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Title: Prof. Dr. K


1
The Delphi Consultation on the Occasion of
Hungarys Accession to the European Union 
WFSF World Conference, Budapest, 2005 August
  • Prof. Dr. Károly Varga
  • Pázmány PĂ©ter Catholic University
  • E-mailh9184var_at_ella.hu

2
Content
  • 1. Entering the Twenty-first Century without
    Utopia
  • 1.1.The Processes Which Span Past Centuries and
    the Future
  • 1.2. The Specificity of the Utopia Syndrom and
    Expert Ways of Dealing with It
  • 2. A Delphi Consultation between Leading
    Hungarian Sociologists Diagnosis and Prognosis
  • 2.1. Iván Vitányi The Light from the Left From
    Reform Marxism to True Leftism
  • 2.2. Henrik Kreutz The Light from the Right. A
    Value-Conservative Theory of the Political
    Transition
  • 2.3 Kálmán Kulcsár Continuity and Transformation
    from a Point of View Between the two worlds
  • 2.4 Iván SzelĂ©nyi A New Societal Formation Comes
    out of the Experimental Laboratory of East and
    Central Europe
  • 3. A Contribution of the Value Sociology
  • 3.1 Value Change as a Frame of Reference for a
    more Fine-Grained Interpretation of Present
    History
  • 3.2 Polytheism of Value Systems versus an
    Ecumenism of Weltanschauungen and Politics

3
Footnote
  • The virtual discussion group called Delphi
    consultation first espoused in 1944 by
    Hungarian-born Tódor Kármán, the idea and method
    was originally applied for the purpose of
    devising future technologies which was hoped to
    put an end to the world war and to launch a new,
    more promising period in the life of mankind.
    (Hence the reference to the Delphi oracle).
  • The Delphi method has since been extended beyond
    the range of the application of technological
    prediction and has grown into an established
    method for the clarification and solution of a
    variety of problems in
  • environmental,
  • business strategy,
  • organisational
  • human resource management
  • national strategy
  • etc

4
  • 1 Entering the Twenty-first Century without
    Utopia
  •  1.1 The Processes Which Span Past Centuries and
    the Future
  •  
  • Examining some of the fateful historic moments of
    the past three centuries
  • Domokos Kosáry, the nestor of the social sciences
    in Hungary found that
  • while in the 18th and 19th century Hungary was
    able to get the utmost out of the opportunities
    the times afforded for the survival and happiness
    of the nation,
  • the 20th century was the age of our missing even
    the few opportunities left by the new
    circumstances which had, in the meantime, turned
    much less favourable.
  •  Centuries of success
  • In the 18th century the liberation war lead by
    Rákóczi, Hungary did not succeed in seceding from
    the Habsburg Monarchy but it was able, through
    that armed uprising and English-Dutch diplomatic
    mediation, to improve its relative position
    within the ill-constructed internal imperial
    structure.
  • In the period of 1848 to 1867 the compromise with
    Austria negotiated by Ferenc Deák offered the
    Hungarian nation more opportunities for catching
    up than since the defeat at Mohács (1526), when
    Turkish conquest put an end to Hungarys status
    as a major power of Europe.

5
  • In contrast, by the end of World War I, which put
    an end to the four-century
  • history of the Habsburg Monarchy and of
    historical Hungary
  • we were in no position to influence the merit of
    the case,
  • in view of the fact that the victorious powers
    were thinking in terms of a cordon sanitaire
    (Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Yugoslavia) against
    Germany, Austria-Hungary and revolutionary
    Russia,
  • but insight and effort could still have reduced
    the magnitude of the loss
  • the only way to draw the attention of those
    negotiating in Paris to Hungary and lend weight
    to the demands expressed in local popular
    referenda would have been a resolute Hungarian
    policy, influence solutions in questions of
    detail which were crucial for the Hungarian
    nation but not so crucial for the decision-makers
    themselves.
  • We must take care to avoid committing the same
    two mistakes based on
  • utopian premises
  • leaving out of consideration the requirements of
    the room for action given by world political
    conditions (blinded by anachronistic ideas of
    historical Hungary)
  • and throwing ourselves at the mercy of great
    powers and multinational
  • corporations by disarming our own forces .

6
  • 1.2. The Specificity of the Utopia Syndrome, its
    Varieties and Expert Ways of Dealing with Them
  • The utopia syndrome can be identified in the
    mixing of
  • changes of the first level type (pseudo, because
    merely combinative within one and the same
    system)
  • and changes of the second level type (real,
    because changing the system itself).
  • In utopian attempts to effect a change first
    level change is aimed at where a
  • solution can be hoped for only through second
    level change.
  •  An historical example involving an assessment of
    a situation whose actor illustrates the kind of
    non-utopian behaviour defined in the model of the
    Palo Alto school in a most ingenious way
  • When, in occupied Denmark, the Nazis ordered Jews
    to wear arm badges
  • with the yellow David star, the king succeeded in
    redefining the situation
  • by announcing that, as there was no difference
    between one Danish citizen
  • and another, the German order held for all Danish
    citizens and therefore he
  • would be the first to wear the badge with the
    yellow star. The majority of
  • the population followed the king's example, as a
    result of which the
  • Germans had no other choice than to withdraw
    their order.

7
Footnote
  • The mathematical specificity of the utopia
    syndrome was brought to light by the Palo Alto
    circle and particularly Watzlawick and his
    colleagues. Relying on and combining the findings
    of Galois mathematical group theory and the
    theory of logical types elaborated by Whitehead
    and Russell, they deployed these findings in
    psychiatry and applied behavioural sciences more
    broadly understood including sociology and
    politology.

8
  • 2. A Consultation between Leading Hungarian
    Sociologists a Diagnosis and Prognosis at the
    Moment of Accession to the European Union
  •  The four Hungarian sociologists are offering
    diagnoses which are distant
  • from, at times even contradictory to each other.
    I will take them one by
  • one, under the following labels
  • The Light from the Left (Iván Vitányi From
    Reform Marxism to True Leftism).
  • The Light from the Right. (Henrik Kreutz
    Wertrationalität and Pragmatic Methodology)
  • Between Two Worlds. (Kálmán Kulcsár Continuity
    and Transformation).
  • Neo-classic Orientation. (Iván SzelĂ©nyi A New
    Societal Formation is Born).
  •  Footnote
  • Two of the sociologists, Iván Vitányi and Kálmán
    Kulcsár are based in Hungary, the other two
    abroad, in the sense that while speaking
    Hungarian as his mother tongue, first language,
    Henrik Kreutz ' entire sociological work has been
    an integral part of the German social science
    tradition while Iván Szelényi started his career
    in Hungary and had to emigrate to the West only
    in the 1970s.

9
  • 2.1. The Light from the Left From Reform
    Marxism to True Leftism
  • Marxist sociologists diagnosed before the
    political transition the anti-
  • authoritarian movements in the Western world that
    merely a crisis of
  • capitalism which will not filter into the
    socialist society.
  • Vitányi is still thinking within the conceptual
    scheme provided by the tradition of Karl Marx
    rather than that of Max Weber. A value system in
    his work appears only as a passive receptacle of
    the events of recent history and of cultural
    policy comprehensively understood.
  • Undoubtedly, Vitányi deserves credit for
    rehabilitating in this country the
  • values of Social Democracy. Paradoxically,
    however, by the time he
  • reached this position, his doubts as to the
    operative force of social
  • democratic values had become more acute.
  • True, there were moments when an independent,
    self-contained, leftist culture of social
    democratic inspiration seemed to exist, a culture
    which perhaps has even spawned a few
    masterpieces. By now, however, it seems that it
    has been able to give birth to masterpieces in
    art, but hardly to any forms of conduct
    discernible for analysis on a social scale.
  • Vitányi as a Homo faber without means gives a
    most depressing
  • description of the state of culture in this
    country (and in the world).

10
  • 2.2. The Light from the Right. The
    Value-Conservative Sociological Theory of the
    Political Transition
  • In the spirit of strategic games, Kreutz goes as
    far back to mythical story of
  • the fall of Troy to find a prefiguring pattern to
    reconstruct the true history
  • of East and Central European political
    transformation.
  • So his societal model reckons with the dynamics
    of the dimensions of
  • Unterwelt and HinterbĂĽhne both in diagnosis
    and in gloomy
  • prognosis.
  • But he demarcates his own camouflaged role
    theory from the
  • conspiracy theories
  • The strategically influenced boundary conditions
    guide a number of individual decisions made in
    uncertain situations in such a way that the
    resultant actions should turn out favourable for
    the strategy.
  • Axiologically speaking extreme zweckrational
    attitude of the self-
  • salvaging political elite completely drove out
    its complementary, i.e.
  • Wertrationalität, indeed it committed the
    blasphemy of degrading
  • Wertrationalität into an instrument for
    camouflaging the real intention.
  • That the wertrational content of achievement is
    here rendered
  • indifferent is shown by the fact that the
    socialist ideology as a value
  • orientation was able to simply switch into its
    capitalist opposite as a mean
  • to secure the salvaging of power and the new rise
    to dominance. (Cf.

11
  • 2.3 Continuity and Transformation from a Point
    of View Between the two worlds
  • Kálmán Kulcsár interprets the political
    transition of the region in terms of
  • the periphery model by Wallerstein, facing the
    problem of how to catch up
  • with the more advanced part of the world system.
  • The decisive thing in his viewe is that the
    Soviet Union was able to subject
  • the region in the military and political sense
    but was not able to digest it
  • with its less advanced level of economic,
    cultural and scientific potential.
  • Kulcsár s concept of the political transition
    stand in stark contrast to that of
  • Kreutz he sees the main danger threatening a
    peaceful transition and
  • further cooperation a lack of trust in the
    intentions of the other party,
  • misunderstanding of the background to their
    actions,
  • Against the charge of intending to salvage power
    brought against the
  • internal reformers of old regime, himself
    included, invites the relieving
  • testimony of Iván SzelĂ©nyi. He quotes SzelĂ©nyi
  • Data point to the conclusion that salvaging the
    power has reached the
  • smallest proportions in Hungary as compared to
    the countries so far
  • examined.
  • So it is time, in our Delphi-endeavour, to turn
    to the position of Iván
  • SzelĂ©nyi the emigrant Hungarian sociologist on
    this controversial aspect of

12
  • 2.4 A New Societal Formation Comes out of the
    Experimental Laboratory of East and Central
    Europe
  • While SzelĂ©nyi is invited to act in the dignified
    position of arbiter, he
  • organised a panel discussion to arrive at an
    assessment of the gravity of the
  • errors committed by various sociologists in their
    interpretations concerning
  • the East and Central European transformation.
  • Only young scholars escaped erroneous judgement,
    who had not had the
  • opportunity to make false predictions, while the
    older generation of
  • sociologists (Burawoy, Nee) outdid each other
    in the gravity of their
  • misjudgements.
  • But none of them could compete with SzelĂ©nyis
    sin. While the
  • colleagues have turned their coats only once,
    Iván has done so already
  • twice. His final theory is to be seen in his
    book Making Capitalism
  • Without Capitalists, a work professing to
    advance a new paradigm.
  • According to this the singular peculiarity is
    that this new brand of
  • capitalism was made by the most unlikely
    agents, i.e. the members of the
  • communist elite of the earlier social order.
  • What emerged was a political capitalism the
    former Communist
  • nomenklatura transformed itself into a
    kleptokratura.
  • As far as SzelĂ©nyis implicit sociological
    axiology is concerned which

13

14
  • In the system of co-ordinates shown in figure 1
  • the vertical dimension of Negative critical
    versus positive reinforcing shows Szelényi
    placed near the well-balanced middle, somewhat
    closer to the critical pole (yet preserving some
    positive elements to contribute to the
    input-output system of the social division of
    labour).
  • I have some reservations about the horizontal
    dimension between the poles of Dependent versus
    independent. Knowing Iváns ironic and
    independent turn of mind, I think his implicit
    axiology should be moved a bit away from
    dependence toward a non-utopian kind of
    independence.
  • In other words, it seems to me that his proper
    place, too is at the conciliatory position of
    value sociology, which is the middle position in
    our figure.

15
  • 3. A Contribution of the Value Sociology
  • 3.1 Value Change as a Frame of Reference for a
    more Fine-Grained Interpretation of Present
    History
  • As organiser of the present Delphi consultation I
    am proposing a new kind of function to the value
    sociology the role of a conciliator, forwarding
    value discourse. (See its placing at the origin
    of the quadratic schema in the Kolakowski-Bourdieu
    -Szelényi typology of sociologists.)
  • Conciliation is a practical art which has been
    applied in the sphere of labour for a hundred
    years in the United States (a country free from
    the temptation of the conflict-model of
    socialism).
  • In the Delphi consultation I have been trying to
    put into effect some elements of the conciliation
    model to promote the harmonising of different
    world views and political creeds.
  • An anecdote in William Ury s book on the
    Harvard Program on Negotiation shows the gist
    of the conciliators attitue
  • At the time of the American Civil War Abraham
    Lincoln delivered a speech in which he spoke with
    sympathy of the Southern rioters. An elderly lady
    a staunch unionist chided him for speaking of
    his enemies with understanding when he should
    always be thinking of how he could cancel them
    out. The response Lincoln gave has deservedly
    become a classic
  • Why, Madame, dont I cancel out my enemies
  • in turning them into my friends?

16
  • 3.2 Polytheism of Value Systems versus an
    Ecumenism of Weltanschauungen and Politics
  • The Delphi prognosis for the new member state
    Hungary (and the Central European region in
    general) with Kreutz conception as its dominant
    tone, is guaranteed to be immune to utopianism
    (anticipating an anomic near future and a series
    of further traps, even reckoning with an
    increasing dynamics of Unterwelt and
    HinterbĂĽhne),
  • a gloomy outlook which is shared by Vitányis and
    (partly) of Szelényis conception albeit on
    different grounds.
  • Despite Kulcsárs longer-term prognosis being
    slightly more optimistic, we can state the
    following as a more or less unanimously endorsed
    outcome of the Delphi consultation
  • the non-utopian prognosis of our discussion group
    inclines toward
  • a cautious Euro-scepticism
  • rather than some kind of optimistic rejoicing.

17
  • But what is the position of the value sociologist
    who has been trying to measure up these different
    conceptions against each other?
  • Well, as an axiologist sensitive to mega-trends,
    I am more inclined to agree with the prognoses of
    Beniger (1986), as well as László (1997),
    Teilhard de Chardin (1980).
  • According to Benigers model we can interpret the
    development of human societies as a series of
    waves of control crises and control revolutions
    where the latter provide solutions for the
    former.
  • Accordingly, the selfish strategic, i.e.
    chaotic and conflict-ridden state of the present
    and near future (described by Kreutz as anomic)
    can be diagnosed as a transitory crisis of
    control
  • while prognosticating the condition of a
    communicative state, i.e. a state reached on
    the basis of mutual benefit and agreement,
    expected to emerge on the long term, as a
    solution brought along by a control revolution,
  • and that in the spirit of re-humanisation which
    succeeds in placing institutional checks on
    one-dimensionally zweckrational destructive
    tendencies set loose at the global level, where
    these checking institutions are guided by
    ethical, legal and technological, i.e. guided
    more and more by multi-dimensionally
    wertrational considerations.

18
  • As for the concrete application of the danger of
    utopianism from both sides highlighted in
    Kosárys warning, we must not forget that a
    non-utopian national strategy would consist on
    one hand
  • in adjusting ourselves to the circumstances of
    the world order, which in earlier periods, e.g.
    that of Cromwell, meant a devoted striving toward
    harmony with the sacral sphere (Let us pray to
    God) but which, in present history, refers to
    adaptation to the constellation of relations
    between major powers
  • but on the other hand
  • prescribes that we must keep the gunpowder dry,
    in a figurative sense, of course, but most
    resolutely, in defence of the interests of the
    nation resident in the Carpathian Basin.
  • In terms of the sociology of value
  • while the dominant tone in the multidimensional
    space of national strategy must be wertrational,
  • a certain measure of sober Zweckrationalität must
    be preserved to retain an ability to deal with
    certain specific problems, including an ability
    to defend ourselves against counter-strategies
    such as those involved in the dynamics of
    Underwelt and HinterbĂĽhne (backstage)
    scenarios.
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