Carl Rowlands says there is much cause to wish the so-called Hungarian Socialist Party an unhappy birthday
IT IS 20 years since the collapse of communism and we can celebrate the freedom this meant for many people. However, subsequent developments indicate that many communist regimes were already thinking about things such as money. And in the new Europe that emerged after 1990, democracy has taken second place to mammon.
Without underestimating the bravery of the democratic activists, it should be acknowledged that, in many communist countries, the rulers had known for some time that the game was up. In Hungary, the ruling Socialist Workers’ Party had already gone through a systematic ditching of Leninist principles in order to create a hefty trade deficit. This allowed a supply of consumer goods into the Magyar homeland that increased during Janos Kadar’s failing years in the late 1980s.
Certainly, people were hungry for the good life they could see on satellite television. Reform communism meant reformed consumerism. It’s against this backdrop that the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party became the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP). This year sees its 20th birthday in this incarnation.
The change in name allowed the party to continue its embrace of capitalism and participate in the peaceful transition to democracy.
The MSZP was to become a monetarist political movement. It had a rather pliant membership base and retained its old headquarters – a fantastic piece of Budapest real estate, tarnished by a terrible lynching in 1956.
The Socialists did quite badly in the first elections in 1990, but they still knew where the bodies were buried and more than a thing or two about digging them up. The success of the right in 1990 committed Hungary to a fire sale of state industries. Many Socialists were well aware of the actual value of these government assets, as they had previously managed them. And often, these entrepreneurs, with their contacts in the newly privatised banks, were the only people who could access the funds to buy the state assets. Unlike the conservative opponents, the Socialists understood capitalism. They were traders who bought cheap and sold out expensively.
At the next election in 1994, the Socialists were back in power. Although many of them had profited from the privatisations of the past four years, they were able to cash in on electoral dissatisfaction with wild, unleashed capitalism. And then the MSZP government set about the next set of sell-offs with fresh zeal, combining this with sharp austerity measures to combat over-consumption.
International investors started to show more interest in Hungary and the country’s assets were soon in foreign hands. From chains of shops to public utilities, everything was up for grabs as part of the “reform” process.
Hungary’s 1998 election was held against a background of austerity measures which led to huge social dislocation, homelessness and mass poverty. But there was also an improved climate for foreign investment and for some – mainly the young and educated – the future looked bright.
A new right-wing government emerged victorious. This was a coalition of the populist Fidesz in alliance with smaller parties.
In 1998, a two-party political system was born, with Fidesz and the Socialists at it core and on opposite sides. This was even though neither had that much actual popular support. Both squandered state financing on endless, repetitive propaganda. Austerity proposals from the Socialists, including charges for days spent in hospital, sounded increasingly bizarre coming from the mouths of millionaires who had made their fortunes from privatisation. Meanwhile, Fidesz became increasingly shrill and nationalistic, alienating the electorate and allowing the Socialists to return to power.
As the cultural and political battle between the two sides has raged, so the waters have become muddied, with dark hints of covert surveillance, massive breaches of the rules governing campaign finance, funds being channelled away from the public purse, and property contracts buried within mafia ties and collusion.
As increasing numbers of Hungarian voters turn away from politics in disgust, the Socialists are trying to grapple with an economic crisis that is far beyond their capacity to cope. They cling onto office with no fresh ideas and no plans for tackling the poverty which is an increasing fact of Hungarian life. There is the continuing atrophy of the communal basis on which the country’s society’s founded.
The growing black economy means unpaid pension contributions. In turn, that means pensioners of the near future will drop below the absolute poverty line. This is the country the political class of Hungary has created since 1989: an unsustainable, slapdash economy with many ill-equipped to cope with globalisation.
But surely Hungary is an independent country and can make its own mistakes? In fact, the British Labour Party may have to bear some responsibility for what has happened to Hungary. The Hungarian Socialists used to point to Labour as an illustration of a successful neo-liberal approach. They admired its embrace of the Thatcherite doctrine of privatisation and the relaxed attitude to some people becoming stupendously rich. As far as the Hungarian Socialists were concerned, Britain’s flexible, unregulated labour markets and debt-laden economy constituted a shining example.
As for their own 20 years of existence and 12 years in power, though, Hungary’s Socialists cannot point to any marginal success, such as Labour’s initial campaigns against homelessness or Sure Start for the poorest children. They can’t boast of policies which have helped the poorest in Hungarian society – other than the benefits handed out as election-time bribes. And these tend to be clawed back in one way or another. Hungary’s teachers and nurses remain the poorest-paid in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development region.
Hungary’s Socialists claim to be modern European social democrats. In fact, the closest comparison may be with Bettino Craxi’s Italian Socialist Party of the 1980s – rotten to the core and destined to implode.
In the absence of mass participation, Hungarian democracy consists of a string of unravelling dependencies, with the opposition and government dependent on one another to provide their respective identities, all parties dependent on anonymous campaign donations and the media dependent on scraps from their masters’ tables. And possibly the most unhealthy dependency of all is Hungary’s dependence on its pseudo-Socialist Party to deliver it from the nationalist right wing and a fierce economic slump.
Carl Rowlands is on the co-ordinating committee of the central Europe branch of Labour International. He writes here in a personal capacity
Fact box: Successful businessman, failed PM
FERENC Gyurcsany was leader of the Young Communist student movement, overseeing its dissolution during the 1989 transition to democracy. He left politics to pursue a highly successful career as a businessman, making full use of his contacts. He returned to state affairs in 2003 as minister for sports, youth and children. The following year, he became Prime Minister and marked this occasion with his “First 100 Days” package. Since then, there have been many other packages and initiatives, reflecting his admiration for “new” Labour’s approach to governing.
Following the 2006 election, Gyurcsany was heard on a leaked tape recording referring to his party’s lies and the fact that they had “screwed up”. These revelations prompted riots. Attempts to introduce fees for GPs and a charge on hospital stays were thrown out in a referendum in 2007.
Gyurcsany proceeded to consolidate his grip on the MSZP, but his popularity in the country failed to recover. With the global recession forcing him to turn to the International Monetary Fund and the European Union for emergency help, his room for manoeuvre was seriously restricted. He resigned as Prime Minister last month.
