Oldal 414 [414]
OCR
ANDREA PETŐ situation of social democracy are all connected to changes in social imaginary: the emerging cult of the individual is undermining the collective responsibility for social cohesion, communitarian units (Gemeinschaft) are replacing society (Gesellschaft). Social democrats in Europe tried to regulate global free market capitalism with social democratic values by a strong state such as solidarity witha mixed success. We cannot identify one or two factors which caused the declining popularity of today but rather the story of social democracy and progressive politics need to be retold and re-narrativised for a new start. In this paper I would like to answer to the question how social democracy is shaping social imaginary in Hungary and I would like to do so with analyzing how gender differences are conceptualized in social imaginary. My starting point is Tony Judt, who in his analyses on future of social democracy pointed out that nobody ever forecasted the end of the roaming 1920s era, and it still ended among horrible circumstances.* Therefore he concludes, the only factor which can save social democracy in Europe, where by now the original social democratic values were mainstreamed largely without their home parties, is “a social democracy of fear”. This fear for him means: “Rather than seeing to restore a language of optimistic progress we should begin by reacquainting ourselves with the recent past. The first task of radical dissenters today is to remind their audience of the achievements of the twentieth century, along with the likely consequences of our heedless rush to dismantle them”.° So let me start this difficult endeavor to get to know more about our “recent past” with including another factor, namely gender into the analysis, trying to explain why social democracy is losing attraction as social imaginary today. I would like to expand the analyses of the “recent past” where Tony Judt stopped: to the post WWII period and I would like to focus on Hungary. I am claiming that the unresolved conflict of women’s participation in social democratic movement is one of the reasons why social democracy is losing its popular support today. Is social democracy on its way to become a simulacrum in Hungary? Will social democratic imaginary disappear from Hungary? In the case of Baudrillard the empire vanished, and the simulacrum remained. In the case of Hungary, and the countries who felt at the wrong side of the Iron Curtain in 1945, the simulacrum is disappearing and the reality, namely the problems are remaining. And the responses to the structural crises (strong state, redistributive welfare policy, transforming unpaid care work to paid care work etc) are given by illiberal actors who consciously position themselves outside liberal value system. * Tony Judt, What is Living and What is Dead in Social Democracy?, The New York Review of Books 56 (2009), No. 20. 5 Judt: What is Living. + 412 +
