Kapitalizmus: egy fogalom színeváltozásai
Ferenc Takó: Once upon a Time There Was… or Wasn’t?: Marx and Weber on Capitalism
The interpretations of capitalism by Karl Marx and Max Weber are often subject to comparison based on various criteria. The most significant difference between their approaches is that while Marx assumes that the capitalist mode of production is essentially different from that of previous periods, and accordingly criticises the use of the term “capital” in the context of preceding epochs, Weber frequently suggests that “capital”—and capitalist thought—existed at various points in history around the world. The study analyses relevant passages by Marx and Weber from a socio-philosophical angle, briefly covering the capitalism interpretation of Werner Sombart as well, to argue that this opposition is caused by the differences between the terminology of the two authors, and that their views about their own time show more similarities than previously assumed. These parallels, as demonstrated by Takó, are revealed by comparing Marx’s narrow understanding of capital with Weber’s “capitalist spirit” rather than with what he denotes as “capital.”
Aladár Madarász: Two Encyclopaedia Articles on Capitalism: Sombart on Jewish Money Lenders and Schumpeter on Creative Destruction
The discourse about the term capitalism and its subsequent evolution into an acknowledged historical and analytical description of an era were shaped by the works of W. Sombart and J. Schumpeter. Starting from their encyclopaedia articles on capitalism, this paper follows the inception and reception of their parallel contributions about the genesis and development of capitalism: Sombart’s reasoning on the role of Jews and Schumpeter’s metaphor on “creative destruction” as the driving force. Sombart’s attempt to show that the Jews, their otherness, and their moneylending activities played a crucial role in the rise of modern capitalism was met with a mixed and controversial reception—from applause to sharp rebuttal as unscientific nonsense—by conservative German professors and religious scholars alike. Schumpeter’s metaphor, on the other hand, became a byword. Rather than searching for an external factor responsible for the emergence of the capitalist spirit, Schumpeter described the development of capitalism as an endogenous growth process of entrepreneurial innovation. Despite some similar features of their outlook and ideas, Sombart’s manifold, unsystematic and contradictory, and in some respect politically biased, oeuvre is largely forgotten by now, while Schumpeter’s legacy continues to attract adherents in evolutionary economics.
Ágnes Pogány: From Ennobled Capitalism to National Socialism: Béla Imrédy’s Economic and Political Views
Béla Imrédy is mainly remembered as prime minister, a war criminal who chose to stand by the Germans to the end and was subsequently executed in 1946. His life as an economist and economic politician before 1938, however, is much less known. The study examines Imrédy’s views from his first public addresses and publications to the end of the Second World War. The aim, on one hand, is to reconstruct the world view and political discourse he adopted to interpret the changeable political and economic situation and to strengthen his own changing political position. On the other hand, the study also examines to what extent these factors influenced Imrédy’s politics. Imrédy’s views underwent substantial changes between 1927 and 1944. As a young economist he shared the views of economic liberalism predominant in that era. As a politician and member of the government a couple of years later, at the lowest point of the Great Depression, he claimed to believe in an economic system based on Christian values and social solidarity. As an opposition party politician, and the leader of a far right party during the Second World War, he professed as a national socialist working for a people’s welfare state based on supremacist ideas and occupational hierarchy. Later, as minister of finance, his economic policy was markedly determined by his increasingly strong conviction about budget cuts and savings, whereby he rejected Keynesian crisis management by demand simulation and opted for fiscal orthodoxy and financial austerity in budget management instead.
Mihály Laki: János Kornai on Capitalism, 1953–1989
The study sets out to explore how János Kornai conceived capitalism in the years of socialism. The members of the scientific community related differently to the oppressive structures and censorship of the communist regime. Kornai opted for academic language and a publication-research strategy, which made it possible for him to avoid open confrontation with the representatives of the official “scientific ideology.” In the meantime—based on the results of comparative economics and on his new discoveries—he acquired the knowledge and methods which allowed him to develop one of the high impact programs of transition after the collapse of socialism in Hungary.
Katonás történetek
Roland Perényi: A Miscarriage of Justice or Judgment Well Founded?: The Relationship between Military Court and the Public in the Context of the 1909 Hofrichter Case
In 1909 the army of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was shaken to the core by a murder scandal. Richard Mader, a k. u. k. sergeant, received an unusual package in the mail, which, according to the enclosed letter, contained pills “to fortify virility.” The sergeant tried the health supplement and was found dead by his aide later that day. The police found out that a number of freshly promoted officers have received similar packages, which turned out to contain cyanide pills. Eventually the police arrested Adolf Hofrichter, first lieutenant of the Fourteenth Linz Infantry, who was subsequently sentenced by the military court on June 25, 1910. The Hofrichter Case is especially illuminating for various reasons. Until these homicide attempts against officers in the k. u. k. army, there had been no precedents for premeditated murder of soldiers of rank by a fellow officer. Regardless of its unusual nature, the murder case reveals the internal and external pressures exerted upon the officers during their career in the k. u. k. army. At the same time, it also shows the widening chasm between the military and civil society, which became the leitmotif of the ensuing media discourse. Based on these two aspects of the story, the study examines available sources to discover the attitudes of the various actors towards the attack on staff officers and towards the army of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in general: the civilian public informed about the case through modern journalism on one hand, and the three protagonists of the case—First Lieutenant Hofrichter, Military Prosecutor Kunz and the attorney of the defence, Richard Pressburger—on the other.
Gábor Csiszár: The Redl Case in Contemporary Press
The study compares articles published about Colonel Alfred Redl’s treason and subsequent suicide in 1913 in twenty-four contemporary Hungarian-language dailies. Nearly all the papers fell short of editorial integrity, either by publishing fake news or by withholding information that did not fit into the narrative flow of the coverage of the case, for example, Redl’s homosexuality. Csiszár examines the attitudes of contemporary political press towards the government, the military, the ministries and the judicial system, suggesting that the number of publications which supported and lauded the government in power was higher than previously assumed in scholarship. Regardless of their political sympathies, many papers incited against ethnic communities on account of Redl’s Slavic background and demanded a firm political foothold of the reliable Hungarians within the monarchy. Based on an incorrect assumption about Redl’s Jewish heritage, one Catholic daily also went as far as publishing an openly anti-Semitic op-ed. The other theme in the study is the representation of homosexuality in contemporary media. The articles reveal the attitudes towards homosexuality upheld by opinion leaders of the intelligentsia a hundred years ago. Homosexuals were depicted as victims of sexual abuse who are (in modern terminology) bisexual, and effeminate in appearance. They were believed to be blackmailed but at the same time it was assumed that they built a secret network to support each other. There were reports about (probably fictitious) orgies in Vienna, transvestite photography, and false charges of paedophilia. One of the articles of Pesti Hirlap, however, was a pioneer of the gay civil rights movement in Hungary: adopting the German fight against Article 175, the author argues for the abolishment of criminality.
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