REFORMING THE REFORM Thus, there is no reason to be surprised at the fact that the preparation for the congress was surrounded by the most generalized indifference. In fact, the congress was held only in order to rubber-stamp decisions that had already been made at other levels: the central committee and the political bureau and the various specialized bodies that gravitate around it. The population - including members of the party - knows from experience where the real centers of decision-making and power are to be found; they thus greeted the appeals to take part in the discussion, which were reiterated throughout the mass media, with the usual lassitude. Even the siren song of Partelet (the theoretical journal of the central committee), which affirmed, uncharacteristically, that the proposed resolution could be amended by the rank and file, did not succeed in breaking through this indifference. Does this mean that there is no question capable of provoking discussion and division within the Hungarian CP today? Just the opposite. Such questions were not discussed at the congress, but there were traces of them in the documents that were submitted to the congress, and one has only to read the political resolution to clearly see all the problems Hungary faces in 1975. The problems Economic problems and the necessity of increasing productivity are incontestably among the most burning of these problems. For the bureaucrats, the problem can be formulated quite simply: In a country in which official propaganda asserts that the working class holds power but in which every day's experience proves exactly the opposite, how can this working class be made to work when it is known that it is impossible to count on the enthusiasm of the workers, and is sometimes necessary to count on their outright hostility? The bureaucrats' response
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HUNGARY to this question has been the economic reform. Introduced on January 1, 1968, its objective was to increase the volume and quality of production by instituting an economic mechanism under which profit plays an indicative role as much as a stimulating role. For the factory managers, the highly skilled technicians, the farmers, and certain socioprofessional layers (doctors, small artisans, and private traders), the reform represented a financial windfall; for the working class, which according to official statistics represents nearly 60 percent of the population, the new economic mechanism meant price increases(1), social services of lesser quality(2), and direct threats against gains won previously(3). In an atmosphere of accelerated wage and social differentiation, the working class was not long in making heard its murmur of discontent, to such an extent that in November 1972, less than four years after the introduction of the reform, the central committee of the CP was compelled to take certain measures to slow down the reform. Two years later, in March 1974, this tendency was accentuated by some significant personnel changes, as convenient scapegoats were selected. As expected, the recent congress ratified the verdict of the central committee; two of the major initiators of the reform, Nyers and Feher, were not reelected to the political buredu. Does this mean that the reform has been abandoned? Certainly not; for those who opposed the reform either at the congress (timidly) or in the central committee (more vigorously) were possessed only of nostalgia for the past and not of a real alternative policy. To abandon the economic reform today would mean alienating those who profited from it; at the same time it would not guarantee the winning over of the working class, to which the critics of the reform are currently directing their demagogy. Apart from the fact that the party itself is heavily permeated with these "profiteers, "who will defend their privileges with determination, the working class has no confidence in those who are stigmatizing these profiteers today. In fact, there are only a limited number of ways to organize production. Either production will be overseen by the power of workers councils, which is the perspective neither of the "reformers" nor of their adversaries, or the bureaucracy will control producfion, and a mechanism of coercion is thus necessary. The "reformers" believed that it would be more effective if this mechanism were an impersonal one of economic interest; their opponents, the "conservatives, "who are more sensitive to the unrest that this policy entails, undoubtedly prefer the older methods: rigorous control of production and society, sprinkled with a bit of egalitarianism and a dash of Stakhanovism. This policy has already proven a fail28 ure, particularly in Budapest in 1956. It is this heavy burden of the past that fundamentally explains the victory of the "reformers" over the "conservatives, " even if in order to achieve this victory the former made concessions to the anxieties of the latter, abandoning two of their most prestigous representatives. Moreover, the scenario can be expected to continue in both camps, an indication of a deep division that will lead to an intense clique struggle within the top bureaucracy of the party. Katona, editor-inchief of Nepzabadsag, the CP daily, predicted just this sort of fratricidal battle when, in an article published November 7, 1974, he warned party members not to demand during the preparatory discussion for the congress that heads roll or that there be many excommunications. Kadar, who owes his reelection to the post of general secretary to the support of the Soviet bureaucracy, will have a lot of trouble preventing this guerrilla warfare from breaking out into open warfare. Everything indicates that the policy of "reform in the reform" advocated by Kadar - that is, the policy of economic reform stripped of its youthful enthusiasm and some of its features that are less defensible in the eyes of the workers(4) - will not be capable of dealing with the impending dangers. These dangers are first of all extemal ones, for what is involved here is the repercussions on Hungary on the one hand of the capitalist economic crisis and inflation and on the other hand of the increase in the prices of Soviet energy sources and raw materials. In fact, foreign trade plays a top level role in the Hungarian economy; more than 40 percent of the national income derives from it. Of this total, 30 percent consists of transactions with capitalist countries. The strong inflation racking these countries forces the Hungarian state to pump subsidies into state enterprises so that they can make purchases in the West. In 1973 the Hungarian state spent 5, 000 million forint in subsidies to counter the effects of inflation. (5) If is estimated that 24, 000 million forint will be needed to compensate for the 1974 deficit, and no one has dared to advance a figure for 1975. Whatever it may amount to, this money will be missed in other sectors, whether in financing new productive investments or in paying for social services. The problem is to figure out what effects such changes in the prices of production will have on consumer prices. The political choice The bureaucracy will have to confront a clear political choice, a choice between the economic orthodoxy of the reform, which would require that the increase of prices of production be passed on to consumer prices, and the workers discontent that this could generate. This is a choice that will once
again oppose "conservatives" to "reformers, "with all the risks of political instability that this implies. The sharp increase in the price of Soviet oil and raw materials raises the same sort of problem. Of course, the price of Soviet oil - which has gone From 16 rubles a ton to 37 rubles a ton (around US$50) - is still lower than the world market price, just as the price increase of all Soviet raw materials and energy sources (52 percent on the average) is still less than the increase that has occurred on the capitalist market. But what is important is that this involves increases that had not been foreseen by Hungarian planners, who will now have to find some way to pay for these new expenses. (6) It can be safely asserted that this task will not be made any easier by the extreme sensitivity Hungarian workers have manifested on the question of prices. At the very least, signs of nervousness are appearing here and there. For instance, Radio Budapest has admitted that a real afmosphere of panic reigned in the capital during December 1974; this was accompanied by a run on the stores as people tried to amass precautionary stocks of goods. The cause of this was a rumor making the rounds of the city that the new year would bring a sharp wave of price increases. Movements of this breadth testify eloquently to the skepticism that is widespread among the population. The youth are certainly not immune to such feelings, and it is from that source that the coming difficulties for the bureaucrats could come. The bureaucrats seem to have understood this, for the congress added the first secretary of the Union of Communist Youth to the party political bureau in order to heighten the party's control over the youth. Concurrently, a campaign has been under way during the past several months to regain a grip over the youth clubs; the results have been uneven. Finally, a general toughening attitude toward intellectual and artistic circles can be noted, accompanied sometimes by judicial action, especially against the Marxist left. After the trial of Haraszti, author of a book reporting on the working conditions of the Hungarian working class that had too much the ring of truth(7), police attention was turned toward the sociologist Ferenc Feher, and then toward the sociologists and authors Konrad, Szentjoby, and Szelenyi, who were arrested and held for several days for no reason; they were finally freed, but were banned from publishing anything in Hungary.
From the podium of the congress Valeria Benke, the only woman on the political bureau, tried to justify prosecution of all those who fish in *the troubled waters of revisionism and ultraleftism, or other less clear currents. " Such warnings, which have tended to multiply since 1973, have a symbolic value.
They testify to the leaders' lack of great security in face of the new situation that has developed after the period during which the Hungarian bureaucrats vaunted their own "liberalism. " Nearly twenty years after the Budapest uprising, it could be that there will again be talk of Hungary in terms other than those of history. April 8, 1975 Footnotes: 1. While they have not been comparable to the price increases in the capitalist countries (far from if), the increases in Hungary have nonetheless been significant, especially for the workers whose wages have grown least rapidly during the past several years. Official Hungarian statistics foresee price increases of 3.6% for 1975; they predicted increases of 2-2.4% for 1974. In 1973 the official price increase was 3%. It appears that the actual increase in the cost of living is higher than that. For one thing, it varies according to what product is being considered, which allows the regime to arrive at an average that conceals the real instances of increase. Generally speaking, the tendency is this: articles of high quality increase in price strongly, while articles of similar character but lesser quality remain stable or even decline in price. Thus, in 1974 a "pure wool" suit went up 10%, while its "synthetic" counterpart fell 10%. It was thus possible to state that the price of suits remained stable. 2. From housing to medical care, everything has become both more difficult to get and more expensive. In Budapest it is nearly impossible to find housing without buying a house, which represents 1015 years' wages for a worker. A riscy business. While medical care is free, quality medical care is for from free: To go to the pubric dental clinic is considered virtually equivalent to going to get your teeth pulled out. Those are some of the results of a policy that has enabled doctors to concentrate on their private clientele to the detriment of their public clientele. 3. There is no unemployment in Hungary. The shortage of labor is responsible for this. But the authorities had coldly envisaged introducing unemployment in order to create a mobile labor force, which would have stimulated the quality of the workers' services. For instance, Nyers, the person most responsible for the economic reform, stated in an interview with Le Monde on September 7, 1971: "In certain sectors it will be necessary to give priority to production over employment. It could thus happen that the justified aspirations of the factories aiming at employing a smaller work force might find themselves in contradiction with social demands.
4. It was thus that the resolution of the congress, while recognizing the legitimacy of the private possession of certain goods (automobiles, houses, plots of land, etc.), nevertheless felt compelled to raise its voice against "the accumulation of goods
60,000 WORKERS MARCH FOR JOBS that are not the result of labor. " That is to recognize — and how strikingly! - the development of various instances of speculation. Hence, the economic reform has given rise to a privileged layer whose opulence contrasts strongly with the modesty of the wage workers. It is this aspect of the reform that Kadar wants to eliminate; he is dealing once again with consequences rather than with causes. 5. The "tourist" rate of exchange gives 20.44 forint for USS1. 6. The building of socialism is not so easy either in a single country or throughout all the East European countries. Once again, the pressure of the news of the workers movement and the. fourth international USA About 60,000