Budapest school
The Budapest School was a branch of Hungarian Marxism that developed around Georg Lukács in the 1960s . The school was strongly influenced by Lukács, but cannot be reduced to his influence. It emerged against the historical background of the de-Stalinization processes in the USSR and the Eastern European countries.
Currents
Various currents emerged within the Budapest School, ranging from reform communist approaches ( András Hegedüs ) to positions that completely rejected theoretical Marxism (György Bence and János Kis). The strongest and most productive current in journalism was formed by a group of intellectuals who were oriented towards human sciences and who, although rooted in Marxism, had broken with the real existing socialism (Ferenc Féher, Agnes Heller , György Márkus and Maria Márkus). The main guiding principles of this group were a "radical humanism " - as a response to the "absolute dehumanization " brought about by Stalinism - the renewal of the philosophy of practice - especially in opposition to positivism - and solidarity with the Western New Left .
Two of the leading figures were Agnes Heller and her husband Ferenc Fehér . As Jews, they experienced persecution by German occupiers and Hungarian fascists, the so-called Arrow Crossers , with whose help thousands of Jews were deported and murdered between November 1944 and March 1945. Agnes Heller narrowly escaped death several times, and her father was murdered in Auschwitz .
Agnes Heller studied philosophy with Georg Lukács, did her doctorate in 1955 with Lukács and became his assistant. Due to Lukács participation in the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and his activity as minister of culture in the government of Imre Nagy , he was arrested after the suppression of the uprising and lost his professorship. After conflicts with the communist party, Agnes Heller was also expelled from the party at the end of the 1950s and worked as a teacher for 5 years. After her rehabilitation she was accepted into the Academy of Sciences and after protests against the invasion of the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact states in 1968 she was excluded again into Czechoslovakia . During this time, the Budapest School formed with sharp criticism of the Soviet system, but initially remained in the realm of critical, unorthodox Marxism. The Budapest school sought contacts with critical leftists in Western Europe. In the 1970s, the Budapest school therefore came under increasing pressure. There were spies, house searches and finally in 1973 layoffs.
In 1978 Heller and Fehér emigrated to Australia, where Heller received a professorship at La Trobe University in Melbourne.
Socialist Criticism and Radical Democracy
Agnes Heller, Ferenc Feher and György Markus stated in 1983 that the founding of the Budapest School was the consequence of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact states on August 21, 1968. Up until this event, they would have criticized socialism as “'perverted' or 'bureaucratized'”, but supported the system “in substance”. They described their criticism of the Eastern European governments as socialist, but anti-Leninist : With this approach they sought contacts to the left in the West, "whose own goal is socialism in the sense of a radicalized democracy, not in the sense of any kind of dictatorship ". The Budapest School first examined the "Soviet-type societies" in Eastern Europe.
First they established that Stalinism had not been overcome and cited the brutal actions of the Soviet military apparatus in Afghanistan as a symptom . The Budapesters sought contact with the unorthodox western left, but encountered communication difficulties due to their very different life experiences. The western left were often disappointed and disillusioned with the possibilities of creating a more just society on the basis of democratic rights. In contrast, the eastern dissidents had bitter experiences with the arbitrariness of the state and the lack of rights of the individual. In addition, Marxism had a socially critical function in the West, while in Eastern Europe it was a state ideology and "lost all credibility in the eyes of the masses".
"While there are doubts in the West as to whether the critical theory formulated by Marxism is still valid or sufficiently valid, under the conditions of" actually existing socialism "there are doubts as to whether Marxism can even exercise the function of a critical theory."
Three theories for analyzing "real existing socialism"
The left developed three theoretical models to analyze the societies in Eastern Europe and thus "to scare away the nightmare of the societies of the East."
First: the theory of the transition society
The “theory of the transition society” evaluates the states in Eastern Europe as societies between capitalism and socialism. Various reasons for the stagnation of development are named, such as bureaucratization, the “parasite layer of state officials” and the backwardness of the Soviet Union, which is threatened by capitalism. At the same time, socialist elements were named, such as the planned economy and the changed ownership structure. This theory goes back to Leon Trotsky and is often used to justify the situation, even by the party bureaucracy itself. The Budapesters saw the core problem of the Trotskyist declaration in a paradox:
“On the one hand, the exponents point out the social position of the party and state bureaucracy as the main source of structural inequalities. On the other hand, they consider the organizational core by means of which the power relations function, namely the central plan, as a weighty counterpoint to the power of this bureaucracy and as a factor that inhibits it. "
Understanding the bureaucratic control of production as a socialist element, according to the Budapesters, contradicts a basic intention of Marxism, namely to place planning in the hands of the producers and to serve their needs. The central plan becomes a fetish , which, disconnected “from the conscious needs and wants of the population”, is nevertheless mysteriously in the service of social interests. In doing so, the Stalinist bureaucrats justify this theory and reject any curtailment of the state-controlled forced economy. From the point of view of the Budapest School, the opposition of market and plan would legitimize the rule of the bureaucratic apparatus over the producers. The 'dictatorship of the proletariat' de facto prevents the workers from having a say in the distribution of social wealth. Due to the limited possibilities of the company management vis-à-vis the planning bureaucracy to make independent decisions, there would be an opportunity for unorganized resistance for the workers in the form of inefficiency, poor quality work, etc. The nationalization of the entire production contradicts the Marxian idea of socialization. Marx's goal was the “realization of the real, collective power of the direct producers over their working conditions and the utilization of their labor product”, not the establishment of a dictatorial planning bureaucracy. In addition, the ability of the system to develop, indicated by the term “transition society”, is doubtful, since the bureaucracy repeatedly reproduces itself successfully despite changes and crises. Nevertheless, in 1983 the Budapesters expected the "approach of a new and global crisis in Eastern European societies".
Second: the theory of state capitalism
This direction, represented by very different groups, assumes that the rule of the bureaucracy has made the state a “total capitalist”. The class conflict between exploited workers and capital basically persists. This theory completely misunderstood the character of Eastern European society. The term capitalism becomes meaningless in view of the lack of private ownership of the means of production and of market elements. The economic activity of the Soviet bureaucracy is not determined by the principle of profit maximization, although an increase in efficiency is constantly demanded. It will z. For example, the industrial sector is regularly preferred for investments, even if clearer deficits and profit opportunities are visible in the consumer sector. In agriculture, the inefficient, state-controlled sector of the large kolkhozes is always preferred to efficient, semi-private sectors. The catastrophic shortage of living space is also countered by completely ineffective investments in the large state-owned construction companies; effective cooperative or private solutions tend to be rejected. The beneficiaries of the concentration of investments on the state area are consistently the functionaries, both through the increase in power and through personal access to advantages. Here, too, “nationalization and planning” did not prove to be a socialist counterforce to the apparatus, but rather a “means of enforcing and exercising this power”.
A considerable part of the products never touch a market, they are distributed by the state to the various sectors of the economy. In this respect, the central contradiction of the exchange of goods in societies of the Soviet type does not lie between exchange value and use value , but between "the administratively prescribed use value of the product (as its" official "valuation) and its real social benefit”. This can be seen in the production of “waste”, such as the production of books that no one reads or objects of such poor quality that they cannot be used.
The relationship between bureaucracy and workers in Eastern Europe is different from the relationship between capital and labor. The apparatus uses various forms of forced labor and can also freely set standards, employment contracts and remuneration. The lack of a separation between subjective and objective factors of production not only creates an enormous power of the apparatus. The “impersonal relations of domination and servitude” would also result in restrictions on the apparatus, such as the lack of economic motivation and the low efficiency of work through individual strategies of the workers.
In one respect the Budapesters agree with the theorists of state monopoly capitalism. Cornelius Castoriadis was right when he called the Soviet Union dependent on the primary complex of capitalism. The Soviet societies lacked innovative strength, there was a high willingness to imitate Western values.
Third, the theory of the Asian mode of production
This theory - advocated by the late Karl Wittfogel and the GDR dissident Rudolf Bahro , among others - regards Soviet societies as pre-capitalist. As "Asian", i.e. H. backward patterns, consider z. B. forced labor, the non-monetized privilege economy , the feudal hierarchy of the nomenklatura , the dirigistic organization of the economy. Nationalism, the “conservatism of everyday life” and personal dependencies are also evidence of the theory. Many of the facts are correct, but the explanatory model of the backwardness has its limits. The Soviet system also works in countries at very different stages of development. For the Soviet Union, too, the initial backwardness no longer plays an economic role, it belongs to the "type of modern society". Judging the problems of the Soviet system from the paradigm of backwardness prevents an analysis of the problems in the history of socialism from which one must learn.
Lessons from this analysis
Agnes Heller considers the fact that the working population in Eastern Europe has no influence on the organization and products of the work process and its distribution and that the rule of the bureaucrats are central problems of the Soviet system. In practice, the bureaucratic apparatus dispose of theoretically state property.
literature
- Agnes Heller: Theory of Needs in Marx. Translated from the Italian by Helmut Drüke. VSA, West Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-87975-095-5
- Agnes Heller: Paradoxical Freedom. A historical-philosophical consideration. Athena, Oberhausen 2001, ISBN 978-3932740893
- Agnes Heller, Ferenc Feher, György Márkus: The Soviet Way. Needs dictatorship and alienated everyday life. VSA, Hamburg 1983, ISBN 3-87975-230-3
- Ferenc Feher, Agnes Heller: dictatorship over needs. Socialist criticism of Eastern European social formations. VSA, Hamburg 1979, ISBN 3-87975-166-8
- Georg Lukács, Agnes Heller u. a .: Individual and practice - positions of the "Budapest School". Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1975, ISBN 3-518-00545-6
- György Márkus: The world of human objects. On the problem of the constitution in Marxism. In: Axel Honneth , Urs Jaeggi (Ed.): Work, Action, Normativity. Theories of Historical Materialism. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-518-07921-2
- Sami Nâir: Budapest School. In: Georges Labica , Gérard Bensussan (Ed.) (German version, edited by Wolfgang Fritz Haug ): Critical Dictionary of Marxism . Argument-Verlag , Hamburg 1989, Vol. 8, pp. 1504-1510, ISBN 3-88619-058-7
Web links
- Andrew Arato: The Budapest School and actually existing socialism , in: Theory and Society 16, pp. 593–619 (1987)
- Lecture by Heller also with information about the school
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cf. en: György Bence
- ↑ cf. en: János Kis
- ↑ See Sami Nâir: Budapest School , p. 1506
- ^ WDR 5, How do Auschwitz and Stalin understand? Agnes Heller, Hungarian philosopher, on the 80th, broadcast from May 10, 2009, 7:05 a.m. to 7:30 a.m.
- ↑ Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 8
- ↑ Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 9
- ↑ Yugoslavia and Albania are not analyzed, cf. The Soviet way, p. 9f.
- ↑ Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 11
- ↑ Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 20
- ↑ Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 21
- ↑ Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 24
- ↑ Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 24f.
- ↑ Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 28
- ↑ Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 35
- ↑ Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 38
- ↑ cf. Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 43f.
- ↑ Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 46
- ↑ cf. Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 49
- ↑ cf. Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 52f.
- ↑ cf. Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 56
- ↑ Agnes Heller; Ferenc Feher; György Markus: The Soviet Way, p. 60