please come! Will you be here then? Can you come back for the celebration? We shall invite you, alright? That is, we shall cover your expenses. Do what you think to be right. Since your last, beautiful poem, I’ve loved you twice as much. You’re done with this place of nothingness and want to live where life is real. And that is the land of responsibilities. Dear Ady, I ask you to reflect upon how much and why we love you so much, and then respond in the manner that you believe to be most suitable. With love and regards, Karl Polanyi.

3 Polanyi is probably referring to the annual 15 March commemoration of the 1848 revolution.

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Letter to Maria Lukacs, Dresden, 25 October 1911 My Lady, Yesterday we buried Leo [Popper], and the burial crowned his sad life with irony. It was a confusing, cold, unprepared, even rather hostile act. It was a telephonic burial. There was an usher in the distance, and eight to ten people milling around, with no idea as to what was about to transpire. Suddenly, as we were loitering in a grand ugly hall, a harmonium sounded, and a bronze casket slowly descended before the altar. Nobody suspected that the corpse was within. Otto and I had hung our clothes next to it, and we hadn’t anticipated anything. This continued for three minutes and then it was over – but nobody knew this either. In the meantime ‘the’ usher distributed little chrysanthemum blossoms from a small bread basket (or was it the lid of a Karlsbad wafer box?); I thought they were made of paper, and the guests threw them into the fabricated grave. Then we arose. And we sat down again. Finally the usher said: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you may cordially make your way outside’. The public, which perhaps by then had realised that it is not the public but a community in mourning, therewith accepted that the event had come to an end. The cremation will take place sometime after ‘receipt of permission from the authorities’. The people then took their seats in trams; the richer ones took cars. Thus it was. In the afternoon we accompanied Otto to the Savoy Hotel where they were staying. Bé’s mother had wired Otto to say that Tur doesn’t allow non-stop travel and as a result Bé would be late.4 But she intends to come to Leo’s grave as quickly as possible, and to meet the parents. How long will they stay? Bé’s mother, moreover, asked for the parents’ address, and telegraphed them with the same message. On this point, Mrs Popper responded to Otto that they will depart already the next day – although immediately before this she had intimated that they would stay for several days. When Otto repeated that he needs to appear in Lausanne, the lady insisted, dismissively, that she does not know how long she would stay: ‘I don’t know, I may leave already tomorrow’. Again, Otto wired this to Lausanne. I was very pleased to hear that Leo’s passing was gentle. The last two days of his debility were more like rest, and on Saturday morning he said very sweetly to the doctor, ‘Herr Doktor, make me completely healthy again, and then it’ll all be very good’. He said this happily because he felt better. Then he fell asleep, never to awake. That he should be cremated was suggested by [name obscured], and he also intended to design the casket, to be fabricated by an Armenian called Okiff – but he didn’t. 4 Leo Popper’s fiancée, Bé de Waard. De Waard would later become ‘the love’ of Polanyi’s early youth (Kari Polanyi-Levitt, interview, 23 June 2006).

Georg Lukacs, 31 January 1912

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The Poppers will of course remain for one or two days. At the funeral the old man’s face was visibly tear-worn, the lady’s was pained. In the afternoon the old lady was quiet while the old man cheered up. My friend Otto told me one or two stories about what had been going on in the last phase, and I will at some point pass these to the father. Would you please convey these lines to Gyuri [Lukacs], whose address I have in my pocket but it is unreadable. I want to add, to Gyuri: yesterday I thought about you constantly. I kiss your hand, and remain your faithful servant, Karl Polanyi.

Letter to Georg Lukacs, 31 January 1912 Dear Gyuri, You will soon see why I am writing you this letter, late at night. You’ll understand why weeks have passed and I have still not read your lines about Leo. In the meantime, I have lied to a hundred men, telling them that I have read it, although I was still afraid of it and avoided it. You know that I was very fond of Leo and that the thought that I would hear your voice, you having been so close to him, made me very hesitant. Today I read it – Bé sent it – four, five times. It felt very good and at this very moment, in which I can say it to you, it feels very good too. You undertook a difficult and worthy task, and I’m sure Leo would appreciate that he has brought us closer together. Since Leo’s memory has been occupying my mind a lot, I have consulted more of your work and I have come to a different understanding of its strengths and weaknesses. A small article of yours (‘Das untragische Drama’) in the March issue of Schaubühne is a very appropriate case in point. My dear Gyuri, I am more talkative again, and I am no longer finding it such a struggle. And my friendships, which I – with modesty and honesty – had postponed for the better times to come – will soon be able to understand that, with this, I have understood life. My dreadful anxiety has passed. I am free again. And also, you have grown in my eyes, for I have followed you with long and slow breaths. The world is measured by the spans of its phases, and the plentiful times in which they are gathered are humanity’s rich ornaments. I have defeated most of my vanities and I now inhabit the residual millesimal jungle. As to the rest, I do not even feel its absence. The successful poetic piece is of the same kind: the poet’s halo of self-restraint is likewise that he is no longer a victim, the sacrifice.

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I spend a lot of time thinking of Leo, as is very easy to do. I have been to the Poppers a lot. The man is an old courtesan, the woman, poor thing, is destroyed. She understands matters and references that she had not even suspected before. Her efforts, which previously had revolved around budgeting, now revolve around Leo. She stands jealous guard over his writings, pictures, thoughts and words. My countless visits move her forward only slowly. Finally, yesterday, we arrived at the point of going through Leo’s belongings. (They were in formaldehyde for weeks; the poor woman finally forced herself to face Leo’s remains.) The episodes were – as Leo had predicted – so amusing that I sometimes thought that Leo would rise again from the dead out of sheer gratified joy. Leo destroyed his letters. I burned the few that remained. He only kept Bé’s, yours, Otto’s, Heini’s and my letters. I have compiled yours and will send them to you tomorrow. I found a lot of texts with sentences, introductions and fragments. I knew them already. Among them were the finished version of ‘The Dialogue’ and lines from ‘Seghers’ and ‘Cézanne’. The ‘diaries’ and so on. I will re-read ‘The Dialogue’. If I like it, I will pass it to Kraus for publication. I will not edit or delete anything, even if it were required. Perhaps I will send you my proposals in this regard as an attachment to this letter, and then we can act on them together. Do you agree to this? Perhaps I shall ask Bé to type out ‘Seghers’ and ‘Cézanne’, attaching all the notes, etc. (pictures, memos). Would you agree to this? The edition (collected essays) simply, modestly. With a good publisher. My dear Gyuri, in the square, due to the constraint of form, it has touched half past one, and time – poor thing – has gone to live with him as a subtenant; it is thus, when one’s friends are in Cap Martin5 and the Earth is sadly scratching its left hemisphere with its right heel. Bé will go to Davos for February–March. The Poppers will have sent her 200 francs – by now – with pleasure. That they would have done something like this with pleasure indicates there must have been considerable compulsion behind it. Their life is increasingly beginning to resemble a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Do you know, the good Jews do not even put any dough in the Allteig. When, back then, P. Altenberg wanted to print ‘Allteig’, they were still printing ‘Alltäg’. But perhaps it is best that way. Because the theory of misunderstanding would have taken two steps: ‘Du, schreibt ma’ alltäg mit ‘ei’?’6 My dear Gyuri, goodbye. Write, if you have time; in any case, do respond to the above questions. 5 A resort near Monaco. 6 A rather opaque wordplay involving ‘Alltäg’ – a possible mis-spelling of ‘Alltag’ (German for ‘daily’) – and ‘Teig’ (German/Yiddish for ‘dough’).

Editor of A Láthatár, March 1927

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Your father is an Englishman. I shall be away for some months, in order to take my lawyer’s exams. I’ll be studying in …,7 where it is quiet and living costs are low. My address, however, will remain Bécsi u. 4. Your friend, Karli.

‘The goals of Hungarian democracy’, letter  to  the  editor  of A  Láthatár,8 March 1927 Many people across the world today share your concern for the fate of democracy. Indeed, this is the vital question facing contemporary European-American civilisation. And the question is even more painful in those countries where democracy is today just a memory. You are right: it is necessary to believe in democracy above and before everything else. But today this is no longer enough. You should learn from the forces of reaction, for they always move with the times. If democracy is true and valid – and it is – you should not fear criticism. The mistakes of the past must be ruthlessly exposed. And if its greatest mistake was that it distanced itself from reality, its head in the clouds – then that is its truth. For the ideal of democracy, we sacrificed its reality. How many were there among us who understood that democracy in a peasant country could only take the form of peasant democracy? That here the road to the realisation of democracy travels through the free and organic manifestations of peasant conservatism, of peasant ‘reaction’ and the anti-urban and anti-intellectual instincts of the peasantry? How could we have recognised this, when our enthusiasm, as it poured into abstract concepts and easy wishful images, simply equated civilisation – and preferably its metropolitan forms – with democracy? We were deceived by Satan’s Potemkin villages! We were afraid to see that he who wants democracy needs to resolutely abstain from the immediate realisation of all other values of culture and civilisation. And how many were there among us who recognised that with a people that has been raised in religion it is impossible to simultaneously hasten the victory of democracy and of freethinking? 7 The original contains no place name, simply an ellipsis. 8 A Láthatár: a political and literary journal that only appeared briefly in 1927–28 but gained a certain fame because it published writings by prominent critics of the Horthy regime.

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It is entirely fitting that an abstract ideal of democracy, which hubristically neglects the realities of class division, religion, war and violence, is swept from the agenda by reality. Fascism is not an abstract formula: it is a concrete reality, which can only be defeated by a democracy that is similarly authentic, capable of interpreting the facts, of patiently waiting, but also of taking decisions.

Letter to Mihály Károlyi, President of the British-Hungarian Council, London, 6 December 1944 Deeply esteemed President! I have the honour to draw Your Presidency’s attention to an article in the 30 September issue of Harc! [Struggle!] which announces a number of organisational changes within Hungarian-American circles. Harc!, we learn, is no longer the official journal of the American Federation of Democratic Hungarians. In future, Oscar Jaszi will not be involved in editing Harc!; instead, responsibility will be assumed by the President of the New Democratic Hungary Movement, Rusztem Vámbéry. As I am personally the co-opted member of the British-Hungarian Council, with only an ancillary role in connection with the American Federation of Democratic Hungarians, these changes do not affect my situation in the slightest. Nonetheless, I would not wish to suppress the fact that, in so far as the exchange of letters between Jaszi and Vámbéry allow us to draw conclusions over past differences of opinion, I am personally inclined to share the position of Oscar Jaszi. Yours sincerely, Karl Polanyi.

Letter to Mihály Károlyi, London, 15 April 1946 Deeply esteemed Mr President,9 Your letter, written to commemorate your seventieth birthday, in which you expressed your appreciation of me, gave me enormous pleasure. Perhaps the feeling was accentuated because it arrived as I was trying to move beyond a particular occasion, and to assess the present against the yardstick of centuries. The occasion was represented by Jenő Práger – and he has since probably regretted it. Supposedly in the name of Mihály Károlyi’s supporters, he 9 Polanyi uses ‘Mr President’, ‘Károlyi’ and ‘You’ interchangeably.

Mihály Károlyi, 15 April 1946

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published a number of conditions that must be fulfilled if they are to give their approval to Károlyi’s return home.10 I protested against this in writing to Práger, and I have never hidden my opinion from you, Mr President, that his move serves neither the interests of Hungary, nor of Károlyi. I added that I did not see any reason why Mr President’s supporters could not demand the cancellation of the Károlyi case and why a similar tendency could not be generated in public opinion, both in Hungary and even internationally. But in the current situation, imposing this as a precondition for your return home would entail the artificial establishment of a putative opposition between Károlyi and the Hungarian regime. To do this at a time when the nation has a burning need for Károlyi, even as its complicated international dependence does not permit its government – and, still less, the left-wing parties that are represented in government – a free hand, is a sin. My article attests to the fact that I could separate our ephemeral divergences of opinion, however serious they may have been, from the assessment of Károlyi’s historical mission. It is a fact that, for more than a year now, there has been a difference of opinion between us over the evaluation of developments in Hungary and what an appropriate attitude towards them should be. The fact that I was looking at the world through English eyes could not have been the cause of any divergence, because both of us agreed that Anglo-Russian cooperation on Hungarian soil would be in the interest of all three nations. Our difference related to developments within Hungary. I have never denied that I could imagine a process in Hungary that would not allow for any involvement on the part of Mr President. No doubt the Russians were, for a while, playing with the idea of establishing a Hungarian Badoglio regime.11 But even in that case, I argued that the democratisation of Eastern Europe would only decelerate temporarily. I argued this on the basis of the point of view that I had elaborated in an article written while in the US, already at the end of 1942 (Harper’s Magazine, March 1943), that is, at a time when I could not have predicted that I would be seeking contact with Károlyi, and when I alone held to the view that the Russians would bring democratic consolidation, and not Bolshevism, to Eastern Europe. Mr President, please allow me to take this occasion to assert what my opinion, voiced with the objectivity of a third person, was. From the outset, I emphasised that Károlyi’s mission is firstly in foreign policy and only secondarily in the domestic arena. But I also said that even with regard to this latter aspect, it could potentially prove useful to the country in two respects: first, as a symbol of the unity of the Hungarian left, and second, as the guarantor of the ­completion of a radical land reform (in the eyes both of progressive foreigners 10 Return home, to Hungary. 11 Following Mussolini’s removal from power Pietro Badoglio was named prime minister and declared war on Nazi Germany.

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and of the Hungarian peasantry, which is distrustful of the communists). In both respects, the Hungarian regime could have been decisively strengthened and thereby, through the help of Károlyi, the left could have created a vibrant unifying force between the two workers’ parties, the National Peasant Party and the leftist Smallholders – to the enormous benefit of the country. There were no insurmountable obstacles to the implementation of this line. A Hungarian movement encouraged by Károlyi, which would have demanded Károlyi’s return, could easily have succeeded. At home, Károlyi could have determined arrangements in the government coalition to the benefit of the left, and later in the elections, too. Of course, for this to happen, it would have been necessary that those at home could count on Károlyi’s involvement, unless they wanted to end up being ridiculed … Certainly, serious risks attended upon this resolute, positive line, but these could not have been avoided either way. Among these risks I do not include the ridiculous reproach that Károlyi would be beating his own drum – and unfortunately, the ‘line’ of vacillation did appear rather more like that. The real risks were twofold: on the one hand, in relation to the Russian occupation forces, and on the other, in relation to the Hungarian left-wing parties. (1) The exigencies of the Russians could not have been foreseen, and to look for guarantees in this regard was neither possible nor permissible within the acknowledged framework of the cooperation among the great powers. Károlyi could not have avoided the risk that, if he were not to acquiesce to the line followed by the Russian occupiers he would be forced to withdraw again (and, of course, he would have had to renounce the option of organising a left-wing opposition against the Russian occupiers, as a necessary precondition for establishing trust). However, there was and could not be any talk about Károlyi giving positive guarantees to the Russians for harmonious cooperation; this Quisling role would not be suitable for Károlyi. Nobody ever demanded guarantees other than those that lay in his past – his true national-popular and Slav-friendly orientation. (2) While supporting left-wing unity and land reform, Károlyi had to leave it to the parties of the Hungarian left to decide how to steer the ship of the progressive republic. But if this approach had not been to Károlyi’s liking, he was not obliged to take part in it; if it had been an obstacle to his foreign policy mission, he could have renounced that mission; if it had been in sharp contradiction with his beliefs, he could have retired. To Károlyi, these guarantees would have been more than sufficient to ensuring his integrity survives intact; he could easily have renounced the alternative – albeit completely legitimate and normal – path of organising opposition. That is, Károlyi could only have been useful in foreign and in domestic p­ olitics if he remained free. However, the risk of this had to be taken. Extra­ ordinary circumstances require extraordinary solutions. That is how things

Mihály Károlyi, 15 April 1946

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stood. To receive assurances from the Russians, or to seek to gain De Gaulle’s veto against the parties of the Hungarian left, was not possible. There were, if I have understood matters correctly, two reasons why Mr President decided not to follow this approach, along with its risks. First, that you appraised the situation, and thus also the associated risks, differently. (Instead of three generals you expected six to enter the government, plus the exemption of Church property from the redistribution of land, if this was really to take place ...) Second, you felt that you would betray your left-wing calling if you would have accepted it. Behind this, however, lay an assessment of international politics that saw a revolutionary situation (at least in Europe) and not a conservative one. A long time ago I gave up fighting this position internally, or arguing against it. Although I believe that my assessment was mostly correct, I feel that I have no right to oppose the second argument. Its subjective truth is incontestable. That passionate, unbreakable fidelity to his principles that has made Károlyi a great man also prevents him from rising above himself. Who am I, to argue with this? In January 1945, this acknowledgment became a conviction within me. That is why I suggested to you, Mr President, in our Church Row discussions when our paths diverged, to retire before it was too late if you felt in the depths of your soul that you could not identify with the new Hungary, with its possible deformations. But if this is not the case, and I wish this from the bottom of my heart, then you should decide now to support the Hungarian regime. From this, you should draw three conclusions: 1. Public support for the Hungarian regime (not necessarily for the government). 2. Endorse the authenticity of the Hungarian regime in front of progressive foreign public opinion. 3. Return home as soon as possible. But if you neither retired nor stood alongside the Hungarian regime with active deeds, then you would, if unwillingly, leave the Hungarian left alone, in its life-and-death struggle. Unfortunately, Mr President, you took neither path. You neither retired nor did you support the Hungarian regime with deeds. In the Council12 you hesitated to acknowledge the authenticity of the land reform. The Tribune article that bruited the ‘fake land reform’ notion did not receive a reply. The last number of the Council’s Bulletin presented Mihály Károlyi’s land reform proposal in opposition to the reform at home. A legend spread that the Russians were constructing a Badoglio regime in Hungary concealed by leftist slogans. The left wing of the British Labour Party, which vociferously supported the EAM,13 12 A British umbrella organisation for various ‘Free Hungary’ movements, headed by Károlyi. 13 The communist-led resistance movement in Greece, initially resisting Nazi German forces, later, opposing the British-backed liberal and monarchist forces.

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did  not support the struggles of the Hungarian working class. Why should it have, if not even Károlyi did? Meanwhile the Tribune line, which was also represented in the government, backed the Spanish republicans (despite their communist allies), but it did not support the hungry and struggling progressive Hungarian fighters who were in the process of demolishing feudalism. Why should they be more papist than Mihály Károlyi? It is no wonder that the British Labour Party government then worked – without any opposition in its own country – for the establishment of a Smallholders’ Party-led government in Budapest. Why should it not have done so, when Mihály Károlyi, who was living there, had not made any declaration that would have helped those at home? The majority victory of the Smallholders’ Party became a prelude to the planting into the saddle of the Greek monarchists half a year later. Who knows, Mihály Károlyi alone could have turned the balance of the Eastern European situation … It is unquestionable that a strong, successful Hungarian left-wing regime would have meant tremendous consolidation in this region … The Hungarian communists’ demonstrative cockade ultra-nationalism is neither elegant nor clever. It is harder to judge Russian politics. It is unquestionably under huge pressure, and the nearing of the date14 for evacuation gives rise to grotesque forms of consolidation at any price. I received a letter from Jaszi yesterday asking me whether I was not also preparing to go ‘home’. He is kept back only by his health now; otherwise he seems to be very much preparing himself. With unswerving devotion, Mr President’s loyal supporter, Karl Polanyi.

Letter to Oscar Jaszi, London, 15 May 1946 My dear Oscar, I was very glad to receive your letter, in which you included a brilliant article concerning events in Hungary. My feelings are the same as yours: I will definitely visit Hungary, if they allow it. Who knows, maybe I can prove useful … Two years ago I wrote about the Károlyi situation; unfortunately, however, because of the censorship, I could not be sufficiently clear. By ‘Londoners’ I meant communists (the Hungarian Club in London), while you, as is clear from your reply, understood the British government! No wonder that my letter appeared to make no sense. 14 ‘Date’ is an educated guess, on the basis of a partially obscured Hungarian original.

Oscar Jaszi, 15 May 1946

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When I met Károlyi in the fall of 1943 he was not willing to cooperate either with the social democrats or with the nationalists. The former I did not understand; with the latter I concurred. The communists, conversely, insisted on the latter, which made any left-wing cooperation impossible. Later, the Council was established, but it never really worked. The nationalists were saving Horthy in it and sabotaging Károlyi’s position, to which Károlyi responded by sabotaging the Council. The communists, as good bureaucrats, were satisfied by its existence on paper. My line was the activation of the Council through the involvement of the social democrats (Böhm-Práger). This was impeded by the nationalists, with the help of the communists. Much more important than the Council were Károlyi’s own position and acts. With regard to these you can get a sense from the copy of the letter (dated 15 April 1946) included with this letter. Until December 1944 Károlyi’s politics were independent from his wife’s. After that, they both isolated themselves from all organisational and personal contact. My own close connection with Károlyi lasted from the January 1944 S.O.S. up until the 2 January 1945 address. Throughout that year much of my standpoint, as presented in my article in Harper’s magazine, prevailed. As to the rest, see the letter attached, which I sent Károlyi before our last discussion. He responded orally, as follows: the Russians should be blamed for everything because their plans did not include even the slightest role for him. In actual fact, the Russian embassy here invited Károlyi on 15 September 1945 and put at his disposal all the facilities for his return home, an offer that he, however, was not willing to take up. Ilona, in contrast to me, participated in the Károlyi movement as well and stood to the ‘left’ of me. But she also thought, as did I, that it would not be good if Károlyi became an appendage of the communists (a thing that they also understood). On this issue her position differed from the completely honest Endre Havas, who naively believed that ‘Károlyi should go with the communists’.15 Hence, he opposed Ilona’s inclusion on the Council. During the critical juncture of January 1945 – after his gloomy New Year’s speech – Ilona and I took action together. I ‘countersigned’ the letter of 17 January 1945 to Károlyi in which we emphasised the need to decide upon a course of action: either to go forward or backward. Later, I repeated the same to him orally. In response to this, Károlyi turned away from me as well. I was totally alone in the Council.16

15 Havas: Károlyi’s secretary and confidant. 16 At this point the letter breaks off.

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Letter to Endre Havas, 25 October 1946 My dear Bandi, With regard to my trip to Budapest, the current situation is that I have still not received the entry permit but I expect it to arrive within a week or two. I have organised my affairs in such a way that I am ready to leave at any time; I have arranged for my deputisation in all affairs. However, my original preference was for the invitation to be for either 15 October–15 November or for May next year. I preferred the former date to May next year, but when it became clear that the entry permit had to be requested in Budapest, I left it to the university authorities to select the dates for the lectures. The Dean suggested that I postpone my journey until spring, since the acquisition of the entry permit can cause delays. Directly after this came the positive telegram from the Ministry of Public Education. This was followed by your letter, which seemed to confirm the situation. (I did not receive a letter of confirmation from the Ministry of Public Education, which I had demanded in my response to the original telegram.) On the day before yesterday I received a very cordial letter from the ViceRector, in which he confirmed that my lecture would be held, and in the second half of October. Then he adds: ‘Bearing in mind the cold weather, and the fact that we do not have any heating, it should be considered whether it would not be more appropriate to postpone the lecture until next spring (May). In all matters, we shall adjust to your demands’. All things considered, I am leaning towards the spring date. Before I finally decide, I would, however, like to know your strongly opposing view. However, I do not want to postpone my reply more than necessary. If possible, please inform me immediately by air mail, or, if you can, by telegram. Yesterday I was reading some brochures from the Political Academy series of the MKP,17 among others two lectures by Lukacs, lectures by Revai, Rákosi and Kallai, and the ensuing debate. This Marxism shows greater progress with regard to the reception of healthy ideas from the West than does the so-called West towards an understanding and fruitful application of the healthy ideas of Marxism. The significant intellectual achievement of the Academy, which I see first and foremost in the way the questions are treated, is surpassed by its moral achievement. Excellent examples of this are provided in the essays of Revai and Kovacs, as well as Erdei’s analysis of the dual background of folk literature. Although there is discussion of party, agricultural, economic, industrial, credit and indeed even of literary policy, the absence of reference to social policy, in the strict sense of the word, is striking – so much so, indeed, that the 17 Hungarian Communist Party.

Oscar Jaszi, 27 October 1950

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lack of material on the social sciences, the philosophy of history and even on political theory is less egregious in comparison. This seems to be legitimated by the practical orientation of the series, in which its strength (and merit) lies. But this only explains the choice of subject, not the method of handling it. With regard to the latter, there is today a manifest contradiction between the relative underdevelopment of basic concepts and the high quality and remarkable strength of practical analysis. The explanation of this is, of course, that the analysis is only seemingly linked to the basic concepts, which tend to act instead as a form of ceremonial introduction. Compare Lukacs’ excellent comments on literary policy (not to mention his aesthetic analyses) with their supposed reference to the concepts of ‘man’ and ‘citizen’ in ancient societies.18 This explains why the imperfect basis of the discussion merely makes comprehension difficult, but without impairing the outcome. But this is not the point here. The important thing is what is being produced in Hungary today, by a clear-sighted, self-sacrificing and robust popular democracy, and under the toughest possible conditions. The Academy of the MKP is certainly playing a vital role in the development of ideas for this great venture. My love and greetings to all and hugs to you.

Letter to Oscar Jaszi, Pickering, Canada, 27  October 1950 My dear Oszi, Apologies for the pink paper – here in hospital it is all that is available. I am already of an age at which the past attains a new life and meaning: the atmosphere of old friends surrounds me and from afar I can see more clearly the beautiful contours of life. You and I came of age before the great transformation. There are only a few left: those who embodied the standards of the West; they form a kind of platinum standard in the historical realm of values. Those who came after us exaggerated or belittled, overstrained or discounted the values of the nineteenth century. As to my own person, I was part of a special mission: from the outset, Russian and then Anglo-Saxon ingredients entered into my Central European intellectual world – on the one hand, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (but as reflections of the Russian revolution!), and, on the other, my English upbringing, overseen by my deeply Westernised father, which eventually bore me to Britain in 1931 and 1933. It is to this trinity that I owe the breadth of my foundations, and to 18 These texts by Lukacs are available in English: Tyrus Miller (ed.), The Culture of People’s Democracy (Brill, 2013).

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which I probably owe all twists and turns, all transcendental ataraxia.19 I was taught tolerance not only by Goethe but also, with seemingly mutually exclusive accents, by Dostoevsky and John Stuart Mill. Marxism has not interested me since the age of twenty-two. At thirty-two, I came under a decisive religious influence. (You were the only one who noticed back then – what I can only now appreciate and understand – that my detached mood resulted from a degree of mysticism.) To this I owe the blessing of my life – my marriage, against which you warned me, with the sober, serious concern of a true friend. But who can know the hidden pathways of life? Even now, I think of your moral bravery with affection. But old age envisaged an even greater surprise for me. In the 1909 Jubilee supplement of Huszadik Század I published my hypotheses under the title ‘The crisis of our ideologies’ – emerging from the Marxist egg – and these, thirty years later, some errors notwithstanding, outlined a set of major developments within the history of ideas. (I only know about Ervin [Szabó], who knew of what they were warning. I do not know what you thought of them, but you did publish them. They meant nothing to the rest of the world.) I now see that, ever since then, I was waiting for the actuality of the prophecy. This is the simple, melancholy and comprehensive explanation of the lack of realism that I exhibited in the middle part of my life, the root cause of my theoretical and practical barrenness. From 1909 to 1935 I concluded nothing. I strained my powers fruitlessly: in a one-sided idealism, its soarings disappearing into the void. This also provides the explanation of the Galilei Circle’s negative balance sheet. In the moral sphere it was a seminal success: perhaps for the first time since 1848, masses of students became acquainted with the experience of moral commitment, and they internalised it within their personal lives. But in the political sense my negligence was irreparable. What you had recognised – the fundamental importance of the land and nationality questions – could have become a reality, at least on the programmatic level, through the Galilei Circle. The Galilei Circle is to blame for the fact that in 1918 no generation was available to unite with the peasantry and the nationalities in a long, serious campaign. This made your mission in October impossible to complete. Who bears responsibility for this? I do. I led the Circle in an anti-political direction. I did not try to forge unity through action with the workers, the peasantry or with the nationalities, nor did I even look for it. It was short-sighted to claim that a predominantly Jewish intelligentsia could not have ventured to undertake this anyway (Szabó’s damaging error). The Russian peasant had a stronger aversion to the Russian aristocracy; the Hungarian peasant has a stronger aversion to the Bolsheviks – but genuine, self-sacrificing, committed, 19 A relaxed state of lucidity and profound tranquillity.

Oscar Jaszi, 27 October 1950

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long-term and clear-sighted political work, which the moral arsenal of the Galileists undoubtedly would have equipped them for, can always overcome hurdles of that sort. The ‘T.T.’20 and, later, the Radical Party could not have achieved anything without the youth. And I was never a politician; I had neither talent for it, nor any interest in it. The Galilei Circle could have been similar to the Russian student movement of the 1880s – but, of course, not without leadership and political experience. Szabó, unfortunately, believed only in conventions. As a result, no one perceived the Galilei Circle’s revolutionary potential. This is one of the hidden reasons behind the failure of October. My responsibility for this cannot be passed to anyone else. I was fifty years old when circumstances in Britain led me to study economic history. When a teacher, I earned my bread from it. Because I was born for this vocation. At that point I did not even conceive that I could have another vocation, even as I was engaged in its precursory stages. Some three years later, again seemingly under the pressure of circumstances, I wrote a book, another attempt to analyse the era – essentially on the foundations of 1909. But this time I also added an economic-historical perspective to my argument. This was in 1940, ten years ago. The surprise arrived in the last four years, between November 1946 and November 1950. I spent these four years as if in the fever of a single workday. The result, whether or not I finish my new book, will be an interpretation of the economy of early societies, especially of the phenomena of trade, money and markets, that will lay the foundations for a comparative economic history. H. Spencer’s descriptive sociology (or parts of it) aimed at something like this; the posthumous work of Max Weber would have accomplished it, if he had not deployed such complicated ­typologies. But basically, in the era of both Spencer and Weber, the limits to the market economy, which were to tower over the 1920s and 1930s, were still not apparent to us. Now it is easy to see that Grote or Mommsen, or even Eduard Meyer and Rostovtzeff, used the market model as historical norm.21 How I would love to let you know a few of my research findings! Let me give you just one example. The business methods of the so-called ‘early Assyrian’ commercial colony (the so-called Cappadocia findings) show that one of the secrets to the tremendous economic progress of the early state – the third millennium B.C. – lay in the following: no economic transactions take place within tribal society (to trade with foodstuffs is a crime). Ok: in order to protect tribal solidarity against such divisive behaviour as profiteering … The famous 20 ‘Sociological Society’ (Társadalomtudományi Társaság). 21 Historians of Antiquity: George Grote, Theodore Mommsen, Eduard Meyer and Michael Rostovtzeff.

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stone-carved equivalent values of the theocratic kings of Babylonia removed the stigma of profit from simple, but essential transactions, because what is ‘equivalent’ can also be traded fairly, with the act itself legitimate. Fair equivalent value made exchange, rent, etc., legitimate. It thereby opened the floodgates of economic progress, precisely by eliminating profiteering from relationships. St Thomas Aquinas and the doctrine of justium pretium ultimately rested on the same principle. Justitia regnorum fundamentum.22 My dear Oszi, old love thus finds its way, without justification, into a long letter. I am writing lying on my back, in bed; hence why my handwriting is so bad. May God bless you, and if you were to come to New York do not forget that I would very much like to see you again.

Letter to György Heltai,23 Pickering, Canada, 24  April  1960 My dear György! Yesterday I received a letter from Erich Fromm, which included the text of a socialist manifesto (manifesto plus programme). Perhaps I have mentioned to you that Fromm joined the Socialist Party this year (Norman Thomas). With this, the standing of socialism in the US has grown significantly. Alongside Reinhold Niebuhr, Fromm is the only recognised thinker in the US. Accordingly, the meaning of the term psychoanalysis has changed: it now signifies practical ethics. Fromm represents a strong religious potentiality upon an atheist foundation. He always kept a distance from communism but without ever joining with the various anti-Soviet currents. Basically, he shares the metaphysics of the young Marx, but he only recently came out as a combative representative of an openly socialist worldview. His strengths lie neither in the labour movement nor in experiments with socialism nor party politics. He does not have any economic training. He is an outstanding theorist of the moral aspects of the problems of contemporary culture, and their highly influential psychologist. My letter to him on the question of the Review, sent some three weeks ago, has only just reached him. He replied immediately, asking for my advice. I knew that for some time he and his friends have been thinking of setting up a socialist journal with an international impact. The manifesto is openly revisionist and, 22 Justium pretium: the doctrine of just price. Justitia est fundamentum regnorum: justice is the cornerstone of state power. 23 Heltai: a ‘reform Communist’ who was imprisoned in the late 1940s but was appointed deputy prime minister under Imre Nagy. Nagy was regarded by Polanyi as a ‘martyr of socialist renewal’. KPA-51-4, Karl Polanyi to Peter Kende (1 November 1960).

György Heltai, 21 May 1960

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basically, radically anti-capitalist. You can only talk in such terms if you are familiar with capitalism and do not fall for any form of demagogy. Looking at the world from America, it is open, as if it were spinning on the television set. And wherever they look, what do they see? The expansion of socialism. There are some who are frightened by this. Some who are naively happy. As for myself, it reminds me of the pressing need for revisionism. Before long it could be too late. In the meantime, the great weakness of America is that it has bought the entire world. No directing ideas can come from here, because America’s ethos has been rightly discredited, just as that of Russia. Whether by secret Russian influence or secret American money, the world has been sundered in two. Nowadays, whoever speaks must first give assurances of his moral independence from these two influences. Of course, independent forces exist in the West, in Rome and in Paris, but in Poland too. Fromm’s name would be a guarantee for this in the US, and likewise in Germany or India. What can I say to him? I sent three issues of my ‘Review’ to him yesterday. If you by any chance have not seen the manifesto, I can send it to you in English. It is about 8,000 words long. Write to me regarding the feedback of the third issue. I am certainly most interested in the question of pluralism. I warned Fromm about this as well (Morin, Capital). Regards.

Letter to György Heltai, 21 May 1960 My dear Gyuri, Are there any articles, working papers or books that deal with the question of the new revisionism? I would readily read them, if I could get hold of them. Of course, the new revisionism covers a completely different set of problems to the old one. For this reason, among others, conceptual unity, one of the indispensable elements of moral virtue, is still almost completely absent from the revisionist camp. Hence, we need to be aware of the fact that we are facing a completely new task. For this, it is enough to list the different issues that are already evident in practice. Let us then, with the scope allowed by a historical perspective, bring together the patchwork of existing problems. It is difficult to envisage a stricter framework, one that is capable of apprehending the trends that are emanating from the crisis of our civilisation and threatening our entire human existence. Let us look at the main issues, although the list is neither systematic nor exhaustive.

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Pluralist democracy – including the assertion of moral freedom within the constitutional, societal and party spheres, and above all in the sphere of trade union autonomy. National independence – including the country’s economic independence and the positive aspects of Titoism in general. The development of effective methods of action with regard to the burning questions that face the entire human order in the areas of politics and culture (racial emancipation, new nation states, atomic energy and the world economy). The latter encompasses the following issues, the regulation of which market societies are incapable: the distribution of natural resources, determination of the value of money, long-term contracts, concrete exchange agreements and cooperative relations. The humanisation of industrial civilisation – in other words, the universal task of socialism within the moral and individual ambit, including the transformation of the production process, i.e. the networks that organically connect the mechanical and economic realms to human behaviour. Pluralist democracy, national independence, industrial culture and a socialist international order. These, the perspectives of a humanist socialism, are immense tasks. What is the source of all these problems that have befallen us? What are these sufferings that are troubling us? What are we afraid of and where lies hope? Robert Owen truly was a visionary: the blessing and curse of the machine is what set us on this road. Our destiny was to become a society that, thanks to the power of machines, has grown into a giant, but one that renders the individual powerless. Our fear is that in a society in which man’s role has been usurped by the machine our human existence will vanish. Our hope is that our internal freedom can be salvaged within a humanised industrial society.

Letter to Istvan Meszaros (from Polanyi and Ilona Duczynska), 30 March 1961 Our dear Istvan, This letter will not arrive for Easter, but it feels so good to have you in our minds. Here there is definitely sunshine, and some birds, but not a single green blade of grass has appeared yet. Before we turn to your letter, which we have read through several times, it would be good to write a few lines about Co-Existence. So, of course, we are still awaiting the decision in Milan, which could drag on for quite a while yet.

Istvan Meszaros, 30 March 1961

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The specific quality of our anticipation derives from the fact that we know too little about the situation. Of course, Rudolf [Schlesinger] wrote to us with more details, as soon as he returned to Scotland, but our distance and isolation as a very heavy burden. Rudolf ’s achievement is immense and important. Without his and [Leo] Valiani’s initiative we would still be at square one. In parallel with the process in Milan we have constructed the inner circle: Joan Robinson participates in everything, she is the organiser. (She will be here in Toronto in a couple of days, at the university’s invitation. Of course we’ll discuss everything in detail with her then.) Meanwhile, Thomas Hodgkin, the Africanist from Oxford, was also here; he is putting all his energies into the project. Meanwhile, Rudolf managed to convince [Edward] Carr to come round to a stance of ‘benevolent expectation’. Doreen Warriner, who in the meantime has arrived in London, is now the most pressing problem. I shall write to her later today about the current state of affairs, and you will probably also meet her. She is a difficult person. We need her, for without her the journal will not be healthy. In truth, she is an independent socialist. She suffered a lot during those years when she was close to the party. Then, in 1949, she had had enough. She is the only English woman who is closely connected to the countries of Eastern Europe, for she has lived in them all, and her life has connected to all their tragedies.24 Her inner independence from the Russians is complete. Her Marxism is unbroken. She is an economic historian by profession and an eminent expert on the land question in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. How can I explain, with greater precision, why she is ‘a difficult person’? There is a certain wariness in her and she likes seclusion. She cannot abide the wooden indoctrination one finds in people, among Marxists from the continent. Her writing is vivid, original and well structured, and she dislikes ‘German’ schematic phraseology and systematisation. At the university, she is the left-winger, and as such, is oppressed. She lives in pessimistic solitude. This is what we will need to open up. She and I (Ilona) have long been close friends. We met in Hungary in 1948, on a research trip to Kisújszállás. But because I know her so well, I know that it will be difficult to shift her from her seclusion. It’s best that you can see this clearly, for your assistance will be indispensable in this. If one looks at the ‘inner circle’ in political terms, then Doreen’s presence is the guarantee for representation of the neutralists;25 Thomas Hodgkin is a former party member and cannot be described as a revisionist (in Africa, he says, the voice of the Stalinists also needs to be heard); Rudolf stands in the middle. 24 Warriner was, for example, involved in aid work for political refugees in Poland and Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s and was forced to flee Nazi-occupied Prague in 1939. In the mid1940s she worked for UNRRA, in Yugoslavia. 25 Warriner was sympathetic to communism but not a Communist Party member.

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In recent days, the multifarious opinions of our dilettantish friends have created some problems for us. Kenneth McRobbie has absolutely no political understanding: and he would, thanks to Cyrus Eaton’s money, become the journal’s semi-official Russian.26 Fritz (I will write to him later today), considering the options if Feltrinelli were to say no, asked Doreen if any British university would publish it. Doreen, of course, replied straight away that that would be out of the question. To which Fritz, with a self-negating idea, replied that we should get Sartre’s journal to publish a Co-Existence special issue. Doreen enthusiastically supported this … This would, of course, be better than nothing, and does not take into consideration that our journal has developed a lot since then. If F[eltrinelli] says no, which we believe to be quite possible, then Thomas Hodgkin would be the man with the energy, enthusiasm and connections who, with his Afro-Asia angle, can present it to a British publisher. Rudolf does not consider this plan to be ideal, it is simply that he does not consider himself capable of presenting it to a British publisher: his English is not of a high enough standard. So, now I have told you about our little problem: a tactical slip happened vis-à-vis Doreen, which favours her negative position. A factor influencing her position is that she does not consider Rudolf to be strong enough to edit the journal. However, the solution is not to retreat into solitude but to put across her real strength. Rudolf feels this himself (especially following our long disputes via mail): he recommends the formation of a small editorial board, in which he and Doreen have to come to agreement over the contentious questions. But all this relates to newly arising issues, which we will urgently communicate to Doreen. Our dear Istvan, with this we have raised an issue that we hope you can help to remedy. Another matter concerning which we would like your help is to write about the conference in Milan, because we do not know enough about it: neither about how the journal was presented nor about the atmosphere at the conference, the contentious issues, etc. Where did agreement lie, where did views differ? What happened over the question of revisionism; populism? We’ve also written to Valiani with a similar request. Finally, let me turn to your letter. Of course, we take it that you know all about the terrain and all its possibilities and impossibilities. According to us, our two plans, the ‘greater’ and the ‘smaller’ one, are so closely interconnected that it might be healthiest if we postpone decisions regarding Eszmélet until the fate of Co-Existence has been decided.27 If the decision regarding the latter is 26 McRobbie: poet, and friend of Ilona and Karl Polanyi. Eaton: Canadian-American philanthropist and winner of the Lenin Peace Prize. 27 Eszmélet: Hungarian leftist journal, edited by István Mészáros.

Istvan Meszaros, 30 March 1961

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positive, and the work on it will begin shortly, this would also constitute a very effective moral and intellectual source of energy for E. [Eszmélet]. As regards Eszmélet’s financing, it is too soon to make any assessment. In our vicinity there are already people interested (I will come back to this). The draft book (or booklet) series seems extremely interesting and valuable in every respect. But we should not consider it as an alternative to the journal. It is impossible to develop a strong line with a book series, and this is precisely what is needed in the current vacuum. The Irodalmi Újság [Literary Journal] is a purposeless journal; János put it nicely when he said that they would drag it along for a while, after which it will waste away and suffer a marked drop in its influence. However, in recent weeks spasmodic efforts have been carried out in the direction of Gleichschaltung [regimentation], to be achieved principally by means of personal unions. (Sz.Z. and Imre Kovács, as the fellows of the U.L.:28 while one of the fellows is walking on eggshells with regard to the London visit of Hungarian authors and, with the same eggshell-walk, writes the introduction to the New Hungarian Quarterly, the other fellow has already become the chief editor of The Hungarian Quarterly, set up with lightning speed; a couple of months ago Független Magyarország [Independent Hungary] inveighed against socialism, now it republishes the foaming-mouthed articles of the I.U.,29 defending it against the exposé literature (this has not reached Toronto). But the view of Független Magyarország, that there is no problem if the émigré press is not independent, has reached [Toronto].) This Gleichschaltung is, most probably, the effect of the [ J. F.] Kennedy world. It is almost inconceivable that an émigré publication of this kind, based on the swamp, will not give rise to any antipathy, and that a prominent, leading Hungarian forum would not find any resonance. It’s with great pleasure that we read that you have begun to collect material for a longer study on revisionism. The passionate rumbling of the emancipated nations, which is not limited to Africa alone, is also nourishing legitimate questions related to revisionism. The aim of ‘Revisionism revised’ is to clarify this, not to support some problematic, haphazard r­ evisionism. We have found a genuine person here (in Toronto!), or rather, we have renewed our acquaintance with her and befriended her. Mrs Gömöri worked in the Planning Office under Zoltán Vas. During a conversation that lasted a whole day, we gathered from her the clear and precise details of Hungary’s planned economy. Of course, ‘concealed foreign rule’ was under the microscope. We shall continue. Gömöri is extremely enthusiastic; she is a natural ‘movement 28 Presumably Új Látóhatár (New Horizon), a literary and political journal for Hungarian emigrants. 29 Irodalmi Újság

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person’, who vegetates for years but who, as soon as she scents the breath of anything that resembles a ‘movement’, grows wings, and tirelessly accomplishes the impossible. Incidentally, she will travel to Britain and Austria for a couple of weeks at the end of April; she will contact you. We showed her the Eszmélet issues. She wants to collect funds for the foundation of Eszmélet, among friends in Britain and Vienna. With hugs and love, Károly.

Letter to the editors of Új Látóhatár, Pickering, Canada,  24  April 1961 Dear Jóska and Gyuszi,30 I have wanted to write to you for a while – and not exactly with an easy heart. What I want to say is not exactly new; we have already spoken honestly and at length about this in New York and Munich. It is simply that following the logic of the situation the paper is drifting further – and this cannot be prevented by means of individual decency, honesty. Today, Hungarian émigré journalism is one fabric, serving American interests and ends. At least you numbered among those who did not welcome this development. It was an essential position that was proximate enough to be attained: to support Hungarian interests while in emigration, along the lines of István Bibó. We attempted to convince you that this could not be achieved unless you remained independent. Not even if the dependence is only partial, material, that is, merely mediated. Unfortunately, this state of affairs has its own logic – only a couple of hundred issues are bought; only a couple of associates work on the paper. But these associates are the trusted acolytes of American organisations. How can you accept that Imre Kovács – who appears as one of the editors of Hungarian Quarterly, published hastily in January 1961, in which prostitute politicians publish their doggerel – can still appear as one of the associates on the front cover of Új Látóhatár? Anyway, to publish a journal called The Hungarian Quarterly three months after the appearance of the New Hungarian Quarterly belongs in the realm of bandit journalism. Besides, [Kovács] is betraying the thawing cultural policy at home, for what is not easier than this: ‘The conclusion … is simply that at a level sufficiently removed from the language and understanding of the man in the street it is now possible to publish non-Communist and, by implication, anti-Communist literature’ (61st issue). I do not know of 30 József Molnár and Gyula Borbándi, editors of Új Látóhatár.

Istvan Meszaros, 24 April 1961

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an uglier deed than injecting poison into a healing body. However beautiful Kovács’ past may be, or anybody else for that matter: ‘That you are a son of the people, you ought today be concerned not with where you come from, but, my brother, where you are going!’31 The publication of The Plough and the Pen once again appears likely, in no small part because the reputation of the populist authors is permeating into the Anglophone world: now the publisher no longer suspects that we may have just invented them. Publishing the Introduction in Új Látóhatár would not be compatible with the view that I have developed about the journal in recent months, and I hereby – with regrets – take it back, just as, with sadness, I have watched the deterioration of the journal. It used to show great promise. Yours sincerely, K.P.

Letter to Istvan Meszaros, Pickering, Canada, 24  April  1961 Dear Istvan, It now appears as though an opportunity to publish The Plough and the Pen has arisen again. Sometime in May it will probably be decided whether it will be a British publisher; if not, we will ourselves select a Canadian publisher, for which the prospects are very good indeed. For myself and Ilona, this is a collective effort that manages to provide something that had been sorely lacking: a positive summation of Hungarian hopes. For in it, the meaning and promise of 1956 is embodied and expressed. ‘Concealed foreign rule’, which is the key area of weakness in Soviet Russia’s global influence, led to the defeat of socialism in Hungary – for no reason. I.e. it was not socialism but foreign rule concealed by the domestic government that underlay the failure, the obstruction of the nation’s development. In an agrarian country this could not be manifested within the industrial working class; it could not confine itself to the organised working class, because, by necessity, the internal development of the village was also part of the economic-cultural life process. More precisely, the two together – the interconnected life stream of village and factory – represent the secret of national existence. Alone, the intellectuals – writers, poets – do not constitute a nation. It is this that enabled the confluence of Hungarian populism and revisionism in the 1956 revolution – one of the most unexpected, brave and pure revolutions in world history. The unprecedentedly disciplined and persistent mass strike that followed expressed the deep loyalty of the working class to socialist principles, and met with sympathy from the entire peasantry. But 31 The quotation is from Gyula Illés’ ‘Egy népfira’, published in Nyugat, 9 (1936).

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where is the entire socialist world when it comes to understanding the prophetic meaning of Hungary’s 1956 for developments in Africa? The fundamental problem of revisionism, the possibility and, equally, the necessity of variegated socialisms. This differentiation originates from the interaction of ecological, historical and cultural factors. In other words, it is the manifestation of national-popular culture. The appearance of the peoples of the new continents, it should be understood, coincides with the development of new socialisms. In this we see the global significance of Hungary’s 1956. This was also, ultimately, the secret behind the global impact of the Russian revolution. It was carried out by Russians (cf. Chernyshevsky). This national-popular factor contributed to a Russian revolution that would otherwise have been marginal, peripheral, theoretically false and, from a rational point of view, ‘impossible’ and destined to fail; it is precisely this element that Russianness contributed to it, and which subsequently enriched all of humankind. The role of the Hungarian people is similar, although its meaning will not be seen until later. Any posing of the Hungarian question today needs to begin with the following: Is it true that it is not meaningful for a small, weak and defeated country to formulate its own politics? For, what can it do? Who will listen to it? Who will be influenced by its wishes? Hence, why should it formulate its own future and inform the rest of the world of it? This viewpoint is extraneous to real life. There is no group small enough, or a people insignificant enough, that do not gain weight, influence and importance by precisely the fact that they think, nourish convictions and hold to their own worldview. There is no great power which, when the question arises, would not take into account the genuine preferences and hatreds of the human collectivities with which it lives. To formulate politics creates national existence; it is not possible to ignore it.32 Karl.

Letter to Georg Lukacs, 27 May 1963 Dear Gyuri, Almost two and a half years have passed since our visit, and since then we have heard no news from you. Already back then we were considering the possibility of setting up an international scientific journal – and this is now becoming a reality. From January onwards, Oslo University Press intends to publish 112 copies of Co-Existence – A Quarterly for the Comparative Study of Economics, 32 The rest of this letter deals with a smattering of personal matters, including Mrs Gömöri’s travel itinerary, a brief mention of a book by Janos Kornai, and a lament on the state of Hungarian émigré publications.

Georg Lukacs, 25 January 1964

239

Sociology and Politics. The initiators include Joan Robinson, Gunnar Myrdal and Ragnar Frisch, and Rudolf Schlesinger, the editor of Soviet Studies, has been asked to take on the editorship. The list of contributors includes, among others, Tinbergen, Adam Schaff and Arzumanyan,33 but, until now, wider i­nvitations have not been sent out. We are hereby inviting you to consider contributing to the planned journal. Your old friend, Karli.

Letter to Georg Lukacs, 25 January 1964 Dear Gyuri, In late October we finally began our journey back to Canada, but we were forced to take a long break from work, culminating in admission to hospital in Toronto on 9 November; after this I received radiographic treatment for six weeks, which kept me at home until 5 January. It was with great joy that I recently looked up the minutes of the seminar that we held together with the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ Research Group on Sociology on 15 October, under the heading ‘Economy and sociology in the United States’. The meeting was chaired by Professor András Hegedüs. While János Varga provided a useful account of contemporary West German sociologists’ critique of America (and the minutes reflect his speech quite faithfully), others are missing from the records. I was, of course, particularly interested to hear domestic Marxist criticism from Hungary. If it were at all possible, I would like to complement the copy that I have in my hands with further trustworthy contributions. In particular, I was thinking of Agnes Heller, who perhaps would be able to assist me with one–two pages of text, from memory – for which I would be very grateful. Ilona and I send our warm regards, Karli.

33 Dutch economist Jan Tinbergen, Polish philosopher Adam Schaff, and A. Arzumanyan, a protégé of Soviet leader Anastas Mikoyan.

Index

acculturation see assimilation Adler, Friedrich 130 Adler, Max 15 adult education see education: workers’ education Ady, Endre 12, 15, 29, 74–5, 77, 204, 215 America see United States American Federation of Democratic Hungarians 27, 220 anarchism 25, 88, 124 see also syndicalism Ancient Greece 10, 214 anglophilia 2 anthropology 11, 24 anticommunism 236 antifascism 26 antisemitism 4, 6, 9, 10, 14, 18, 26 Arendt, Hannah 4 assimilation 3–6 Athens see Ancient Greece atomisation of society see fragmentation of society Attlee, Clement 163 Austria, 4, 6, 7, 9, 26 see also Austro-Hungarian Empire; nationalism Austro-Hungarian Empire 6–7, 129 see also Austria; nationalism Babylonia see Mesopotamia Bakunin 124–6 balance of power system 131–4 Bernstein, Eduard 7, 13, 15, 17, 21, 86, 116 Bevan, Aneurin 164–5

Bevin, Ernest 163 Bolshevism see communism bourgeois radical movement 10, 13, 15, 17, 169–71, 174–97 see also Radical Bourgeois Party Bretton Woods 165–6 Bright, John 25 Britain 2, 24–6, 31, 111, 157, 161, 165, 221, 227 foreign policy 3, 7, 27, 144, 146–7, 156, 162–6, 223–4, 229 labour movement 13, 25, 101, 108–12, 118, 120–1, 150, 163–7, 223–4 market economy see also anglophilia Budapest 1–3, 6, 8–11, 15, 19–23, 55, 159, 226 Jewish community 2–3, 5 Canada 1, 161, 239 capitalism 2, 6–9, 13–17, 87–8, 113, 119, 175, 189, 192–5, 198–201 liberal capitalism 8, 110 organized capitalism 6–7, 84, 117 state capitalism 30, 84 Carr, Edward 233 Central Europe 141, 227 see also Eastern Europe; Western Europe Chesterton, G. K. 13, 111–12 China 79, 155 Christ, Jesus 75, 79–80, 87 Christian Socialism see socialism Christianity 3, 6, 9, 10, 24, 80, 85, 87, 91

Index Catholicism 7, 9, 80, 86–7, 91 Protestantism 3 Chrysanthemum Revolution see Hungary: 1918 revolution Churchill, Winston 166 Cobden, Richard 25 Co-Existence 29, 232–4, 238 cold war 29 Cole, G. D. H. 119 Comintern 123 commodification 9 communism 19–23, 29, 33, 86–101, 104, 110–11, 114–18, 123–4, 164, 198, 204–5, 207, 208, 221–6, 228, 230, 236 see also anticommunism; Marxism; Russia communist parties Britain 164 Hungary 11 20–2, 28, 33, 95–8, 224–5 Russia 99–100, 104 Spain 224 Comte, August 43 conservatism 4, 8–10, 16, 18, 27, 136, 219 as antisemitism 9 in Britain 163 cosmopolitanism 4, 5, 7 see also internationalism crisis civilizational/general 8, 25, 53, 155, 183, 231 cultural/spiritual 24, 70, 83 economic 147, 165–6 moral 70 Crossman, Richard 163–7 debt 146–7 determinism 12–13, 102, 107, 125, 195 Deutscher, Isaac 4–5 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 2, 12, 100, 126, 227–8 Duczynska, Ilona 26, 28–9, 233, 237 political commitments 12, 225 Dühring, Eugen 14, 152 Eastern Europe 19, 221, 224, 233

241

economic planning see planning education education reform 18, 157 workers’ education 15, 206, 208 emigration 178 Engels, Friedrich 90, 100, 109, 195 England see Britain Enlightenment 2, 10, 105, 206 environment see nature equality 3, 9, 14, 80, 102–3, 149, 185–6, 193, 195 evolution (social) 102 see also progress exile see emigration; Hungarian exiles Fabianism 2, 13–14, 24–5 see also Labour Party; social democracy; Webb, Beatrice; Webb, Sidney fascism 26, 143, 160, 162, 164, 220 Austrofascism 26 see also antifascism; Nazism feminism 11 First International 124–5 First World War 11, 17, 60, 63–7, 70–1, 86, 198–9, 202 fragmentation of society 5 free trade 3, 10, 13, 18, 25, 65, 165–6, 191, 194 freedom 3, 13, 15, 33, 50–4, 59–60, 63, 66, 80, 90, 101–4, 109–10, 114, 117, 120–5, 133, 149, 160, 169, 186, 232 and market economy 7, 9, 14 freemasonry 14 freethinkers 51, 60–1, 219 Freud, Sigmund 15 Fromm, Erich 230–1 functional theory 120, 122, 210 Galilei Circle 11–12, 14–16, 18–20, 25, 74, 181, 204–8, 214, 228–9 Gemeinschaft 1–2, 6 George, Henry 102, 153, 186 George, Lloyd 162, 178

242

Index

German Historical School of political economy 17 Gesellschaft, 1–2, 10 see also capitalism; individualism; liberalism Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 75, 228 gold standard 165 Goldsmith, Oliver 54 great transformation 140, 227 see also Great Transformation, The Great Transformation, The 25–6, 31 see also great transformation Greece (Ancient) see Ancient Greece guild socialism 25, 101, 110, 118–22 Habsburg Empire see Austro-Hungarian Empire Haeckel, Ernst 43 Havas, Endre 28, 225 Hilferding, Rudolf 7 Hitler, Adolf 160 Hodgkin, Thomas 29, 233–4 Horthy, Miklós, 23–4, 225 see also fascism; White Terror humanism 4, 100, 105, 232 Hungarian exiles 23–4, 26, 28, 235–6 Hungarian National Council 19–21 Hungarian-American Democratic Council 27 Hungary 1–23, 27–8, 33, 55–6, 62, 74, 78, 123, 169–83, 187, 204–10, 219–35 1918 revolution 18–21, 183, 207 1919 Councils’ Republic 21–3, 33 1956 uprising 28, 209, 237–8 Hungarian nation and nationalism 5–6, 8–9, 18, 22, 171–3 New Democratic Hungary movement 19, 26, 220 see also Hungarian exiles; Károlyi, Mihály; Social Democratic Party of Hungary image of society 53, 68 immigration 4, 9

immiserisation 89, 115–16 India 161–2 individual responsibility see responsibility individualism 7, 12, 26, 83–4 Industrial Revolution 119 industrial society 1, 11, 16, 153, 175, 232 intelligentsia 4–5, 9–10, 15, 17–18, 20–1, 30, 187, 197–203, 207, 228 internationalism 4, 22, 70, 86–7, 154, 198 see also cosmopolitanism; Second International Jaszi, Oscar 2, 11–14, 27, 130, 169, 182, 208, 220 political commitments 13–14, 18–22, 33 relationship with Polanyi 24, 27, 228–30 Jaurès, Jean 149 Jews 1–6, 14, 80, 218, 228 in Central/Eastern Europe 4, 8 in Hungary 2–6, 9, 18, 23 see also antisemitism; assimilation Kant, Immanuel 12 Károlyi, Mihály 19–23, 26–8, 33, 130, 220–5 see also Hungarian National Council Kautsky, Karl 114–17 Keynes, Maynard 139, 153, 166 Keynesians 29 Kipling, Rudyard 2, 111–12 Klatschko, Samuel 2 Koestler, Arthur 11, 164 Kun, Béla 22–3, 33 Labour Party 111, 121, 150, 163–6, 223–4 see also Attlee, Clement land reform 15, 20, 123, 193, 221–3 see also redistribution of land League of Nations 132–3, 142–5, 156, 162, 194 Lederer, Emil 11 Lee, Jenny 164–5

Index Lenin 22, 102, 110, 153 liberal socialism 14, 101, 123 liberalism 2–4, 6–14, 16, 20–1, 24–5, 27–8, 110, 164, 186, 208 economic liberalism 8–9, 13 liberal nationalism 28 Liberal parties 8–9, 16 liberty see freedom Lukacs, Georg 5, 10–12, 14–15, 20, 23, 25, 204, 213–14, 217, 226–7, 238–9 Luxemburg, Rosa 5, 7, 95 Mach, Ernst 15, 41–9, 206 machine see technology Malthus, Thomas 153 Mannheim, Karl 5, 10–11 market economy 14, 25, 151, 210, 229 labour market 84 marketization 9 market society, 25, 232 Marx, Karl 25–6, 28, 43, 85, 88, 99–101, 108, 112, 114–16, 119, 124–6, 152, 230 value theory 88 Marxism 7, 11, 15–16, 86–91, 99–105, 114–17, 184–86, 193–94, 226, 228, 233, 239 and Hungarian SDP 124 maximization principle 77 Mesopotamia 79, 230 metaphysics 15, 42–5, 48, 57, 92, 213–14, 230 Meyer, Eduard 229 Mill, John Stuart 2, 14, 228 money 115–16, 141, 151–2, 229, 232 monism 186, 206 see also Mach, Ernst Morris, William 89, 153 Mussolini, Benito 143–4, 147, 150, 160 narodism see populism National Radical Party see Radical Bourgeois Party nationalisation of industry 23, 87–9, 100, 109–10, 116–18, 121, 125, 184

243

see also planning nationalism 5–9, 27–8, 70, 87, 149, 197–8, 224, 238 in Austro-Hungarian Empire 17–18, 20, 169–70 national minorities 3, 8–9, 14, 17–18, 20, 169–73, 177, 182–3, 189, 207–8, 228 nation-state system, 133, 142, 156–7, 232 see also Hungary nature 12, 113, 153, 232 Nazism 26 Needham, Joseph 29 Nietzsche, Friedrich 12, 31 nuclear energy 232 objectivism 58 Oppenheimer, Franz 14, 32 Orwell, George 164 Ostwald, Wilhelm 15 Owen, Robert 2, 108, 232 pacifism 129–37, 142–4, 162, 181, 183, 189 patriotism see nationalism planning 116 Plough and the Pen, The 28–9, 237 Polanyi, Adolf 11 Polanyi, Laura 11 Polanyi, Michael 11 political science 58, 152, 210 see also social science Pollacsek, Cecile 2–3, 8, 11 Pollacsek, Mihály 2–3, 6, 8 Popper, Leo 11, 216 populism 2, 24, 28, 237 Pór, Ödön 13 positivism 2, 12–13, 31, 43 private property 13, 16, 84, 88–9, 182, 185–6, 192–4 progress 2, 6, 9–10, 16–17, 25, 42, 49–51, 54, 56, 60–1, 63–4, 76, 79, 101–2, 104–5, 149–50, 157, 173–6, 180, 185, 192, 195–7, 201–2, 229–30

244

Index

see also Enlightenment Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 112, 124 psychoanalysis 2, 230 racism 159–60 see also antisemitism Radical Bourgeois Party 16–17, 169–70, 174–8, 181–3, 188–9, 191–2, 195, 229 see also bourgeois radicalism Radical Party see Radical Bourgeois Party Rákosi, Mátyás 226 Rathenau, Walther 153, 159 reality of society 26, 76 see also Christianity redistribution of land 13, 18, 20, 22, 33, 223 see also land reform religion 3–4, 9–10, 41–5, 49–51, 54, 79, 85, 88, 96–7, 103, 151, 153–4, 185–6, 193, 200, 202, 206, 219–20, 228, 230 responsibility 51, 54, 63, 183, 199, 201, 206 revolution 12, 14, 19, 23, 28, 55, 60, 71, 74–5, 80, 91, 93, 96, 98, 125–6, 170, 176–7, 183, 189–92, 223 French Revolution 80, 140 Russian Revolution 2, 20, 22–3, 87, 90, 96, 99–106, 115–16, 123–6, 207, 227, 238 see also Hungary: 1918 revolution; Hungary: 1956 uprising Robinson, Joan 29, 233, 239 Romanticism 2, 10, 12 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 152 Russell, Bertrand 25, 100, 152–3 Russia 2, 15, 24–5, 27–9, 150, 164, 189, 204, 206, 221–5, 227–9, 231, 233, 237 see also communism; revolution: Russian Revolution Schlesinger, Rudolf 29, 233, 239 Schmoller, Gustav 17

science 12–13, 42–4, 48–52, 56, 58, 76–7, 93, 114, 141, 151–2, 155, 157, 214 see also social science Second International 125, 189, 198 see also social democracy Seidler, Irma 11 Shaw, George Bernard 13, 111–12 Smith, Adam 14, 25, 152 Smuts, Jan 161–2 social democracy 5, 19, 86, 102, 124, 164, 198 Polanyi and, 23–4, 225 Social Democratic parties: Austria 7, 26, 124, 130 Germany 86, 95, 115 Hungary 9, 12, 16–17, 19, 23, 27, 33, 95, 97–8, 164, 170, 174–7, 182, 189, 191, 205, 208, 225 see also Labour Party; Second International social science 12, 15–16, 62, 139, 158, 227 see also anthropology; science; sociology socialism 4, 7, 9, 13–15, 20, 23–30, 80, 84–91, 97–102, 105–24, 130, 138, 153, 164–6, 174–7, 184–6, 192, 197–8, 206, 230–2, 237–8 ethical socialism 114 guild socialism 25, 101, 110, 118–22 see also communism; liberal socialism; populism; social democracy Society of Social Science see Sociological Society Sociological Society 11, 181, 214, 229 sociology 12–13, 15, 56, 62, 181, 229, 239 positivist sociology 12–13, 43, 58 Sombart, Werner 15, 17 Somló, Bódog 11 South Africa 161–2 Soviet Union see Russia; communism Spencer, Herbert 13, 15, 31, 43, 229 Spengler, Oswald 79, 140 strain (social) 28

Index syndicalism 12–13, 25, 85, 118, 120 Szabó, Ervin 2, 11–13, 25, 228–9 technology 25, 49, 52, 58, 112, 141, 151–4, 157, 232 see also industrial society; science Third International see Comintern Third Way 24 Tisza, István 172–3, 176–9, 182–3 Tolstoy, Leo 2, 26, 153, 227 Tönnies, Ferdinand 10 Trotsky, Leon 2, 100, 189 unemployment 69, 161, 165 United Kingdom see Britain United States 2, 26, 65, 147, 149, 156, 165 relationship with Britain 164–5 utopia 2, 88–90, 108, 112, 134, 158, 186 Varga, Eugene 20

245

Vienna 1–2, 6–8, 23–5 fascism in 26 socialism in 25–6 see also Social Democratic parties: Austria Wallace, Henry 164–6 Warriner, Doreen 233 Webb, Beatrice 108–10 Webb, Sidney 108–10 Weber, Max 12, 229 Wells, H. G. 13, 24, 25, 111–13, 146, 153, 155–8, 186 western culture/civilization 2–3, 28–9, 100, 102, 173, 195, 227 Western Europe 3 White Terror (Hungary) 23–4, 123 Zilliacus, Konni 164–5 Zionism 4