PART ONE
1
Moral Imperatives, Political Objectives
Agriculture was the backbone of the Hungarian economy, the productivity of labor its Achilles heel. Bemoaned as the âcountry of three million beggars,â Hungary suffered from a surfeit of labor and a paucity of enthusiasm for modern business. Large manorial estates sprawled across the countryside, relying on an indifferent community of impoverished rural families to farm the land, while peasant landowners struggled to make do. Proposals to remedy the problem fell into two broad camps: advocates for land reform anticipated the growth of an intensive peasant agriculture while proponents of scientific engineering imagined a highly rationalized sector of large agrarian enterprises. The debate over these alternatives during the interwar period was framed in terms of economic advantage, both sides citing numbers and graphs to bolster their claims. The divisions, however, were grounded in deep moral convictions about the dignity of labor, the right to property, and the national purpose. Land reform advocates were associated with left wing politics; those endorsing rationalized modernization were strongly committed to conservative, right wing politics. At the end of World War II, the political compass of the debates pointed in new directions. Scientific rationalization became the byword of the Communist Party, making them strange bedfellows with conservative champions of capitalist business whose modernist vision supported collectivization in the late 1940s. Those who received land in the land reform in 1945âmost of whom had numbered among the agricultural proletariatâdid not vote in the 1947 elections for the Communists but sided with parties on the right guaranteeing property rights. As we shall see, this about-face makes sense once the principles debated in the 1920s and 1930s are outlined. In the following chapter, I will discuss four crucial points of disagreement between the two factions during the interwar periodâ(1) economies of scale, (2) standard of living, (3) property rights, and (4) morality and the demographic crisisâto show how the debates unfolded. Arguments were legion but shared a common language: a reliance on statistical data and, when that was lacking, a recourse to complex commensuration exercises to produce comparable numbers. After the war certain claims lost legitimacy, such as arguments about property and race; institutions with which claims to land were associated, such as the Catholic Church, were subject to open criticism by social reformers and leftist politicians. Yet the core of the economic argument on behalf of large-scale production continued to be legitimate in the eyes of agrarian economists and work scientists, their position strengthened when thousands of new property owners failed to establish viable farms by the end of the 1940s.
The Lay of the Land
The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed at the end of World War I. New nations were formed, such as Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, while the territory of Romania vastly increased by absorbing the territories of Transylvania and Bukovina. Hungary shrunk to one-third its prewar size, losing thousands of acres of plowland, meadows, and forests. In the decade following the war land reform was enacted by virtually all countries in the region, but Hungaryâs conservative forces forestalled any significant change, leaving it with the most skewed distribution of property in Central Europe. Close to 75 percent (74.7) of the farms in Hungary had less than 5 kh (2.85 ha).1 These small holdings covered only one-tenth of the land under cultivation. At the other extreme, we find that more than a third of the land (37.7 percent) was distributed among 0.15 percent of the total number of farms in the country. Farms between 50 and 100 kh (28.5 and 57 ha)âi.e., those considered large enough to be self-supportingâwere scarce; they constituted only 1 percent of the farms and covered only 6.4 percent of arable land (KerĂ©k 1939, 300; see table 1.1).
TABLE 1.1. The size and number of landed properties in Hungary
Size of properties | No. of farms | % | Acreage | % |
kat. hold | hectare | | | kat. hold | hectare | |
below 1 | below .57 | 628,431 | 38.5 | 236,417 | 134,758 | 1.5 |
1â5 kh | .57â2.85 | 556,352 | 34.2 | 1,394,829 | 795,053 | 8.7 |
5â10 kh | 2.85â5.7 | 204,471 | 12.5 | 1,477,376 | 842,104 | 9.2 |
10â20 kh | 5.7â11.4 | 144,186 | 8.7 | 2,025,946 | 1,154,789 | 12.6 |
20â50 | 11.4â28.5 | 73,663 | 4.5 | 2,172,300 | 1,238,211 | 13.6 |
50â100 | 28.5â57 | 15,240 | 1.0 | 1,036,162 | 590,612 | 6.4 |
100â200 | 57â114 | 5,792 | 0.3 | 805,164 | 458,943 | 5.0 |
200â300 | 114â171 | 2,126 | 0.1 | 516,875 | 294,619 | 3.2 |
300â500 | 171â285 | 1,714 | 0.1 | 663,676 | 378,295 | 4.1 |
500â1,000 | 285â570 | 1,362 | 0.1 | 944,250 | 538,223 | 5.9 |
1,000â2,000 | 570â1,140 | 581 | â | 798,490 | 455,139 | 5.0 |
2,000â3,000 | 1,140â1,710 | 187 | â | 452,109 | 257,702 | 2.8 |
3,000â5,000 | 1,710â2,850 | 117 | â | 451,376 | 257,284 | 2.8 |
5,000â10,000 | 2,850â5,700 | 101 | â | 680,084 | 387,648 | 4.2 |
10,000â20,000 | 5,700â11,400 | 48 | â | 690,953 | 393,843 | 4.2 |
20,000â50,000 | 11,400â28,500 | 25 | â | 855,106 | 487,410 | 5.3 |
50,000â100,000 | 28,500â57,000 | 10 | â | 671,475 | 382,741 | 4.2 |
|
above 200,000 | above 114,000 | 1 | â | 209,256 | 119,276 | 1.3 |
|
Source: Kerék 1939, 298
Manorial estates in Hungary resembled latifundia and colonial plantations familiar in the New World and Far East: an expanse of land, dotted with small outposts for resident workers, and a wealthy owner or renter rarely to be seen in the estateâs vicinity. Among its residents we would find a steward, ten coachmen, three farmhands assigned to the coachmen, a farm boss, seven general-use farmhands, someone in charge of feed for the animals, two dairymen, three cowboys, two pigherders, and one shepherd. Craftsmen lived on the estate as well. There would be several machinists, a blacksmith, an assistant to the blacksmith, a cartwright with his apprentices, a stonemason, and someone in charge of the warehouse. Two gardeners and two viticulturists would be counted among the specialists employed on the estate. The families of estate workers (cselĂ©d) were housed in isolated clumps of buildings scattered across the land. In the summer months approximately fifty migrant workers would come to do all the fieldwork, and all additional tasks throughout the year would require hiring an additional 3,715 days of adult male labor. In contrast to the workers living on the estate, day laborers lived in nearby villages, whereas migrant workers came from farther away, sometimes far-flung counties in poorer regions.2 Landowners who lived in villages adjacent to or in the vicinity of manorial estates treated estate workers poorlyâviewing them as little more than animalsâand considered them to be as foreign to the region as migrant workers were, even though their families may have lived on the estate for generations.
Workers residing on the estate were paid on a yearly contract, the majority of which was comprised of goods in kind: a fixed amount of grain (wheat, rye, barley), firewood, and in some cases a kilogram of bacon and a measure of salt. A small amount of cash was allotted to each household. Housing was provided, if one could call it that: four large families lived in one room measuring approximately seven square meters. Families were given the right to a small garden plot and often had the opportunity to raise piglets until the age of one. In exceptional circumstances, manorial residents were allowed to keep a cow for milk. Migrant workers were paid with grains and room and board; only day laborers were paid in cash. What workers earned in yearly contracts or by day labor varied from county to county and sometimes from manorial estate to manorial estate. While the means of recruiting migrant workers resembled a labor marketâa labor boss recruited a band of workers every springâthe contractual relationship was usually based on long-term ties between specific villages and particular manorial estates that siphoned off better workers, leaving only a motley crew of obstinate and lazy folk for everyone else. Under these conditions, labor productivity was extremely poor, difficult to improve, and even more difficult to measure. Modernizing productionârationalizing farms to compete internationallyâwas only a a pipe dream. Undaunted, agrarian work scientists and economic engineers sought to make this dream a reality.
Disagreements Economic and Moral
The conservative government often depicted Hungarian village communities as populated by the self-supporting, proud, and deeply nationalistic peasant landowner, wrapping itself in populist clothing while downplaying the need for land reform. Numerous essays and monographs strongly contested the image of a comfortable peasant lifestyle promoted by the conservative government, penned by leftist social critics known under the collective name of âsociographsâ (e.g., IllyĂ©s 1936; KovĂĄcs 1937; SzabĂł 1937; see also TĂłth 1984 and Esbenshade 2006). The land question was rehearsed interminably in publications of every sort (weekly newspapers, journals, pamphlets, dissertations, and book-length monographs). Academics, businessmen, and political activists of every stripe participated. Those who advocated on behalf of manorial farms included professional economists, religious leaders, conservative nationalists, and intellectuals associated with rightist causes, though their motivations differed sharply. Business economists and work scientists, for example, were primarily motivated by their interests in modernization and improved productivity in agriculture, while the Catholic Church emphasized its moral obligations to society. These claims rang hollow, since âthe Catholic Church was one of the largest landowners in Hungary, deriving a good part of its wealth from vast estates in the south and west. Given this vested material interest, the episcopate could hardly support any serious effort at land reform that might improve the lot of Hungaryâs ethnic Magyar peasantry and so remained skeptical of anything that smacked of populismâ (Hanebrink 2006, 130). Advocates for land reform clustered on the left of the political spectrum, though some conservative religious associations numbered among their ranks. Beyond simple arguments in terms of the equitable distribution of land, many in this camp envisioned a rejuvenated agricultural economy based on small farms specializing in intensified production as an alternative to manorial estates dominating the landscape.
PRODUCTIVITY AND ECONOMIES OF SCALE
The relative advantages of small versus large farms preoccupied those on both sides of the land reform debate. Economic arguments advanced by promanorial advocates claimed that large farms were more productive and offered more stable, secure employment. It was a matter of gospel in this camp that large estates were more able to modernize than small farms, in part because manorial properties were better equipped than their poorer neighbors. To assuage their leftist colleagues, conservative writers were fond of citing the debate Kautsky led over proper economies for agriculture as evidence for their position. Land reform advocates were fully cognizant of the distinct disadvantage small farms confronted in relation to economies of scale. Family landowningsâaccumulated through inheritance and marriageâwere frequently divided up into small plots scattered across the outskirts of the village boundaries. In the absence of any substantial land reform, peasant advocates argued that consolidating holdings would significantly improve the viability of small farms. A popular alternative was a vision of âGarden Hungary,â3 intensifying agricultural production to replace the obsolete âwheat factoryâ (gabonagyĂĄr) model of large estates inherited from the previous century (KerĂ©k 1942, 92). This approach was considered a far more competitive and sustainable model for farming, better suited to the nationâs climate and geographical position within Europe. Moreover, small-scale but intensive farming had the definite advantage of requiring greater labor inputs, a must in a country burdened with an unemployed agrarian proletariat.
The economy of scale argument did not necessarily support the idea that manorial estates should be kept intact, since large sections of land on manorial estates were underexploited. This was particularly true of the larger estates. Approximately one-third of the acreage of manorial estates larger than 500 kh (285 ha) was not cultivated (KerĂ©k 1939, 316); the percentage of land devoted to forests at large estates varied from 12.9 to 42.8 percent (ibid., 302). Smaller properties, on the other hand, devoted a larger proportion of lands to cultivation: âThe proportion of land under agricultural cultivation (plowlands, gardens, vineyeards, meadows and pastures) is largest at small farms (87.3â95.8 percent), somewhat smaller at medium-sized farms (78.4â80.9 percent), and much smaller at large estates (50.6â77.6 percent)â (ibid.). The discrepancies in land use were seen as evidence that large estates crowded smaller farms, preventing them from growing into more viable economies of scale, challenging the need to keeping estates intact.4
Policies designed to resettle peasants within the countryâto distribute the population more evenly and landownings more fairlyâwere a recurring feature of debates over agricultural modernization, reaching back into the nineteenth century following the abolition of feudalism in 1848. During the debate over the 1935 settlement plan in parliament, Samuel MĂĄndy rejected the view that large estates crowded smaller farms: âIn general we donât have overcrowded small farms. . . . Even though the price of land is more than half as cheap as before, buyers are as rare as a white raven. Small landowners in particular are hard to findâ (Köztelek, 20 Jan. 1935). MĂĄndy overlooked the possibility that lands would not be sold off but simply parcelled out to neighboring communities.
To some minds it was folly to spend huge amounts of money dismantling manorial farms when the money could be better spent improving smaller farms (e.g., Köztelek, 24 Nov. 1935). A smarter way to remove the barriers ...