Industrial Workers, Socialist Industrialisation and the State in Hungary, 1948-1958
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CONTRIBUTORS:
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UNIVERSITY / COLLEGE:
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YEAR:
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1998
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PUB TYPE:
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Thesis/Dissertation
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PAGES:
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421 p.
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SUBJECT(S):
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None
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DISCIPLINE:
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History
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HTTP:
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LANGUAGE:
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English
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PUB ID:
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103-421-506
(Last edited on
2005/11/26 07:20:47 US/Mountain)
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SPONSOR(S):
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ABSTRACT:
This thesis examines the interaction between industrial workers, the Stalinist state and the process of socialist industrialisation in post-war Hungary during the immediate post-war period. Industrial workers are examined as a group in order to analyse the interaction between social transformation and state formation under socialist conditions. In contrast to well-worn theories of "totalitarianism" and "atomisation" relations between the state and society are presented as an interactive and multi-faceted process.
The socialist state attempted to create a society based upon productive labour. Work became the basis of socialist citizenship, whilst membership of the collectivity of "working people" (dolgozó nép) became the passport to full membership of socialist society. Added to this was the regime objective of integrating the whole of the dolgozó nép into socialist labour, which the state came to define as working within the socialist sector. The state implemented a policy of proletarianisation, the integration of the population into the socialist labour force.
The new state sought to realise this programme under specific social and political conditions. The country's "liberation" by the Red Army and the beginnings of the Cold War in 1947 ensured that in Hungary the new state would "build socialism" by importing the Stalinist model of centralised economic planning. Under these conditions the industrialisation drive created an economy characterised by endemic shortages, shortages that were not merely felt in production but in almost every area of social life. The dynamics of shortage, the individualisation of production and the re-composition of the workforce that proletarianisation entailed had created a fragmented workforce with little sense of unity. The competition between workers for work and for favourable treatment had corrosive effects on solidarity at the point of production as individuals or small groups of workers sought to survive by developing informal control over their remuneration.
As a result of their experiences of socialist industrialisation workers developed a generalised hatred of the state . This did not translate, however, into class-based mobilisation from below. The nature of the economy and society created by socialist industrialisation shaped resistance in ways which were far from conducive to solidarity or to the development of an encompassing worker identity. The shop floor environment led to the particularisation of social identities within the factory, whilst the spread of informal economic activity resulted in the growth of social isolation and privatisation.
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