symbolic elements of everyday culture - MTA Szociológiai ...

● KAPITÁNY ÁGNES – KAPITÁNY GÁBOR ● Changing World-Views in Hungary, 1945–1980●
WORLD-VIEW OF THE SIXTIES
„Those who are not against us are with us” (Gospel of Mark, 9:40)
instead of „Those who aren't with me, are against me” (Gospel of Matthew, 12:30)
(Slogan of Kádárism as a new idea after the old Stalinist slogan)
Important elements were inherited from the 1950s in the world-view of the 1960s, but on
many points, they were formulated as an antithesis. The struggle, the polar opposition, remains,
but this is no longer the organizing principle. The core of the new world-view becomes ensuring the
viability of the system and the country that was identified with that system. The principle of
unbroken linear progress is replaced by the ideal of organic evolution. This is also a principle of
development, but one of slow, balanced progress with bends, in which the consideration of
circumstances plays a role. Traditions and the preservation of values give a legitimacy of a sort to
conservative behavior, as opposed to inorganic, violent interventions. The role of the human factor
increases as ideas such as „socialism with a human face” and socialist humanism replace
revolutionary restlessness. The importance of moral weighing increases; socialist morality becomes
a favored theme of ideology and the Marxian alienation theory is „discovered.”
The black-and-white polarization dissolves. The search for an enemy decreases; the new
formula is that the man who deviates from our own principles is not necessarily on the other side.
The sharp front lines of the class-struggle are replaced by the representation of society as a
coexistence of different strata in which attitudes differ, but which can be won over, on an individual
basis to socialism. Concepts such as trust, social coexistence, and cooperation (instead of general
will) are proclaimed. Instead of polarities, the principle of the middle is the ideal and this realistic
policy finds its expression in the „struggle on two fronts,” where individuals should develop the
ability to manoeuvre cautiously.
The relentlessness of totalizing laws is increasingly replaced by rules, the reverence for
principles and ideas is replaced by reverence for facts, and, by the end of the period, a sort of
positivism takes a major role in the sciences. The favored categories of the age are: knowledge of
facts, a demand for historical authenticity, an emphasis on „real data.” On the one hand, this is an
attempt to preserve the trustworthiness of the system despite the lies that become obvious. A
slogan of the period is that there must be a return from Stalinism to the Leninist roots. On the
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