‘Szekfű described “capitalism” as “having grown in size over time, becoming a more and more fearsome monster, creating factories and cramming hundreds of thousands and millions of people into the unhealthy, immoral air of smoky cities. And the longer the unrestricted freedom proclaimed by liberalism lasts, the more freely the capitalist big business devours the little ones, the more freely it exploits the economic weaklings, especially the workers.” Szekfű’s book Three Generations, in which he also called for extensive worker protection and the regulation of industrialists by law, bears a striking resemblance to the basic tenets of socialism.’
Standing on the ground of inexorable social progress, Prohászka views social transformation positively, and even despite his harsh criticism of socialism, he acknowledges its necessity. After all, social democracy serves to achieve social progress that ‘excludes the phraseology of delusive emotions and disturbing social passions,’[vi] which is otherwise so problematic in revolutionary change.
‘Bangha considered “social redistribution and governmental intervention to be appropriate tools”. These tools, according to Bangha, create the possibility to eliminate the imbalances that—as he puts it—are caused by mega-wealth concentrated in a few hands. In turn, these measures are embedded in a larger social reform, meaning the reformation of public life based on the Christian spirit and the re-elevation of Christianity to the status of the state’s main principle.’
In his books, Giesswein, although he devotes more space to the refutation of the egalitarian logic of collectivism, throws himself with at least as much radicalism into the denial of the wrong, anti-human approach of extreme individualism and laissez-faire capitalism.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.