Ideology and economics: Cooperative organization and attitudes toward collectivization in two Hungarian communities

Abstract

In this paper I have attempted to examine the relationship between the economic success or failure of two agricultural cooperatives, their social and economic organization and the members' attitude toward collectivization. As we saw there is a relationship between the members' positive attitude toward collectivization, the economic success of the cooperative and its internal organization. It would be tempting at this point to suggest the causal primacy of one of these factors in giving rise to the others. Decentralized cooperative structure and individualized work organization, for example, could be seen as being responsible both for the economic success and the members positive attitudes. In the absence of detailed longitudinal data on all these factors which charted the introduction of modifications in the organization of production against economic success in one cooperative and the lack of these in the other, such causal primacy cannot be assumed. It is possible, however, to examine briefly what the relationship between economic success, economic and social organization and attitudes imply about the emergence of the desired collective work ethic and collective ideology in the peasantry of the socialist state.