Contested socialisms: the conflict between critical sociology and reform economics in communist Hungary, 1967–71

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between economics and sociology in communist Hungary in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The discussion is grounded in the two fields’ respective history from the 1940s through to the conservative political backlash between 1968 and 1975. The Brezhnevite assault brought havoc to Hungarian sociology and social theory but left economic research basically intact and unscathed. My curiosity is in the contrasting fortunes and differing experiences of the two disciplines. We have to ask why these two segments of social thought and intellectual life fared so differently in the storms that reached the shores of reform communist Hungary following the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The answers to these questions are to be found in the historically contingent cultures of the two fields; in their differing identities and professional ethos; in their understanding of their place and role in society; in their internal politics; and in their relationship with the wider structures of political power and policymaking.