the
bureaucracy tightens the screws
HUNGARY by Z. RICHTER & E. CAMPAES In the space of one week, the Hungarian police arrested the sociologists Gyorgy Konrad and Ivan Szelenyi, and the poet Tamas Szentjoby. The repression has been intensifying in Hungary for a year now. There have been bans on sociology colloquiums; Miklos Haraszty was given an eightmonth suspended prison sentence; there have been threats against Haraszty's associates; searches and surveillance have been stepped up. Haraszty is the symbol of the growing intellectual radicalizafion in Hungary. He was the organizer of the Vietnam Committees, whose radical slogans led the bureaucracy to declare the committees outlawed. Expelled from the Communist Youth and from the university, he organized a group to study Lenin and socialism. On several occasions, the police tried to seize his manuscripts. Haraszty then went to work in a construction factory, and out of his experiences there came a book, called Piecework, which was a collection of testimony about working conditions that was crushing to the regime. The book was banned and the author arrested, but
Budapest, 1956 the mobilization of intellectuals was able to prevent the regime from putting him in prison. Nevertheless, for the past two decades Hungary has been considered as a "liberal" country in which intellectuals particularly could express themselves freely. The reforms of 1968 seemed to have opened up a new era. But then what? Role of the reforms The 1968 economic reforms corresponded to the necessity to break with twenty years of economic development based on the "classical Stalinist model, " which means giving priority to heavy industry. In a small country lacking natural resources, having an agricultural majority, and possessing an industry of a very special type implanted by German capitalism in the period between the two world wars, this "model" was a catastrophe. There were repeated agricultural crises; after the
HUNGARY forced collectivization of 1948, there was a break between the regime and the peasantry. There were crises of productivity in heavy industry, investment was anarchic, and dependence on the Soviet Union was stifling. The workers responded with the insurrection of 1956 and the workers councils. The bloody repression of the insurrection was to provide a relative stabilization for the regime, which had to move toward reforms in order to prevent the same sort of situation from developing again. The reforms were aimed at several objectives: *Breaking with autarky through growing integration into both the socialist market and the capitalist market by developing advanced industrial sectors (chemicals, electronics, pharmaceuticals). *Reforming the price system, which had provoked the anarchy of investment. Many enterprises were allowed to freely set their own prices on the basis of "the market. "The export industries were the driving lance of this initiative. *Initiating a productivity race by setting up a system of substantial bonuses - especially for technocrats! *Developing the consumer goods industry, particularly by giving a new impetus to agriculture. The bureaucracy was thus able to reestablish its base; the working class was calmed down; the peasantry saw its income in the cooperatives rising faster than income in industry, and was able to freely dispose of a part of the agricultural surplus, selling it at will (and at prices it set itself. The salaries of the technocratic layers were doubled and even tripled by the bonuses; their habits of consumption were "westernized" by the greater availability of durable consumer goods (televisions, automobiles, refrigerators, and so on, which were aimed almost exclusively at these layers and at the export market). Nevertheless, not all the contradictions were resolved. An explosive situation The economic crisis of capitalism has had repercussions on Hungary, which is now strongly linked to the capitalist market. The crisis of the capitalist market in raw materials causes difficulties in Hungary. Moreover, the Soviet Union has given priority to exports to the West, thereby disorganizing the production plans of Czechoslovakia and Hungary; restrictions on the use of oil are also on the aerio of the Fre enger, timente. agenda in the workers states, contrary to the
But more profoundly, the economic reform created new contradictions that are going to intensify. A growing inequality in income is being caused by the bonuses (the Hungarian workers are not strongly motivated by the bonus system, especially in that they are not entitled to very much under the system: a yearly maximum of one month's wages). There are now tendencies within the technocracy, the master of economic development, that openly favor the restoration of capitalism. These tendencies fail to understand why there has been an attempt to "liberalize" prices while at the same time preserving a banking system centralized and under the direct control of the central government. There are tendencies that are coldly considering underdeveloping certain regions of Hungary in order to rationalize production and create a reserve army on the scale of the whole COMECON. The temptations can be understood when it is recalled that the leaders of the economy are being sent for one-year courses at the Harvard Business School. But these tendencies have not yet crystallized politically. At the same time, moving from an era of heavy industry to an era of production of "consumer goods" raises the problem, described by Trotsky in The Revolution Betrayed, of the necessity of calling for a minimum of initiative and decision-making on the part of the masses. And that, in time, could be a factor challenging the bureaucratic character of the plan. It is through the prism of this necessity that the post-reform "liberalization" - the relative freedom granted intellectuals until last year -must be understood. (It went so far that French CP leader Georges Marchais even proposed a public debate between Hungarian Minister of Culture Aczel and French Minister of Culture Peyrefitte.) But finding an equilibrium is always difficult for a bureaucracy that cannot tolerate the slightest autonomy of any social layer. Kadar, the old Bonaparte of the post-1956 period, had trouble continuing to play this role. The pro-Kremlin tendency was getting nervous; it achieved a gain a few months ago with the removal of Nyers (the "father" of the economic reforms) and Aczel from the leadership and the addition to the leadership of Komocsin (who died only a month later). On that basis, it was then possible to strike very hard blows at the intellectuals. In the present context, the radicalization of the intellectuals is a decisive factor, given the fact that the working class is still apathetic, traumatized by the crushing of the 1956 revolt, and is retreating back into itself. (The sharp new rise of alcoholism is one of the most tragic expressions of this.) Last year there were demonstrations in Budapest that mobilized up to 2,000 people - students, high-schoolers, and a not inconsequential number
of young workers radicalized by the Houses of Culture. The slogans came directly from the French May of 1968: "This is only the beginning!" The first steps taken by this opposition are deci