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 Péter 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 Szelényi 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 Szelényi 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 Hinterbühne 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 Szelényi. He quotes Szelényi
• 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
• Szelényi 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 Szelényi 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 Szelényis
  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 Szelényis 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
  Hinterbühne),
• 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 Hinterbühne (backstage)
  scenarios.