Hungarian Liberals [antikvár]

PREFACE Hungarian Liberalism in the nineteenth century Characteristics and Roles (1830-1867) by András Gerő Liberalism is not an ideology of social awareness. Historically, one of the most frequent objections levelled against liberalism is that it is not conscious enough of social tensions; that it formulates its objectives in legal rather than social terms. As critics of liberalism aphoristicaEy put it: the millionaire and the beggar are equal in their right to sleep under a bridge. From the second half of the nineteenth century, various intellectual movements and their political offshoots launched a series of attacks on this front, promising a decisive breakthrough. The justice of these criticisms was, however, recognized and, what is more, accepted by a considerable number of liberal theoreticians and politicians. A Hungarian example for the reception is József Eötvös's A XIX. század uralkodó eszméinek befolyása az államra (The Influence of the Prevalent Ideas of the Nineteenth Century on the State). In this work, Eötvös discusses, among others, the irresolvable antagonism between the principles of freedom and equality. That this was more than a merely theoretical problem was amply demonstrated by the large number of anti-liberal social and political movements that emerged after the complete or partial victory of liberalism. Throughout Europe attempts were made—and not without success—to transform nineteenth-century political regimes founded in the spirit of liberalism into absolutist states or dictatorships on the basis of slogans largely emphasizing social issues. While this is a specifically nineteenth-century issue, its historical relevance points well beyond the period; and in the twentieth century—indeed up to the present day—it , f