Conservative Ideology in the Making
Iván Zoltán Dénes,
historian of ideas, Professor, Chair at the Department
of Political Theory and History, Faculty of Jurisprudence
and Political Science, University of Debrecen
Translated by Judit Pokoly
The fifty years or so preceding the watershed of 1848–49
witnessed the emergence of liberal nationalism in Hungary,
along with a transmutation of conservatism which appeared
then as a party and an ideological system in the political
arena. The specific features of the conservatism, combining
the protection of the status quo with some reform measures,
its strategic vision, conceptual system, argumentation,
assessment criteria and values require an in depth exploration
and analysis.
Different conservative groups were in the background
or in opposition from 1848 to 1918, while in the period
between the two World Wars, they constituted the overwhelming
majority of ruling parties. During the one-party system,
from 1949 to 1989, the liberals and conservatives—like
all other political groups—were illegal, a status
from which they could later emerge upon the change of
the political system.
The inheritance of the autocratic system frozen up
and undigested by the one-party state was thawed after
the peaceful regime change, the constitutional revolution
and its discrete components began to be reactivated,
including the enemy images of earlier discourses. "Liberal”
and “conservative” had become state-party
stigmas in line with fascist, reactionary, rightist,
and bourgeois. In reaction to that, at first conservative
then liberal, intellectual fashions and renascences
unfolded in the 1980s. The attempts by liberal and conservative
advocates to find predecessors did not favor an objective
approach.
The first step toward objectivity is establishing distance
from the different kinds of enemy images and their political
idioms. This is a pressing need because, although several
pioneering works have appeared on different variants
of the Hungarian liberalisms and conservatisms, there
are no serious unbiased syntheses. This work is urgent
because the political poles of the constitutional revolution
and the ensuing period have up till now been described
in terms of different conspiracy theories.
Contents
Foreword; Introduction; Conservatism; The
Liberal Challenge: Nation-Building through Reforms;
The Conservative Answer: Law, Order, and Stability
What to Preserve, What to Give Up, and What to Modernize?
(1839–1842); Separation vs. Unification (1842–1843);
Law and Order : Which Kind? (1843–1844); Journalists’
Offensive: Issues and Arguments (1845–1847); Programs
(1846–1847); Conservative Politics in Defense
(1847–1848); Myth in the Making; Epilogue,
Bibliography, Index
"This meticulously researched book belongs on
the shelf reserved for 'memory studies,' one of the
principal presuppositions of which is that present sociopolitical
interests and power relationships determine not only
what is remembered but how it is remembered. Dénes
argues that Hungarian conservatives, including those
of the present day, have substituted a myth of political
wisdom and national responsibility for the truth concerning
their predecessors, those who flourished during the
Age of Reform leading to the 1848–49 revolution
and war for independence". - Slavic Review
2009
268 pages + 24 with black and white photos
ISBN 978-963-9776-57-9 cloth $45.00 / €33.95 /
£30.00
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