Second economy and civil society

Abstract

If the expansion of the ‘second economy’ in contemporary Hungary is considered in the context of the wider labour market, the second economy can be seen to have brought only limited panaceas to economic problems, whilst accentuating inequalities and moral tensions. But some new forms of work may have very appealing aspects, and the suggestion that an all‐embracing market model is the only alternative to the reform path followed hitherto is untenable. Such calls perpetuate the tradition of East European intellectuals in thrall to the West, and to some rather unhelpful Western ideas at that, including the concept of ‘civil society’. With the best theorists apparently committed to solving the problems of a small East European country in the late twentieth century with preindustrial Western remedies, it is not surprising that there has been little sign to date in Hungary of any rapprochement between intellectuals and the bulk of the working population. It is an error to abstract the second economy from the first, and it is equally mistaken to conceive of a modern civil society without paying careful attention to the new forms of society and state which have emerged in the socialist period.