Acta Oeconomica 14. (1975)
1975 / 1. szám - Huszár István: What Thirty Years Tell
Ada Oeconomica Vol. 14 (l),pp. 1-14 (1975) I. Huszár WHAT THIRTY YEARS TELL* The author draws certain conclusions from thirty years of Hungarian economic and social progress, analysing the results and deficiencies of the extensive and intensive stages of development. He looks into the way in which the Hungarian economy has joined the international division of labour and, finally, he sums up the lessons of the development of the system of economic control in Hungary. The last thirty years - hardly half a man’s life these days - have prompted a scientific analysis of the history of liberated Hungary again and again. We certainly find the subjectivism of contemporaries in these analyses and there is a lack of historical perspective, yet the multitude of events, the size and portent of the changes, and, last but not least, the planning of our future while relying on the past forces us to draw up abalance sheet. We delimit periods; search for political, economic and social interrelations; we explain the yesterdays so as to achieve new successes tomorrow and avoid the mistakes of the past. Attempting to draw the major lessons from the economic development of thirty years, we are up against the difficulty that economic development can not or hardly can be explained in itself, nor can it be measured entirely in its own terms. Political, economic and social questions are so closely interlinked that only their order of importance can be determined - primacy being given to politics - and each of them can, as a rule, be best measured with the aid of the other two. We cannot here undertake a systematic survey of economic development and results achieved. But, precisely in the interest of future development, it will be worth attending to some characteristic items which are perhaps the most instructive. Interrelations between economic and political development The social relations of pre-war Hungary can be described in a summary way as powerful remnants of the feudal order, a capitalist social system, extreme class differences and contradictions and a largely hierarchical structure. The political system correspondend to these relations: dictatorical, fascist state power, and an almost complete absence of democratic rights and institutions. The basis, and thus the reason, for political and social relations, but also their consequence was the economic * The article is based on a lecture held at the scientific session arranged by the Karl Marx University of Economics and the Hungarian Economic Association on April 21, 1975, on the occassion of the 30th anniversary of Hungary’s Liberation. Acta Oeconomica 14,1975