Tamás Mészáros:

Force for self-definition

Nowadays many in Hungary complain that 10 years after the change of regime the position of liberalism and liberal politics is getting worse and worse. Though this is certainly true, the real surprise is that liberalism actually had some successes in the last decade and could even occasionally play an important role.

The events of this period favoured the establishment of all other ideological trends over liberal thought, even though the influence of the self-defined liberals was strong in the circles of the democratic opposition. For the democratic opposition itself was very limited, at least while it operated illegally consisting only of marginal groups of the intelligentsia. In contrast to this, the significant Hungarian political forces, which partly originated from before the war and partly from trends in the state-party during the socialist decades, didn’t get into contact with liberal ideas at all. The traditional Hungarian right-wing canobviously not be accused of being liberal, and ; the former social democrats and smallholders were also very far from it.

In the Kádár-regime, under the rule of MSZMP there existed basically three trends: the orthodox, we can say Moscow-apparatchik stratum, the so-called popular-trend, which had some kind of nationalist left-wing views and the group of reformers who, being the supporters of the new-mechanism, knew well that the re-structuring of the economy could not be imagined without some kind of social changes. The only unquestionably common feature of these very varied, certainly disintegrating and rather instinctive political cultures (if the term ‘culture’ can be used at all), was that it hadn’t even heard of liberalism.

Only a small group of intellectuals issuing samizdat, and co-operating in SZETA and Szabad Kezdeményezések Hálózata had liberal views, those who established SZDSZ at the beginning of the change of regime and who did very well at the first elections, mainly due to their anticommunist attitude authenticated by their past. However, it is very obvious today that in reality neither then nor 4 years later their political programme, which attracted its voters, wasn’t really liberal. It’s not by chance that the formerly liberal FIDESZ wasn’t able to achieve any significant electoral results either, as long as it was considered to be, - at least ideologically, - the youth section of SZDSZ. A purely generational identity wasn’t sufficient for an outstanding success. According to public opinion surveys heir popularity temporarily increasedwhen the voters’ dissatisfaction towards the Antall then Boross governments peaked. However, this wasn’t due to their liberal ideology but to their radical parliamentary rhetoric. Then, quite unexpectedly, they started an approach to MDF and due to this sudden conversion they fell back in 1994 so enormously that they hardly reached the parliamentary threshold. Their new success started when, under the MSZP-SZDSZ government, they began to integrate the various different kinds of right–wingers in Hungarian society who, after their electoral defeat, were looking for more dynamic, younger and less scrupulous approaches to regain political power.Following their victory in 1998, the young democrats, after being in power for two years, were able to get rid of the liberal ‘label’ formally as well. They havejust left the Liberal Internationale and directed their efforts toward integrating all their present coalition partners into one common right-wing party formation.

The socialist party has certainly never been committed to liberalism, however, when forming a government in 1994, its economic programme basically followed neo-liberal patterns. They didn’t really have any other choice, since they were forced to introduce the Bokros package. Even their coalition partner, SZDSZ urged them to do so. Anyway, people could experience as early as 4 years after the change of regime that both the self-declared liberals and the socialists gave up the attitudes with which they had theoretically identified themselves. The social-liberal government did not represent the liberal and social ideas that were expected of them. I use the term ‘expected’ because SZDSZ voters didn’t expect a less scrupulous liberal re-structuring in the first place but a programme managing human rights-, minority- and poverty-issues, paradoxically, a more determined social sensitivity. SZDSZ, however, felt that its historical task is to force MSZP, its coalition partner to introduce hard economic restrictions that the socialists were trying to postpone. SZDSZ might have been right in its intention but it shouldn’t have forgotten that liberalism means above all the protection of civil rights. These rights, however, are worthless for those who don’t have a job, are ethnically discriminated against or live under the poverty line. Even in its rhetoric, SZDSZ forgot that classical free-market liberalism is ill-timed in Hungary because the social differences are enormous and still growing. Talking about the superiority of the market, its superior self-controlling power, and the idea of success based on individual decisions in a country where hundred thousands of people are thrown onto the street, and where there is no possibility for many people to make positive decisions - seemed very cynical to a great number of voters.

Even today, the real problem of Hungarian liberalism is, and it will be more and more so, whether it is able to accept a kind of social democratic ‘deviation’ instead of the absolutism of the liberal notion of individual freedom, and whether it can it admit that the model of the so-called welfare state, which is very questionable in many respects, cannot be avoided any longer. And even if it admits this , it is still doubtful if Hungarian liberalism is courageous enough to go through with it. It has not yet done so because it has been afraid that the middle class or the stratum moving upward to it or even the average man who can hardly make a living, wouldn’t accept positive discrimination toward gypsies and other minorities and wouldn’t be enthusiastic about the determined representation of the human rights of the different minority groups. Liberals are afraid that for a significant group of Hungarian voters liberalism, if it means anything to them at all, means the free enforcement of their own interests without any form of social solidarity. Conscious and determined liberals think that FIDESZ based its successful tactics on this recognition.

In today’s Hungary the liberal notion is one of the ‘not well considered’ political ideas. And certainly it will not develop with only a sterile social theoretical base or a philosophical approach. If liberalism does not find a special Hungarian terminology and assets, clear targets and appropriate policies, it will inevitably and very soon disappear from the political scene.