The Budapest School Model of Eastern European Societies

Abstract

The Budapest School, a label coined by the Hungarian Marxist phi? losopher Georg Lukacs shortly before his death in 1971, refers to a small group of dissident scholars that Lukacs considered his best and brightest students. Most of the group held academic positions in Budapest until 1973. At that time, their dissident views resulted in official condemna? tion and job loss, and since then several have left Hungary for academic positions at Australian universities. The Budapest School model of Eastern European societies, labeled the over needs, is due primarily to the work of Agnes Heller, her husband Ferenc Feher, Georg and Maria Markus, and Mihaly Vadja. As a model, dictatorship over needs is an attempt by this group of leftist scholars to develop a conceptual framework that cap? tures the essence of Eastern European societies. Moreover, dictatorship over needs is a highly abstract conceptualization, emphasizing the fun? damental features of Soviet society that not only distinguish it from the Western mixed economies but identify it as an historically unique social formation. While the model considers Eastern European societies as unique social formations, it also emphasizes the Budapest School's belief that these societies cannot adequately be understood by the prevailing perspectives of the Western left. As democratic socialists, they argue that Eastern European society should not be viewed as a form of state capitalism, a form of bureaucratic socialism or a peculiar form of pre? capitalist society. [Feher, Heller and Markus, pp. 22-44] No previous leftist explanation of twentieth century Eastern Euro? pean societies, in the Budapest School view, has done justice to the real nature of oppression and social domination in these self-reproducing systems of unfree paternalism. [Feher, 1978, p. 42] From their perspec? tive, the socialist movements associated with Leninism and Bolshevism produced regimes which are, in fact, anti-capitalist but which are not socialist but rather an abominable caricature of everything socialists have lived and fought for. [Feher, Heller and Markus, pp. 235-236] From their experiences in Hungary, as well as from their analysis, they found that there is nothing socialist about Soviet society, and that it is an historical dead-end despite its self-reproductive capacity. . . .[p. 121]