Ugrin-Varga New theory FULL BOOK - Csaba Varga

Preface Introduction to foreign readers This volume leans on the Hungarian and more broadely speaking, on European experiences, although the crisis of the state and democracy model is not exclusively a Hungarian, nor a European phenomenon. We wouldn’t be exaggerating even if we modestly claimed that the political-social crossroads have become global. The sociological backround of the book is based on the social crises of Hungary, Central-Europe and the totality of the European continent. For theory creation, however, this regional observation exceptionally constitutes a point of advantage. For instance, in Hungary or in the Central European states that have implemented political regime change, the uselessness of the Euro-atlantic democracy model is more clearly and sharply visible than in the Western European classical democracies and states.

The authors belong to those exposed intelligentsia who have been instrumental to regime change in 1989/1990. Csaba Varga was one of the opinion leaders and social scientists of the Opposition Round Table while Emese Ugrin art historian became a (Christian Democrat) MP in the Hungarian parliament after the regime change. Already at that time they warned that the post-socialist state neither then, nor subsequently should opt for the 19th century form of capitalism as their universal future perspective.

In 1989 this was scarcely understood and was accepted by even fewer people because during the euphoric times of the regime change everyone seemed to have been satisfied with the slogans that had grown into mythic proportions, namely those of market economy and democracy. Not before long, however, it became obvious that while classical capitalism based on private ownership that replaced state capitalist socialism could function merely as a valid starting point, yet it would never bring real and permanent economic and social solutions (neither) to Central Eastern Europe. And it has also become clear that the empty, formal, false socialist „democracy” won’t be redeemed by civil democracy either that is itself formal and rapidly emptying of content. The two models of the past sharply oppose each other and one could support only one of them, - yet the real solution could only be brought about by a quantum jump-like new model.

We should also note here that the Hungarian social-economic situation and climate is well suited to swiftly and spectacularly reveal the exhaustion and emptiness of the nineteenth-twentieth century market economy and world democracy model at the end of the millenium. Moreover, the Hungarian and other Central European examples of crisis also unveil at a similar speed that the 7