Ferenc Gyurcsány's answer to the problems of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) was an adaptation of Tony Blair's "Third Way" so successfully employed as well by Bill Clinton and others. The "Third Way" is a term that has been used to describe a political position that attempts to transcend left-wing and right-wing politics. This approach is commonly viewed as representing a centrist compromise between capitalism and socialism, or between market liberalism and democratic socialism. But the Hungarian version of a centrist, reformist political orientation within the Hungarian Socialist Party failed. Ferenc Gyurcsány was unable to deliver, and today MSZP is in crisis. What happened and why? This is what the party leadership is now trying to figure out, but I'm not at all sure that they are on the right track. The catchword today is "return to the left." Everybody is talking about "leftist values," whatever they are.
Gyurcsány, who has not been seen or heard from since his "retirement," still has his blog except instead of writing every day as he used to he writes perhaps once a week. Mind you, his "fans" are still numerous. His last blog had over 800 comments! Usually he confines himself to everyday affairs--his knee operation, his children--but here and there he writes a few lines about politics. It is evident that he is sticking with most of his political ideas, which he still considers the foundation of a modern Hungarian society. It seems that Gyurcsány has also had enough of all this talk about "leftist values" and the accusation that where MSZP went wrong in the last seven years was the party's abandonment of leftist values. To quote Gyurcsány (June 30, 2009; http://kapcsolat.hu/blog/a_baloldalisagrol): "The question is not whether we were leftist enough in the last few years but instead whether there were times when we were too leftist." Here "being leftist" for Gyurcsány means giving too much to segments of society that are not active in producing economic growth. Children, students, the disabled, pensioners, and so on.
Those in the party who are considered to be the followers of Gyurcsány join the others in repeating the "toward the left" slogan, but they add that it also means "modernization." What modernization means in this context is also a mystery. Then there are the left-wingers. Katalin Szili and Tibor Szanyi are good examples. They want to help the lower classes and are less concerned with the middle class that is actually the backbone of the party's electorate. As Szili said this morning, she wants to work for a "plebeian mass party of the left." However, she immediately added that she doesn't want to have "a squandering state but one that develops." You will say: "but this doesn't make any sense." No, it doesn't. It doesn't because I have the feeling that Ms. Szili doesn't know what she is talking about. Both Szili and Szanyi say that they wholeheartedly support Gordon Bajnai's program because the country has no other choice. They are supporting the program of the man who just the other day made it crystal clear that "the number 3.8 is carved in stone." That is, the deficit cannot be higher than 3.8% and surely no "squandering" of public money is possible with that tight a budget. (I use the word "squandering" here because I couldn't find any better equivalent for the Hungarian "osztogató." I think this translation is fairly close.) And there's the rub. How can MSZP be the "plebeian mass party of the left," which presumably implies a very generous state, under the present circumstances? I don't think it can be.
There are some who think that MSZP's problem is that it suffers from left-over Kádárism that prevented the full blossoming of the market economy. At the same time they continued the "insane spending" that kept the Kádár regime going for a while. As the matter of fact, practically all governments after 1990 added to the "insane spending" until the the country nearly went bankrupt. But the most recent crisis wasn't the first. In the latter part of the 1970s and the mid-1990s the country was on the brink of financial ruin as well. Both times stringent measures had to be adopted. But these measures were temporary. As soon as the country got out of financial trouble the government went back to its profligate ways. This is what they call in Hungary a policy of "loosening and tightening."
The socialists at the moment are busily apologizing for not being socialist enough. They practically admit, repeating the accusations of the opposition, that they did nothing and achieved nothing. This is, of course, not at all true. They try to explain their failure on a lack of communication. They say that they didn't "explain" the reforms properly. Some critics claim that in the middle of a financial crisis and the implementation of an austerity program the government simply shouldn't have initiated a reform program. A lot of criticism is levelled against the socialists' coalition partner, SZDSZ, because of their doctrinaire liberalism that led to the disastrous so-called health reform. Yes, health reform was handled poorly, but it wasn't a pivotal factor in the failure of the Gyurcsány government. The decline of the party began immediately after the announcement of the austerity program during the summer 2006 and has continued relentlessly ever since.
Ferenc Gyurcsány's problem was not that he was not leftist enough but that he wasn't courageous enough to make greater cuts in unnecessary social spending. To the very end he insisted on keeping the extra month of pension for 3.5 million pensioners, which was a huge budgetary burden. And when he first came out with his austerity program he said "one mustn't be afraid, it won't hurt." Well, of course, it was going to hurt. He should have been totally frank and told the whole truth. After all, it seems that Bajnai's stringent measures have been accepted and there are already tangible results that even the population has been noticing. Perhaps a less timid, less leftist approach would have been more successful than the one Gyurcsány chose. The question is whether the party leaders would have accepted such measures in the summer of 2006. They seem to accept them now but perhaps three years later, after a world economic crisis, they came to their senses. In any event, I cannot see a return to the good old socialist "plebeian mass party of the left" any time soon. The only way out is still Gyurcsány's way, without him for the time being.
"But the Hungarian version of a centrist, reformist political orientation within the Hungarian Socialist Party failed. Ferenc Gyurcsány was unable to deliver, and today MSZP is in crisis. What happened and why?"
This is a complex question and neither the left, nor Gyurcsány seem to me to have a convincing answer to it. The first problem was that while the "third way" was useful in winning the first election, it lacked any kind of attractive political programme. Clinton won in 1992, and within two years of his inaugration spent the remainder of his two terms mitigating the effects of Republican control of Congress. In Italy it brought the left one full term of power between 1996 and 2001, and the same in France from 1997 and 2002; in Germany the left barely scraped a second term in 2002, and in the UK - while electorally more successful - its defeat is imminent as a result of the crunch that has followed its credit-financed boom. Ultimately as a philosophy it has been vacuous, and it almost certainly had no chance at the outset in Hungary.
On a superficial level the crisis of the MSZP has nothing though to do with ideology, and everything to do with the issue of trust. In 2002 it won the first round because of fear of FIDESZ, and lost the second round (though not the election) because Orbán re-awakened fear of Bokros between the two rounds. Medgyessy bought himself stability with his wage and pension measures, but his government was de-stabilised by an almost permanent continuance of the campaign between the rounds of 2002 down to 2006. In 2006 (and I'm quoting from the MSZP pledge card, which I have infront of me) Gyurcsány promised (1) 400,000 new jobs, (2) a 25% wage increase to 2010, (3) free public transport for anyone over 62, (4) an increase in family allowances of at least 20% before 2010, and (5) the introduction of a "social tarrif" for gas and electricity. And within weeks of the elections he delivered an austerity package that cut real incomes fairly substantially. And then came the infamous speech, and measures like the charges for health care etc. They were then defeated in the April 2008 referenda, which produced an about-turn from Gyurcsány. After having argued budgetary measures and reforms were necessary for two years (after having promised policies diametrically opposed to these in the election), he then blamed his coalition partner for the state the government was in and partially reversed the reforms, begging the question of what families who tightened their belts after 2006 had suffered for. When the economic crisis arrived he displayed little idea of what to do; sent his Finance Minister to sign a disastrous deal with the IMF, flip-flopped in the spring and then resigned. His party then abandoned all political honour by choosing rather to take twelve months of their salaries than exercize any independent judgement and acquiesed in a bloodless coup d'etat by the country's financial elite, which is busy imposing large cuts in the living standards of the poor, while its token "leftist" measure - the property tax - has more holes than the average swiss cheese, so anyone with a half-decent accountant will be able to avoid paying too much of it. Given this record - which is pretty spectacular by any international comparative or historical standard - it isn't really any wonder the MSZP in crisis. After all this, why should anyone believe a word they say?
But the reason they have landed in this mess, is precisely because they have lacked an ideological compass, and a sense of what it means to be a left-wing party in a post-socialist state. Many of their blinkers stem from the fact that they are ultimately a product of the reform communism of 1968, and the attempt through "socialism as a human face" to manage a transition to something like western European social democracy. The problem really was that when, after 1989, it became politically possible to abandon the centrally planned economy and Marxist-Leninist dictatorship, the space for social democracy in the west had disappeared. In 1989 the right governed in London, Bonn and Rome. In Madrid and Paris nominally left-wing governments pursued policies of neo-liberal modernization that were indistinguishable from those of the right. The model they wished to emulate had itself collapsed, and they had nowhere really to go. Ten years later the "left" had taken power in London, Berlin and Rome, but only through a policy of accommodation to the neo-liberal economic and political climate in western Europe, just as Hungarian society was tiring of transition.
What can they do? A large part of the problem, is that they can't really do very much. The trust problem means that the best they can do is to try and minimize the scale of their defeat in the next elections. And then they can try to re-build the left in opposition. But this isn't going to be easy - after all it took Labour in the UK eighteen years, and the SPD in Germany sixteen years before they were trusted with power again after being ejected as a consequence of their handling of the stagflationary crises of the 1970s. And now, the international background is worse - after all in their north-west European core areas social democratic parties struggled to win 20% of the vote across a range of countries (the UK, Germany, Belgium, France, the Netherlands) where they either still, or have held power in the past decade. It isn't going to be easy for the MSZP to survive in this kind of climate in its present form.
Posted by: Mark | July 07, 2009 at 06:08 PM
I am embarrassed writing so much here, but it is hard to resist.
I must say, I do agree with your conclusions, more or less, but disagree with your reasoning.
If I may remind you of Gyurcsany's first lecture at Corvinus University, you will remember how he explained the cycles of largess and austerity in economic behaviour of the consecutive governments and how he vowed to avoid it.
So, he was clearly aware of this problem, but was either too weak, or too inconsistent to stick to it in his policies and force the party and the parliament to follow suit.
Then, when it came to the introduction and realization of his reforms, all very reasonable, first he flinched at the opposition of his own party, then he flinched again at the opposition of the, well, the Opposition. He did not realize at all, that he is supposed to manoeuvre around all this obstacles, as is a politician's wont, instead he gave in more and more, until the reforms lost all meaning and all efficacy.
For example, when the constitutional court ruled that the patients' co-payment was suitable as a subject of referendum, because it was not part of the budget, he, instead incorporating it into the budget and getting it approved by parliament, left it unattended and chose to go for the referendum on the issue. This was a mere technical mistake that cost him dearly and together with numerous other similar mistakes removed from his hand the initiative that normally is the greatest weapon of the incumbent.
Because of this increasingly disadvantegeous timing, he was lagging behind the events, unable to regain the initiative.
In this situation his fundamental need would have bee the support of his party, unwavering in the carrying ot of the reforms. Well, good luck!
He neglected to insure himself of that support the way Bajnai have done later.
As silly as the socialists are, they are looking now to blame Gyurcsany and the lack of proper ideology instead of recognizing the fact that they failed in their political craftsmanship and not in their ideology. They had a job to do, they knew what the job was, (Gyurcsany told them in Öszöd, in no uncertain terms), but they were too cowardly and too inept to carry it out. They simply failed to exercise their power.
I don't believe that looking for, and finding new ideological underpinning will the least help them.
What they must do is the same as Bajnai is doing: define what "good governance" means at the given moment and carry that out resolutely and consistently, regardless of what the opposition says. Damn all ideology!
I am afraid, the changing of government to fidesz could scarcely be avoided next year, however, it will serve as useful contrast to what good, pragmatic government is and will help them regain the initiative after four years of rest in opposition.
Posted by: Sandor | July 07, 2009 at 06:56 PM
To paraphrase Neil Kinnock, it's a ridiculous situation when a SOCIALIST government - a "socialist" government - is asking its supporters (who are often elderly and tend to be working-class) to vote in support of a bed charge resulting from hospitalisation.
As if being in a Hungarian hospital isn't already bad enough.
That was an absolute low point from which there was, and will be no recovery. As Mark says, it is a betrayal of the trust given to the party to protect the more vulnerable in society. Is this "leftist?" To be honest, from Bismark onwards, it could also be described as paternalism. But in the MSZP there are few other concepts of leftism - few ideas on ownership or reducing child poverty.
I had to go to a clinic on the day it was introduced and was told by a lady with a clipboard, that in England, the NHS is struggling because they haven't introduced these measures.
So very wrong, and sadly indicative of the arrogance and ignorance which informs much of Hungarian public life.
But also indicative of the moral vacuum in which most Hungarian politics operates. Perhaps, for Sandor, politics is about pragmatism. But this technocratic approach is limited at the best of times, and dangerous in a deep recession. Politics relates quite deeply to how people see their interaction within society and reflects a value system. I don't believe one could find many political scientists outside Hungary who believe in politics as rational choice.
In Sandor's model, the aspirations and values inherent in politics are subsumed to classical economics (itself an imperfect and overrated pseudo-science, largely based on spurious time-based axes). Sandor's argument - which probably reflects Gyurcany's - is essentially anti-political and in certain regards anti-democratic. The Third Way can be seen as a philosophy that was not a philosophy.
I'm no fan of Giddens, but his Third Way relied on a strong civil society movement - charities and organisations - and this doesn't exist in Hungary.
The question may not be, where did the socialists go wrong, but whether they are being fairly punished for the failure to protect Medgyessy in 2004. After all, he had actually delivered on his promises, and was in the process of a more mild austerity package. The MSZP/SZDSZ opportunism won them an election which would have been the one to lose in 2006. Instant karma's gonna get you...
Posted by: whoever | July 07, 2009 at 10:49 PM
whoever, I see some reason in what you are saying. But not enough to be convincing.
Funny that you should mention Bismarck, the inventor of socialized health care. Similarly funny is how you disregard the German example of pragmatic governance, regardless of party affiliation: starting with Adenauer, through Kiesinger, Erhardt, and Schmidt, not to mention the present coalition. There is absolutely no excuse for the application of "values" at the detriment of effective, good government.
All this however is just hypothetical philosophizing, as far as Hungary is concerned, because they are nowhere near to be in the position to pick and choose values and governance models. And if you add the effect of the all pervasive corruption, there is no point to discuss the whole mess in terms of rationality.
Posted by: Sandor | July 07, 2009 at 11:33 PM
Sándor: "Similarly funny is how you disregard the German example of pragmatic governance, regardless of party affiliation: starting with Adenauer, through Kiesinger, Erhardt, and Schmidt, not to mention the present coalition. There is absolutely no excuse for the application of "values" at the detriment of effective, good government."
You write here as if "good government" and "values" are in some kind of opposition to each other; in fact they are mutually self-reinforcing, and I think the (West) German example shows this. All of the politicians you mention were motivated by the desire to build a democratic, European German state after the disaster of Nazism, and under the shadow of the threat of state socialism. I suspect if FIDESZ and MSZP had shown the same kind of committment to overcome a troubled past, and had shown the same unequivocal committment to democratic values as both the SPD and CDU/CSU have then Hungary's democracy would be in a better state than it is now.
Helmut Schmidt, despite his advanced years, continues to be a staunch defender of social democratic values. In his recent articles in Die Zeit he has held the "market fundamentalism" that spread from the US and UK to CEE (and continued by Bajnai et al) responsible for the economic crisis and has advocated its reversal. It is a shame that so-called "social democrats" in Hungary haven't even bothered to read him.
Sándor: "Damn all ideology!"
Fine, but maybe you have missed the point that Bajnai's programme is probably the most transparently ideological of any Hungarian government since the system change. Shrink the state, make people stand on their own two feet (though one wonders what those who can't are supposed to do), and subordinate everything to the free play of market forces (even when they don't appear to be delivering). I don't happen to agree with this ideology, but one can, as some commenters on this blog have done, make an intelligent defence of it. But, please, let's not pretend it is any less ideological than any of the alternatives.
Posted by: Mark | July 08, 2009 at 06:56 PM
One of the yields of the last month was to show how superficial and shallow is the would be ideology of modernization in the MSZP. During the run up to the congress one of the main dividng lines inside the party was between those who advocated a "leftist turn" and those who advocated the preservation of the "modernization" as the party's main goal. A significant proportion of the party see in the Bajnai government the embodiment of the real left, a government making the necessary reforms at last, leading out Hungary from the Kádár-era. (It is not insignificant that in his recent interviews Bajnai tried to depict his government as the one that achieved everything the villainous politicains weren't capable in their fear from the electorate in the last decade.)
FRo soem people it is clearly an obsession. For example Vitány in an interview given recently to the Népszabadság periodized the history as follows: the West, after a great historical achievement reached the welfare state in the second half of the 20th century and moved forward towards the
sel-care state! He even praised the Horthy-era, as at that time his father only had to pay the 5 pengő to the doctor and nobody felt being ashamed... This is perversity and obsession, I would say.
The funniest (or the most twisted) part of the story is not the fact that modernization is not defined in this rethoric (and therefore I can't really understand why it is percieved as being opposed to a leftist turn?), but that it's roots are in the work's of Bibó and Erdei Ferenc. The main reason for putting the "reforms" in the frontline of the political agenda, even at the cost of the living standards of the population is their belief in the "zsákutcás fejlődés", the "feudal remnants" and the surviving Kádárism as the roots of all evil. Sometimes I feel that they are waging a crusade against this percieved phenomenons. (Note that Gyurcsány's idological works were based on the same assumptions.) I've heard Vitányi many times presenting that kind of "analysis", and it was in vain if someone, for example Mária Ormos, tried to contradict it. (Ormos was never an enemy of reforms, but she considers Vitányi's "analysis" ridiculous, that has nothing to do with history and insulting to the people, as it treats them as lazy, indolent, stupid etc.)
Anyway, in this context of imminent defeat and a lot of social problems to be adressed the word "modernization" turned out to be an empty signifier, without any defined content beyond the will to transform the country at once according to some unfounded assumptions regarding its historical development. (Although I adnmire many part's of Bibó's thinking, his "historical analysis" is rather an anti-Szekfű pamphlet, a response to the Három Nemzedék, a not anti-liberal story of decline.)
Posted by: Gábor | July 09, 2009 at 02:43 AM
As for Gyurcsány's mistakes and faults: it was clear even before the 2006 elections that with the SZDSZ embracing wholeheartedly neo-liberal economic theory there is a very limited sphere of possible cooperation. In 2006 the coalition should have to agrre on one issue dear to the heart of the SZDSZ and pursue it vigorously and leave everything else to the socialists. The result instead was a somewhat chaotic reform attempt in wich the SZDSZ insisted not only on the reform of helath care but the introduction of the flat tax (and the brutal cut of social spending with it). Therefore I would be more emphatetic with the socialists, who among those circumstanes tried to achieve compromises in every field and that way effectively blocking every major reform attempt. (But once agin, I think the rethorical concession to the SZDSZ on the helth care insurance issue was disastrous. The planned system was far fom being the initially propsed private insuarance system with a relatively short transition period to the individually assessed insurance fees, but to allow the SZDSZ to save its face it was referred to as a private isnurance system...)
It's true that Gyurcsány tried to bring about reforms with not allowing the social differences to grow (at least in terms of between the higher and lower tenth of the population), but as he was (and is?) rather and adherent of the market idea he was not capable to mobilize against those who criticized his politics and ineffective, because it takes into consideration social issues and not ready to implement the brutal spending cuts. (And the problem with the credibility and trustworthiness played a signifacnt role in it.) I would suspsect, that it was a factor behind his flip-flop in this year as well.
Posted by: Gábor | July 09, 2009 at 03:25 AM
I tend to agree with whoever's statement that Sándor's approach to - let's say - good governance is non-democratic. It is rather leading to an Orwellian world. Many of today's economists are convinced that the society can be described with econimc models and even social systems should be organized according to market principles. They always propose an optimal solution - supported by mathematical models, seemingly sophisticated, but rudimentary for many mathematicians. The real problem is, that if such dedicated, single soultion for every social problem exists, how can anyone oppose it? The only possible action - in order to provide the community with the maximum public good - to accept and implement the propsals. I would prefer a word in wich we can make mistakes, to a world directed by econimists.
Hungary seems to be a special case in this sense, as the economic filed is dominated by neoliberals and very few contradicting ideas appear. Quite telling was the fact, that only Péter Róna was capable to put forward his contesting views, who was a banker at Solomon and Barney's. Where alternative econimc discourses exist it can be possible for politicians to free themselves for some extent from the "experts", but in Hungary everyboy who is not ready to implement thier ideas become a silly politician, flirting with the voters, buying the electorate etc.
The awkward thing is that the present governemtn is doing the same, aiming at a different group. Instead of paying for the support of inactives, they are paying for the indebted, middle class rent-seekers. Those, whoe are supposed to be educated, capable to take the responsibility for their own life, having the necessary knowledge of the economy etc. And what happaned and happans? This backbone of the society take a burden higher than it can bear, and it was clear from the beginning. But the government seeks a soultion exclusively for them, instead of a more balanced and right distribution of the burdens of the crisis. To aggravate the situation even more, in order to lift this burden from them the government is not seeking solutions in the financial system, but in the form of a stronger forint, while it menas the loss of every competivity advantage the country awkwardly achieved in this year. Although they are obsessed with the idea that Hungary is way behind its neighbours in terms of competivity (what is a doubious assessment in itself), they are ready to sacrifice the suddenly emerged advantages completely. Sometimes I'm even suspicious, whether it is not a deliberate attempt, because this can justify their obssession that lowering labour costs is the only way to gain competivity... Moreover, the government is even ready to give hidden subsidies for incompetitive enterprises. At least the cuts in social contributions is nothing else then a subsidy for declining (maybe even negative) marginal product of additional labor, instead of encouraging higher productivity. Something for the rent-seekers from the economy as well...
Posted by: Gábor | July 09, 2009 at 03:46 AM
Gábor: "Ormos was never an enemy of reforms, but she considers Vitányi's "analysis" ridiculous, that has nothing to do with history and insulting to the people, as it treats them as lazy, indolent, stupid etc.)"
I have long been interested in the ways in which European (and indeed Hungarian) social and economic history has been distorted in political debates. I suppose my first acquaintance with it was in 1995 - just before the announcement of the Bokros programme - when an MSZP politician, György Jánosi, I think, was holding forth in a radio interview on why the Horn government had not delivered the social improvements promised in the elections the previous year. His argument, was that the transition would follow the development of capitalism in nineteenth century England and that Hungary would pass through the same "historical stages". There would have to be first a period of "wild capitalism" which would be bad but would create the material base for a welfare state. My jaw dropped! Similar arguments clearly underpin concepts like the "premature-born welfare state" which one hears more frequently - and from reputable social scientists. Leaving aside for a moment the spectacular ignorance of the actual history of British social policy that these arguments reveal, there is something bizarre about the way in this discourse that vulgar Marixst categories have been recycled from the official political economy textbooks of the 1960s and 1970s to justify economic liberalism in the 1990s and the present decade. It is something of a shame that economic history, which flowered in Hungary in the late socialist era, has been so marginal in the academy since the system change. Debate would benefit considerably if Hungary's experience was situated more rigorously in its international context.
I like Bibó's analysis of the political situation in the late 1940s (and have been influenced by it in my own work), and Erdei's acute sociographic analyses of rural society in the inter-war years are essential reading. But I have my doubts about the applicability and viability of the theories of Hungarian history they advance. After all, Hungary is not the only country (look at the influence of the notions of Sonderweg on thinking about the German past) where theorists have been influenced by the irretrievable divergence of their own society from an apparent (and largely idealized) norms of capitalist development. I think their notions of "distorted" and "cul-de-sac" development have led their followers to seek a utopia of a perfect model of development that just doesn't exist.
The "facts" of Hungarian economic development as some of the best calculations of historical national income statistics show is that Hungary could be grouped with the southern European periphery up to the middle of this century. Greece, Spain, Portugal and (if one excludes the industrial powerhouse regions of the north) much of Italy. Hungary's divergence from this group began in the 1960s when most of these countries began to benefit from the post-war western European economic boom, from which Hungary was excluded because of the functioning of its state socialist political and economic system. By 1970, Portugal (the poorest of these states) had overtaken Hungary. I think if their debate confronted this fact more explicitly, we would get a lot further.
Posted by: Mark | July 09, 2009 at 05:38 AM
Unlike Germany post-World War II, there appeared to be no definitively right or wrong answer about Hungary post Kadarism. Lots of people liked their lives during the twilight of socialism, and for some reason (which is beyond me) even those who hate communism/socialism seem often to distinguish between the political effects of the Socialist system (BAD!) and economic/social elements of the era.
As such, MSZP has for most of the post-1989 period been perfectly happy in adopting policies that were really Kadarism-lite. Gyurcsany spoke of a break from this, but in the end was manifestly unable to do so. The Bajnai Government is (as Mark has noted) the first radical change from this type of politics.
Second, it seems to me (as one who is not a huge fan of an all encompassing social welfare state) that any effort to build a successful social welfare state requires real social cohesion and a responsible citizenry willing to pay the price for such welfarism. Anyone who spends more than one hour in Hungary should understand that social compact does not exist and at least since 1989 has never existed. Instead of the social compact, the welfare state in Hungary survived solely on foreign credit. The locals don't need to sacrifice as long as (the stupid) foreigners are willing to finance us. It is easy to see why people (especially elderly people who will be long dead before the bill comes due) like this bargain. It is, however, impossible to justify this type of politics from a responsible politcal party. In this way, the MSZP is far worse and should face and even more dire political fate than its counterparts in Western Europe. What ever you want to say about Tony Blair and the Labor party in the 1990s, it was not that they promised a free lunch.
Posted by: nwo | July 09, 2009 at 06:20 AM
NWO: "What ever you want to say about Tony Blair and the Labor party in the 1990s, it was not that they promised a free lunch."
I think, in contrast, that "the Third Way" was precisely a way of offering people a "free lunch". In the UK context it was about reassuring the middle classes that they could keep the low tax regime established under Thatcher/Major, while promising Labour's own supporters more collectivism - "Swedish levels of public spending with American levels of taxation". This was an illusion that rested on persuading the UK citizenry that the hard choices of funding state services could be avoided. It was an illusion that was maintained by a titanic housing bubble, in which rising prosperity for home-owners was bought by freezing the young out of property ownership (and has left 8% of the UK population, c. 5 million people stuck on waiting lists for social housing). It was also bought by a mountain of both public and private sector debt (equivalent to 300% of UK GDP). There are clearly differences between "the Third Way" a la Blair, and the same a la Gyurcsány, though having lived under both of them, they are not as different as many assume. The biggest one is that Hungarian society is less well able to bear the economic consequences of its implosion, which is not to say it is proving (and will prove) easy for Britons.
Posted by: Mark | July 09, 2009 at 06:39 AM
Mark
I take your point which goes to show that while the contrast I drew was faulty, my underlying point may have even more validity.
Posted by: nwo | July 09, 2009 at 07:16 AM
NWO: "my underlying point may have even more validity."
I agree with your underlying point to an extent. My difference with relates to the origins of nostalgia for the world of the 1970s and 1980s. I don't think it represents actually a belief that that period was "good"; rather for much of society it was seen as "better" than what came after it. In other words it is a consequence of the mess that was made of the transition - to persuade people to change their behaviour, especially in a society characterized by low public trust, one has to be able to offer people tangible improvements. It took until 2000 for average living standards to recover to their 1989 level, and there are still large numbers of people in Hungary for whom living standards have yet to recover. In this context it is not surprising that people become backward-looking, risk averse and politics becomes centred on issues of material security. I don't think "nostalgia" is really about the remnants of Kádárism (however conunter-intuitive this point seems). It is rather more a reaction to what came after the system-change. And if this is correct, then one of the (many) consequences of Bajnai's course will be a population even more hostile to sensible reform than it is at the moment.
Posted by: Mark | July 09, 2009 at 07:56 AM