Attempts at Interpretation in Hungary

In Hungary, beginning with (and practically ending by) the 1980s, in light of such antecedents the philosophy of MARXism searched for points of ferences to correct the distortions incurred in the previous era and to re-construct M^ARX’s original methodological ideas. The attempts were mani-fold indeed. In the present paper, I can present but a few characteristic examples, worthy even today of philosophical reflection from a methodo-logical perspective.

One of the approaches sought a modern formulation of the (as alleged, eventually) determinant role of the economy by comparing and reformu-lating the relevant stances taken by the classics of M^ARXism in this matter.

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21 Cf., by the author, ‘A jog mint felépítmény: Adalékok az alap–felépítmény kategóriapár történetéhez’ [Law as superstructure: outlines of the history of the pair of categories »base« and

»superstructure«] Magyar Filozófiai SzemleXXX (1986) 1–2, pp. 35–75, particularly at paras.

1–2.

“What we do not acknowledge is that ideas and opinions may have a development independent of the economic conditions. Ideas al-ways originate on grounds of certain economic conditions—that is, the economic base—, but after being born they react upon this base, influence its development and play an active social role.”²²

This approach clearly shows the efforts to eliminate the relics of the me-chanical deterministic approach by pointing to the interrelations manifest in the social existence in their dialectic interaction.Thanks to its subtleness, this formulation is hardly refutable but it is still questionable as a complete response, because it suggests that a system of economic conditions (as a kind of base) could apparently be created alone, without any previous interaction with some sort of a superstructure, that is, as if something mu-tually exclusive could exist b e f o r e and a f t e r the course of the develop-ment of base and superstructure.

Another approach tried to provide an answer through the help of the L^E

-NINist theory of reflection. According to this, the reference was provided by establishing that “[t]he superstructure reflects the economic base.”The ac-tual meaning soon came to light after the key-notion had been interpreted:

“We call reflection the phenomenon when the processes within one given system have an impact upon another system.”²³The notion of reflection thus defined is by no means unproblematic as it helps the survival of trends of ideas that, during the development of MARXism in the 20^th century, re-placed the ontological approach more and more exclusively and distort-ingly with an epistemological one, thereby evoking sharp criticism from L^UKÁCSas he wrote his Ontology.²⁴ It is true, however, that notionally we cannot speak of distortion in the case of LUKÁCS, as the definition of ref-lection we quoted ascribes both epistemological and ontological importance

160 AN IMPOSED LEGACY

22 Kárpáti A társadalom...[note 12], p. 16.

23 Kallós & RothA társadalmi rendszer[note 6], p. 162.

24 Cf., e.g., with my own efforts since the time of my The Place of Law in Lukács’World Concept(Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó 1985 [reprint 1998]) 193 pp., which was already quali-fied by one of its reviewers, namely, the editor of LUKÁCS’ works in German, as an early formu-lation of autopoietical theory. See Frank Benseler in Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie 8 (1987) 2, pp. 302–304. For the understanding of autopoiesis in an ontological reconstruction of apparently epistemological (or, properly speaking, epistemology-bound) processes in law, cf., by the author,Theory of the Judicial ProcessThe Establishment of Facts [1992] 2^nd {re-print} ed. with Postfaces I and II (Budapest: Szent István Társulat 2011) viii + 308 pp. &

<http://drcsabavarga.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/varga-theory-of-the-judicial-process-the-establishment-of-facts-19952011/>.

to this notion, but, once having provided that ‘reflection’ becomes a mere synonym of ‘exerting influence’, it will necessarily lose its particular qua-lity to embody an independent category. On the other hand, it is also prob-lematic if both ‘re|flection’ and ‘re|action’ presume a previously existent agent, which could be born sufficiently in and of itself in order to enter into contact with other factors only later. This is to say that reflection theory obscures exactly the most sensitive issue in the relationship of base and superstructure, namely that this is a relationship between aspects that ori-ginally have developed together, mutually and bi-directionally from the earliest points of their development.

Finally, there was an attempt that tried to provide answers based on LU

-KÁCS’ Ontology in opposition to the simplifications rigidified into pre-judices within M^ARXism. Accordingly,

“essentially we can distinguish two kinds of mutual aspects within the total interrelations of social complexity: mutual conditioning, on the one hand, and boundness to conditions, on the other, in case of the latter one moment irreversibly preconditioning the other.”

The first type of correlation is—in L^UKÁCS’ terminology—characterised by the predominance of one of the moments, and the other, by ontological priority. Well, based on this conclusion, only the latter can be the case with regard to the economy, since

“[t]here was a period in history when the economy functioned witho-ut legal regulation, and even today there are numerous areas and re-lations of economic life which lack legal ordering.”²⁵

The efforts of the author may have been aimed at disproving the prejudice that wanted to express relationships between law and economy, as well as economy and other sectors, respectively, in the form of a relationship bet-ween contents and forms. This attempt was fully successful, moreover, as L^UKÁCS’ standpoint, too, is unambiguous:

“form and content ever and always, in the individual subject, com-plex, process, etc., determine together and only together its specifi-city, its being as it is [gerade-so-sein] (including generality). But it is

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25 V[ilmos] Peschka ‘Ideologische Vorurteile über das Verhältnis zwischen Wirtschaft und Recht’Acta Juridica Academiae Scientiae Hungaricae30 (1989) 3–4, pp. 259–274.

for this very reason impossible that in the determination of real and separate complexes to one another, the one should figure as content, and the other as form.”²⁶

My doubts arise in relation to the question whether or not any distinction between the two types of mutual aspects derives from this. This is a de-cisive question, and answers to it are hard to offer as they would presume a philosophically consistent and thought-through re-examination of the multi-directional reasoning in LUKÁCS’ Ontology.