Abstract
The onset of the Velvet Revolution in 1989 led to a radical transformation of the social structure and new types of economic inequalities in Slovakia, but the media, academia, and civil society initially rejected any talk of these developments in terms of class, seeing the topic as potentially toxic to democracy. There was a tendency to veer away from the study of new social stratification toward research on postmaterialist topics such as environmental protection, civil rights, and alternative subcultures. Those social scientists who did study the changing social structure mostly analyzed statistical data without linking this to a broader theoretical framework. Social classes came to be discussed in gradational rather than relational terms, without discussion of how one group’s new privileges comes at the expense of others. In the early 2000s, radical neoliberal thinking became prominent, leading to the pervasive presentation of the poor and working poor as themselves responsible for their own fate. A backlash against that led to the triumph of the SMER party in 2006, which allowed topics such as poverty and social justice to return to everyday political discourse, and in this sense allowed for the return of class into politics. A younger generation of Slovak social scientists now regularly criticize the cult of the market and argue for an alternative political economy, though ongoing neoliberal hegemony in public discourse continues to make it hard for these new voices to be heard.
Class analysis represents a niche rather than a subfield in Slovak academia. The term itself remains far from central to public debates in the country. Slovakia stands in contrast to the virility of 1990s Western academic debates on the alleged “death of class,” or the renewed interest in class issues since the outbreak of the financial crisis. Recently, however, things are beginning to change: a close look at contemporary academic and public discourse reveals signs of increased interest in class and inequality in both political and academic circles. In this essay, we look at changes in Slovak discourse on inequality, some different empirical approaches to the study of class, the hegemonic position of neoliberalism, and recent cracks in this hegemony due to the rise of populism and of the new postcommunist generation.
The Legacy of Communism and the Velvet Revolution
The social change caused by the Velvet Revolution is widely identified as the key factor leading to the inequalities that characterize modern Slovak society. 1 There were of course inequalities in Slovakia before the Revolution but, being based on control of political rather than economic capital, their nature differed in fundamental ways from those known in the capitalist world. The totalitarian regime rewarded loyalty with high positions in the social hierarchy and denied human rights to its opponents and their families. Regime propaganda, as is well known, continually invoked class imagery as a strategy of legitimation: Opponents were routinely labeled as the bourgeoisie and their “lackeys,” while elites portrayed themselves as representatives of the working class. Class terminology was embedded in all aspects of society—in legal texts, the media, at the workplace, and of course in academia, too. 2
Despite this all-pervading deployment of the concept, there was little systematic scientific inquiry into class issues. The regime was quick to quash attempts at critical analysis of its dogmas. Indeed, the entire academic discipline of sociology was officially disbanded in 1948 as an alleged “bourgeois pseudoscience,” to be replaced by “Marxism-Leninism.” By the early 1960s, even some Communist Party officials saw a need for empirical research, and the discipline gradually revived. Following the Soviet-led military occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, however, sociology again fell out of the favor, as a result of sociologists’ involvement in the political upheavals. This was a bigger issue in the Czech part of the country than in Slovakia, because of the provincial status of Slovak academic circles. Nevertheless, there were purges in Slovakia too, so the official sociology that reemerged after the crushing of the movement was accessible only to those not branded as “disloyal,” and who abstained from any activity that could be interpreted as oppositional. 3 While most sociologists, like the wider academic community as a whole, never really accepted the role of a channel for regime propaganda, anyone who wished to survive in academia had to accept and accommodate the official rules. Scholars thus learned to invoke class rhetoric even at times when it was clearly inappropriate, for no other reason than to satisfy ideological requirements. Unsurprisingly, this led to a discrediting of both the category of “class” and the research methods associated with it.
Yet while communism caused damage to class categories, it did not discredit the ideals of social and economic equality. When rejecting the regime in 1989, people did not necessarily seek the return of the old social order. Many of the old dissidents—now the new elites—were sympathetic to ideas of equality. Some were motivated by humanistic concerns in their support for an accommodation of the interests of those at the lower end of the new hierarchy, while others spoke of equality for pragmatic reasons of winning the votes of industrial workers.
4
The first democratic president of Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel, appealed directly to the legacy and dignity of the working class in his first New Year’s Eve speech, challenging the communist narrative that it was its rightful representative:
A state which calls itself a workers’ state humiliates and exploits workers. . . . The previous regime . . . reduced man to a force of production, and nature to a tool of production. In this way it attacked both their very substance and their mutual relationship.
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Despite lingering sympathies, however, the newly emerging democratic elites did not perceive righting the wrongs that Havel so passionately decried as their most pressing issue. Instead, they focused on the “triple transformation”—political democratization, economic liberalization, and rebuilding of state institutions, 6 considered necessary to stabilize the new regime. Indeed, soon civil society, and in particular organized labor, began to be seen as an obstacle to democratization, because of the widespread belief among the new elites that only a technocratic government insulated from popular demands could successfully transform society. 7 And so even though much of eastern Europe surpassed expectations with a relatively smooth transformation, initial hopes for a more equal society were dashed.
The New Inequalities
While the old inequalities of the communist regime largely disappeared after 1989, the subsequent social transformation led to the appearance of a new breed of inequalities. Some of these were already well known in the West, such as those caused by unemployment, or discrimination against ethnic minorities, in the Slovak case particularly the Roma. Others were more specific to the East Central European societies undergoing transition, such as the inequalities resulting from the meteoric rise of a “new class” of technocratic professionals 8 or from the dramatic decline of labor. 9 Some were specific to Slovakia: under the autocratic rule of Vladimír Mečiar in the 1990s, a class of wealthy and powerful politically connected managers came into existence, similar in many ways to the Russian oligarchs. 10
Despite the declining popularity of class studies, the changing nature of inequalities in Eastern European societies has received scholarly attention. 11 Yet it has been harder to buck the trend in Slovakia. Slovak academia in the 1990s and early 2000s saw a conscious move away from the concept of “class” and from the methodological tools of class analysis. There was, as Zuzana Kusá notes, an element of “self-censorship” here, as Slovak scholars accepted the narrative that a successful civil society could only arise after the establishment of “democratic virtues,” which in turn could thrive if society got beyond the “old thinking” stressing social protection over democratic freedoms. 12 Most social scientists saw themselves as guardians of the nascent democratic order and were reluctant to open topics that they linked with ideas potentially toxic to democracy. At the same time, there was a tendency to move away from the study of social stratification in favor of more fashionable “postmaterialist” topics, such as environmental protection, civil rights, or the wide range of alternative subcultures that mushroomed in the postcommunist era. 13
As far as the body of work that has been produced, much of it consists of field research into specific social phenomena or the statistical analysis of data, with little effort to connect the findings to a broader theoretical framework. Social classes are discussed in gradational rather than relational terms, avoiding discussion of how the new privileges of one group is based on the reduced prospects of another. The Slovak term for class, trieda, is often replaced by vrstva (layer, or stratum), and Marxist terminology is used interchangeably with more structuralist terms. 14 By and large, the picture of society presented by Slovak scholars is rather conservative and functionalist. Society is understood through a hierarchical model in which individuals are positioned in a pyramid-like construction, with inequalities seen as “necessary” to having a “normal” market economy. The characteristics used to determine the position of an individual in a society tend to be objective, such as income, property ownership, or educational attainment. Slovak scholars approach a variety of issues with this perspective, such as poverty 15 or regional differences. Only recently has there been an effort to complement this approach with examination of the subjective positioning of Slovaks within the pyramid. 16
Many who do use class as an analytical tool have applied Goldthorpe’s class schema (EGP, after its founders Erikson, Goldthorpe, and Portocarero), which defines class according to such criteria as profession, position in workplace hierarchy, source of income (profit or wage), and income security. In the first such attempt dating back to 1993, Bunčák and Harmadyová 17 analyzed how the class structure of society changed immediately after the revolution in comparison to the situation in the 1980s. Much work in this area, however, has been done by the sociologist Ján Sopóci, with criteria developed by Iván Szelényi and Donald Treiman in their Social Stratification In Eastern Europe After 1989 survey, which distinguishes among six classes: self-employed, encompassing both business owners and independent tradesmen; a service class; routine nonmanual workers, providing vast ranges of clerical, administrative, sales, or personal services; skilled manual workers and foremen; unskilled manual workers; and agricultural workers. 18 Sopóci has used this typology to explore the class structure of Slovak society in semiregular intervals over the course of the 2000s. 19 In 2011, Sopóci joined forces with sociologists active in research of social stratification to explore changing socioeconomic distances between classes over six points in time: 1983, 1988, 1993, 2001, 2008, and 2009. Three criteria were used to measure the distance: the values of the International Socio-Economic Index of Occupational Status (ISEI), average wages, and the self-identification of respondents on their position in social hierarchy on a scale from one (lowest) to ten. ISEI measures the relative rate of returns of investment in education by workers in different positions. The higher the ISEI score for a particular occupation, the better payoffs it offers for skilled workers.
The findings confirmed the quick rise of the self-employed class, which went from being virtually nonexistent during the communist era to encompassing 10 per cent of the population in the late 2000s. This group experienced rapid ascent in the first decade of the twenty-first century compared even to the 1990s. Jobs for higher skilled workers, meanwhile, have shrunk dramatically, from nearly 28 per cent at the end of the 1980s to 14 per cent in 2009. (See Table 1.)
Class Distribution of Slovakia According to the EGP schema (in %)
Source: Ján Bunčák, Roman Džambazovič, Anna Hrabovská, and Ján Sopóci, “On Some Questions of Social Stratification in Slovak Society,” Slovak Sociological Review 43, no. 5 (2011): 506.
compiled based on recollections of respondents about the past
Positions offered to skilled workers now provide decreasing return for their competencies: While the mean ISEI value for skilled workers and foremen was 35.7 in 1988—almost identical to that of the self-employed class—by 2009 it had fallen to 32.2. (See Table 2.) Meanwhile, the payoffs to educational competencies among the self-employed increased dramatically during this same period, as their ISEI shot up to 43.7 in 2009. The only class that rewards education more generously is the service class, with a mean ISEI value of 55.8.
Mean values of socioeconomic index (ISEI) for individual classes in Slovakia, 1988–2009
Source: Ján Bunčák, Roman Džambazovič Anna Hrabovská, and Ján Sopóci, “On Some Questions of Social Stratification in Slovak Society,” Slovak Sociological Review 43, no. 5 (2011): 509.
compiled based on recollections of respondents about the past
As for self-assessment of social position, members of the self-employed and service classes see themselves as occupying higher levels in the social hierarchy. (See Table 3.) Skilled workers seem to be aware of the relative decline of their position; they place themselves closer to their low-skilled colleagues than to those in the service and self-employed classes. Interestingly, skilled workers now see themselves stationed even below the routine nonmanual class, despite having higher earnings. According to the authors, this signals a gradual stabilization of new social divisions, even though the distance between classes is growing slowly and is still quite low. Indeed, Slovakia has a relatively low Gini coefficient: 26, in 2009. 20 The income of the self-employed, for example, is not even double that of the lowest class of agricultural workers, while the socioeconomic status of the most prosperous group, the service class, is just under three times that of agricultural workers.
Mean ISEI, monthly net wage, and self-placement of survey respondents in 2009
Source: Ján Bunčák, Roman Džambazovič Anna Hrabovská, and Ján Sopóci, “On Some Questions of Social Stratification in Slovak Society,” Slovak Sociological Review 43, no. 5 (2011): 510.
Sopóci’s work has had only modest influence on public discourse. Meanwhile, the potentially more controversial relational application of class analysis, based on exploring a conflictual relationship between classes, remains largely taboo. So while there still exists a niche space for class analysis in Slovak academia, it has so far remained content with mostly functionalist description and has not manifested an ambition to challenge the “classless” mainstream of public discourse.
Neoliberalism and the Growing Backlash
At the beginning of the 2000s, a new generation of Western-educated intellectuals, mainly economists, emerged as highly influential actors in the public debate. They typically subscribed to the neoliberal worldview of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and saw it as their purpose to put it into practice in Slovakia. 21 What made these newcomers powerful, much more so than academics alone, was their ability to move freely back and forth between think tanks, government, media, and academia.
Ivan Mikloš, the face of Slovakia’s “second generation reforms,” 22 is probably the best known representative of this group. Mikloš managed to radically reform the social and economic policies of Slovakia while serving in high-level government positions between 1998 and 2006. He also contributed immensely to the creation of an intellectual environment conducive to these reforms in roles outside of the state: as a professor at universities in Slovakia and abroad, a founder of the influential think tank MESA 10 (Center for Economic and Social Analyses), and an often-quoted expert in the media. Over his remarkable career, Mikloš has been consistent in his belief that for prosperity to be achieved, the government must dismantle social protection and create an environment in which business can thrive. His ideas are the opposite of traditional Marxist maxims on class conflict, and premised on the assumptions of “trickle-down” economics according to which wealth flows from the uppermost strata down to the lower levels. In this view, social conflict is damaging to all, as everyone is said to be better off as a result of the upper classes getting richer.
Mikloš made no effort to hide that he sought to improve the position of the business class, for since “competitiveness is closely connected with the business environment, it is necessary to have structural reforms for a more business and investment friendly environment.” The enemy of competitiveness he identified as “insufficient market flexibility, especially in the labor market.” 23 There was, he claimed, “no alternative” to his favored approach. 24
While the left naturally contested these claims, its impact on public discourse did not even come close to that achieved by the neoliberals—especially after neoliberal policies succeeded in attracting significant capital investments fueling fast economic growth, leading Slovakia to be heralded in such terms as “the tiger of the Tatra mountains.” 25
As Ol’ga Gyárfášová, founding member of the influential think tank Institute for Public Affairs (Inštitút pre verejé otázky), has written, Slovakia’s neoliberal consensus “originates in a strong reformist intellectual elite gathered in think tanks, nongovernmental organizations, and newspapers,” and as a result “the drive toward free-market principles is probably even stronger than in Western Europe.” 26
One of the most striking aspects of neoliberalism in its Slovak manifestation is its total exclusion of the poor. The underprivileged, Zuzana Kusá has noted, are usually portrayed as myopic actors, incapable of recognizing their true interests, keen on pursuing narrow personal gain at the expense of the whole society. 27 This approach offers no ground on which it is acceptable for the poor even to voice their grievances. Given the absence of a legitimate alternative to this narrative, many Slovaks who have felt economically marginalized have started to give up on politics, leading to resignation, apathy, and a questioning of democratic institutions, which in turn has led to a resurgence of populism.
Populism already dominated the country in the 1990s, when it was chiefly targeted against ethnic others such as Hungarians and Roma. Following the electoral defeat of Mečiar in 1998, however, and Slovakia’s European Union accession in 2004, minority rights appeared to disappear as a politically contentious issue, and populism appeared to be a thing of the past. Soon afterwards, however, the SMER party under the leadership of Robert Fico began to flourish. SMER presented itself as the protector of “ordinary Slovaks” against pervasive injustices ranging from the impoverishing reforms of the previous government, employers who failed to pay wages on time, and alleged Roma thieves stealing from farmers and unopposed by the police. With this message, part of which naturally appealed to many right-wing voters, Fico managed to unite the economically left side of the political spectrum, too, under his banner. He has served as prime minister from 2006 to 2010, and from 2012 to the time of this writing.
The real impact of SMER populism has not been in the area of economic policy—here, SMER largely maintained continuity with the policies of the previous government—but in the political activation of themes dear to the previously marginalized majority. As Ivan Krastev has argued, SMER did not empower the lower classes, but its rise did allow topics such as poverty or social justice to be brought into legitimate political discourse. 28 In this sense, SMER allowed for the return of class into politics. Recent disruptive acts conducted by coordinated groups of workers, such as nationwide strikes of doctors and teachers in 2011 and 2012, or the 2014 strike threat at the Volkswagen automotive plant, which forced management to withdraw proposals to cut wages, hint that the revitalization of class demands that started as a populist electoral strategy might be developing a momentum of its own.
Not surprisingly, such developments act as a source of fear for some Slovak intellectuals. The prominent political scientist Gregorij Mesežnikov was not alone when he criticized SMER for placing “excessive emphasis on material aspects” and for downplaying “social needs to satisfy primary material needs.” Yet such a dichotomy of freedom and prosperity versus the satisfaction of the material claims of the masses is no longer universally accepted. Indeed, it is increasingly rejected by the young generation of Slovak intellectuals, who grew up in a democratic, capitalist society. This does not necessarily mean that young Slovaks necessarily embrace class analysis, but they are certainly more critical of the status quo and less willing to maintain established taboos. According to the political scientist Juraj Draxler, himself a representative of this generation (born 1975), moods and sensibilities have changed a great deal in recent years. Commenting on his many discussions with those Slovak scholars “who have a Western education and are coming back to Bratislava,” Draxler writes, “How fed up they are with the cheap ideology that the ‘market is everything’! . . . Young people today . . . see that society can be governed another way.” 29
Conclusion
Class analysis in Slovak society has been hindered by the politically motivated reluctance of intellectual elites to approach the issue. Immediately following the fall of the old regime, there was a widespread belief that technocratic elites should be insulated from popular demands in order to successfully oversee the democratic transition. The belief that freedom demanded radical inegalitarianism remained quite potent up to the mid-2000s, when it was challenged by the rise of a new populism and a young generation of more critically minded scholars. While functionalism is still the dominant paradigm for the perception of Slovak society by most domestic scholars, and an explicitly Marxist approach rare because of negative connotations from the past, this new generation has definitely made possible a deeper and more critical exploration of class and inequality today. Or at least it has done so in the academy; the phenomenal growth of neoliberalism has made public discourse far more resistant to class concepts. Altogether, though, recent developments suggest change is afoot, with a new willingness on the part of Slovak citizens to articulate their interests, and of intellectuals to engage with issues of class.