The social limits of state control: Time, the industrial wage relation and social identity in Stalinist Hungary, 1948-1953

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates that 'hegemonic' factory regimes, characterised by a high degree of cooperation between at least a core of the workforce and management, dominated industry in the Stalinist years, as much as they were to characterise the conditions of production in a climate of economic reform. Furthermore, it shows that they emerged from economic tensions created by the Stalinist state and by worker responses to them. An examination of how such 'hegemonic' factory regimes arose suggests a major revision of the traditional image of Stalinism as collectivist. The state attempted to use systems of remuneration on the shop floor to bind workers to the goals of the plan. These systems of remuneration were individual rather than collective, suggesting that at the heart of classical central planning lay an apparent paradox between institutional centralisation and a high degree of individualisation at the point of production. Keywords: economic reform; hegemonic factory regimes; industrial wage relation; institutionalisation; social identity; Stalinist Hungary; Stalinist years