Conservatism and the State: A Hungarian Perspective

Gergely Szilvay

Hungarians and other central European conservatives are more pro-state than Americans. Unlike their American counterparts, Hungarian conservatives are skeptical that the “invisible hand” of the capitalist market will solve every problem. Rather than endorsing “small government,” they hold that the state must be involved and must be strong.

This conservative policy, which is capitalist but protective, establishes a third way—usually called here “Orbánomics,” neither neoliberal nor social democratic. It proposes workfare instead of welfare. It deliberately establishes an incentivizing state, which tries to support and develop small and medium businesses. It lowers taxes, but remains relatively regulatory. It also maintains a meritocratic social security system, and actively protects Hungarian culture and Christianity. It also works together with established churches. (I have discussed this further at the European Conservative.)

Many on the left and especially in the West sees this approach as a recently developed “right-wing populist” approach, differing from classical conservatism. Thus they accuse it of being false conservatism, even anti-conservative.

These critics are wrong, because their framework is Anglo-Saxon minimal state conservatism. I do not want to say that minimal state conservatism is not conservatism; I simply would like to show that there are different authentic conservative traditions regarding the role of the state. There is not one exclusive “true conservative” solution regarding the role of the state.

Etatist Conservatism: The European Continental School

The European continental school, which is a more robust conservatism, assigns a greater role to the state. It stems from not the empirical-political approach to tradition, but from the “perennial tradition” as understood in Catholicism. The continental school is not against political traditions or folk customs, but it is theoretically more robust and more transcendental.

As the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has become an international phenomenon, and conservatives have started to gather in Budapest, the success and traditions of Hungarian conservatism have become more interesting outside our small country. But what are its origins?

The Founding Hungarian Conservatives

The first five Hungarian conservatives of modern times were Count Aurél Dessewffy (1771–1843), Baron Zsigmond Kemény (1824–45), János Asbóth (1845–1911), Győző Concha (1846–1933) and Count Nándor Zichy (1829–1911).

1. Aurél Dessewffy: The First Conservative

Aurél Dessewffy was the first shining light of Hungarian conservatism. At the end of the eighteenth century, national liberalism had became a strong force, offering a new framework for the problems of Hungary and transgressing the old Habsburgs-versus-national aristocracy divide. The first conservative response, represented by Dessewffy’s father, was an unapologetic defense of the old feudalism and aristocracy (although the aristocracy was divided between an Aulic-Habsburgian wing and a more local and independent one). The brightest minds of national liberalism wanted to end feudalism, but they also were divided regarding the Habsburg rule.

After half a century, liberalism eventually had become a winning force. But Dessewffy was a representative of a new conservatism of his time, and a friend of leading liberal Count István Széchényi. Dessewffy proposed a conservatism that would champion many reforms, but would leave intact the privileges of the nobility (e.g., their taxing authority) and allow the peasant serfs (iobagies) to redeem themselves by buying themselves out. (The eventual solution was redemption without buyout.) He was a proponent of constitutional monarchy, and even wrote for the Edinburgh Review. He also proposed some state reforms, including the foundation of state-owned credit bank and state-led infrastructural development.

2. Zsigmond Kemény and the Problems of Liberal Political Economy

The writer and politician Zsigmond Kemény started as a skeptical liberal before the revolution of 1848–49, but later became a conservative. He accepted the collapse of ancien régime, but in his essays in the 1840s and ’50s he gave attention to the problems caused by liberalism: the miserable state of industrial proletariat, how the peasantry had become poorer and had been uprooted. Liberalism, he saw, had started to alienate people from their own folk and religious traditions. Against mass democracy and a mechanical view of the political community, Kemény promoted the organic view of society and an anti-egalitarian, aristocratic conception of law.

2. The Ruskinian Communitarianism of János Asbóth

János Asbóth, who was an essayist and a public official (and the pioneer of investigative journalism at Hungary) was born to a liberal family, and eventually became a follower of John Stuart Mill. He founded his theory of individualism on Christian anthropology, and later had become more conservative, somehow resembling the views of Disraeli regarding politics. He balanced his individualism with a theory of Hungarian interests along communitarian lines.

Asbóth accepted organic change and reforms, but criticized liberal laissez-faire capitalism because he thought that it replaced the patriarchal rule of old landed aristocracy with the tyranny and immoral oligarchy of capital. In his only novel, Asbóth came up with a Ruskinian political concept, proposing that individual human rights could be suspended in special cases of national or state interest. He warned that the great problem of the near future would be the social question and socialism. He eventually became a founding member of the Catholic People’s Party (Katholikus Néppár) in 1895, whose program was marked by a striking emphasis on the need for social policy, influenced by Rerum novarum of Pope Leo XIII.

4. The Organic-Historic Theory of the State: Győző Concha

Győző Concha, a philosopher of law, proposed that the goal of the state is the common good, and highly emphasized the moral and legal aspects of the state. He also emphasized that the essence of the human being is materialized in the nation, and the nation materialized in the state.

Concha was thus one of the greatest Hungarian representatives of the tradition of the organic-historic theory of the state. But he stressed that the state exists for the sake of human beings and the community of human beings—the nation. So he didn’t want to dissolve the individual in the nation or state. Rather, he thought that one of the main roles of the state is balancing the interests of the different classes of society. He was influenced by Hegel and Fichte, and his theory of the state is the polar opposite of the minimal state theory.

5. Count Nándor Zichy and Catholic Social Teaching

Count Nándor Zichy was the founder of the Catholic People’s Party, which defended the autonomy of the Catholic Church and, as I mentioned, put great emphasis on Catholic social teaching. Also Zichy and his party tried to defend the interests of the peasantry, the workers and small crafters. They proposed to arrange a compromise between the capitalists and workers.

Besides that, he opposed not only laissez-faire liberalism and socialism, but also the sometimes too nationalistic, anti-minority (I mean, ethnic minority) policies of the liberal governments of the era of dualism (1867–1916).

It is true that this era of “peaceful times” was dominated by the liberal party of Ferenc Deák and later that of Kálmán Tisza, as much as Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz-KDNP has dominated the recent era. From today’s point of view Deák’s was a conservative liberal party, being in power for almost half a century not because it “rigged” the system but because there was a national consensus around it. It represented every important national issue, so there was little occasion for an opposition to consolidate. It had such authority that nobody was really able to challenge it. Oftentimes the opposition parties (the more nationalistic and independent Left and the unorganized conservatives) had nothing to oppose either, because they agreed with many policies of the party of Deák and Tisza.

This liberal era, however, was seen by conservatives as kind of capitalistic laissez-faire regime, but in fact the liberal party also supported a modernizing state—which they tried to implement so heavily that it almost went almost bankrupt in the 1870s. Deák’s liberal party made a fusion with the right wing of the Left, that of the fraction of Count István Tisza under the liberal label, and Tisza became prime minister of His Majesty Franz Joseph I.   

The State as Organic Framework

Still, it is true that the first conservative thinkers, politicians and movements of Hungary were not really keen on some kind of minimal state. They imagined the state as an organic framework for the political community, offering a protective force. Hungarian and continental conservatism thus began as defense of the premodern traditional social structure and the monarchy. It defended everything that the American founding was against, and it regarded the minimal state and laissez-faire capitalism as something quintessentially liberal.

This more etatist tradition still dominates Hungarian conservatism today, although in a modernized and democratic form. There is nothing new in Europe or in Hungary about the moderately etatist aspects of “right-wing populism” or the “illiberal state” proposed by Viktor Orbán in 2014. This is an organic part of our own political tradition, which is more communitarian than its American counterpart. From this point of view, the new “populist” and common good schools of the American Right have just arrived back at the origins.

We are small countries here in Europe, and to support some version of “big government” is not viewed the same way here as it is in the United States. We might compare Brussels to Washington from this point of view. European conservatives support more governmental action at the member state level and a more limited role at the federal level.

Although fiscal prudence and meritocratic economic policies are important parts of political conservatism, I think that the essence of conservatism is not about how small or big the state is. Conservatives of different schools of the West can accept each other’s approach regarding the size of the state. Rather the core essence of that political theory is its social teaching—cultural and social conservatism.

American “neoconservatives,” who focus exclusively on the minimal state, capitalism and foreign policy are not conservatives from this point of view, because their so-called conservatism is empty.

While “classical liberals” can be allies of conservatives on many questions, they also are not conservative, and shouldn’t masquerade as such. On the other hand, if they are conservative on social, cultural and moral questions, they shouldn’t masquerade as classical liberals either.

The simple truth is that without substantive social, cultural and moral content there is no conservatism because there is nothing good being conserved. In the Hungarian view, the state is not an evil force to be limited, but a protective force for the good of its people.