Modernism: The Creation of Nation-States

Oszkár Jászi: The future of the Monarchy

OSZKÁR JÁSZI: THE FUTURE OF THE MONARCHY Title: A monarchia jövője. A dualizmus bukása és a dunai Egyesült Államok (The future of the Monarchy. The fall of dualism and the Danubian United States) Originally published: Budapest, Új Magyarország, 1918. German edition: Der Zusammenbruch des Dualismus und die Zukunft des Donaustaaten (Wien, 1918) Language: Hungarian The excerpts used are from chapter 9 ‘Magyarország és a demokratikus föderalizmus ,’ (Budapest: Maecenas, 1988), pp. 59–71. About the author Oszkár Jászi [1875, Nagykároly (Rom. Carei, present-day Romania) – 1957, Oberlin, Ohio]: politician and political scientist. He came from a secularized Jewish middle-class family which converted to Calvinism during his childhood. He studied in Hungary, France and England. Inspired by positivist sociology (especially Herbert Spencer) and a non-dogmatic understanding of socialism, Jászi emerged as the most prominent figure of the Hungarian civic radical movement. He was editor-in-chief of the journal Huszadik Század (Twentieth century), which was the most important ‘left-liberal’ social sciences periodical of the time. Jászi was also secretary of the radical Társadalomtudományi Társaság (Social Sciences Association) and leader of the Civic Radical Party (founded in 1914). He played a prominent role during the Hungarian Revolution of 1918, and was a minister in the government of Mihály Károlyi, with the special task of negotiating with the representatives of the nationalities . In his talks with the Transylvanian Romanian leadership in Arad, he offered wide concessions, but being obviously too late this could not prevent their declaration of union with Romania (December 1918). After the collapse of the Károlyi government and the declaration of the Soviet Republic (21 March 1919), Jászi refused to cooperate with the Communists and emigrated to Vienna, becoming the editor of the Bécsi Magyar Újság (Viennese Hungarian journal). In the early-twenties, he attacked the ‘counter-revolutionary’ Horthy-regime, and tried to establish some kind of relationship with the liberal political elites of East Central Europe (mainly with Czech intellectuals). In doing that he lobbied for certain political concessions to Hungary provided that a democratic government was formed. From 1925, he lived in the 320 FEDERALISM AND THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRES United States, where he taught sociology at Oberlin College and published a series of important political-sociological analyses. In the 1930s and 1940s, he adopted an antitotalitarian stance and increasingly distanced himself from Károlyi, who was willing to cooperate with the communists on an anti-fascist political platform. Although Jászi visited Hungary in 1947, he did not settle permanently and spent the remaining years of his life in the United States. He is considered the most important Hungarian radical democratic political thinker of the twentieth century and ranked among the most prominent Central European scholars of nationalism. Main works: Művészet és erkölcs [Art and morality] (1904); A történelmi materializmus állambölcselete [The political philosophy of historical materialism] (1908); A nemzeti államok kialakulása és a nemzeti kérdés [The formation of national states and the nationality issue] (1912); Mi a radikalizmus? [What is radicalism?] (1918); Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary (1924); The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (1929); Against the tyrant: the tradition and theory of tyrannicide (with John D. Lewis, 1957). Context From the beginning of his political activities, Jászi was the proponent of concessions to the nationalities in Hungary, albeit within the framework of the overall democratization of the country. Nevertheless, in his works before the First World War, he considered the economic pressure of the processes of modernization to be the catalyst of greater integration. Consequently, he hoped to convince his mainly urban and Hungarian-speaking audience that the introduction of radical political reforms would not threaten the existence of the Hungarian state. A democratic Hungary—the ‘Switzerland of the East’—might become a strong focus of identification for its citizens, irrespective of their ethnicity. Jászi and his circle of social scientists in the journal Huszadik Század (like the sociologist Róbert Braun) formed the intellectual group in Hungary most prone to cooperation with the political leadership of the nationalities in the fight for universal suffrage and national emancipation . In the first years of the World War, he advocated the Mitteleuropaproject of Friedrich Naumann which envisioned a supra-national reorganization of the region dominated politically and economically by the Germans; while, in 1917–1918, he...