Gypsies, work and civil society

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Gypsies, work and civilsocietyMichael Stewart aa Lectures at the University of CambridgePublished online: 12 Nov 2007.

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Gypsies, Work and Civil Society

Michael Stewart

For Vlach Gypsies, the ideology of work contained in the Hungarian authorities'concerted attempts to generalize socialist wage labour is destructive of culturalidentity. In the new labour market situation which has arisen Gypsies are stilldisadvantaged, in the second economy as well as in the first; but Magyars shouldrecognize Gypsy entrepreneurial abilities, and respect their resistance to all formsof social and political hierarchy.

Introduction

One does not have to be a fellow-traveller to concur with official propa-ganda in Eastern Europe that the post-Stalinist treatment of nationalminorities there (with the grotesque exception of Ceausescu's Romania)has marked a significant improvement on the immediate pre-socialistperiod. In Hungary the treatment of the recognized national minoritieshas been in many ways exemplary. However there, as elsewhere in theregion, there is a large and until recently unacknowledged Gypsy popu-lation, the treatment of whom is starkly reminiscent of earlier chauvinistpolitics.1

In each of the countries of the Eastern bloc where there are large Gypsyminorities (Poland and East Germany have no major Gypsy populations)the so-called 'Gypsy problem' has proved remarkably intractable tosuccessive communist regimes and political styles.2 In Hungary thedevelopment of Gypsy policies, rather than providing a direct micro-cosmic picture of the present polity, offers a delayed-frame image of thepolitical style characteristic of the previous era.

Thus in the Stalinist period (1948-56) the party did not addressitself to a Gypsy problem as such and assumed that, along with otheroppressed groups, Gypsies would disappear in the cauldron of thePeople's Republic. The position of Gypsies within Hungarian societystagnated or worsened in these years. Under the rule of János Kádár,when communism was given a half-human face as far as the Magyars wereconcerned and the party began to withdraw from its attempt to dominateall spheres of social life, the state adopted an interventionist policy inrelation to the Gypsies that would not have been out of place in the early1950s. The distinctive feature of this highly active assimilationist policywas an attempt to alter the behaviour of Gypsies in the labour market.Only in the most recent period, begining in 1986-87, when in the widersociety reform currents have been allowed greater freedom of organiza-tion and expression than at any time since 1956, has the Gypsy policy been

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GYPSIES, WORK AND CIVIL SOCIETY 141

amended. Gypsies arc now encouraged to have a say in policy formationthrough formally representative organs. But ihese bodies are still made upfrom place-men and toadies of the authorities. In Hungary at large therecently initiated struggle to separate civil society from the state impliesthe acceptance of profound social conflicts between divergent interestgroups and the need for a public forum within which such interests may bemediated. The official Gypsy policy still relies on the intervention andfixing of we-know-better-than-you engineers of the social order.

Using ethnographic data collected in 1984-85 among Vlach, Romany-speaking Gypsies who live in the prosperous agro-industrial town ofHarangos in Northern Hungary this study looks firstly at the nature ofGypsy policy under the Kdddr regime. Later I add some comments on theambiguities inherent in recent developments.3

Gypsy Assimilation and the Socialist Ideology of Work

The formation within the Communist Party of an explicit Gypsy policy inthe years after the 1956 uprising appears to have been the result of twoextraneous forces. In the liberal atmosphere which prevailed for a year orso after the 1956 Uprising was crushed a National Gypsy Association(Orszdgos Cigdny Szovetsig) was founded. This organization revealedappalling living conditions among many Gypsies and began to exert amoral pressure on the authorities to act against blatant forms of exploita-tion of cheap Gypsy labour.4 At the same, time possibly taking theircue from Soviet policy moves, officials of the Ministry of Labour beganto formulate a specific Gypsy policy.5 It seems thus to have been acombination of pressures from disaffected Gypsies and from the Soviet'vanguard party' that prompted the Hungarian power-holders to addressthe 'Gypsy Question*. The formal policy statement promulgated in June1961 made a very important assertion of principle. It opened with theconviction that 'despite certain ethnological specificities the Gypsy popu-lation does not form a national minority. In the resolution of theirproblems their specific social (my emphasis) situation must be taken intoaccount'.6 According to the party's analysis Gypsies were characterizedby a 'way of life' that had its roots and persistent causes in the past. Indeedthe party resolution of 1961 squarely laid the blame for the Gypsies'current position on their inheritance from class society. It argued that'Gypsies were excluded from the capitalist society, and there arosebetween the Gypsies and non-Gypsies a mutual lack of trust and a deepgulf of prejudice'.7 In analysing the contemporary position of Gypsiesemphasis was given to the cultural and social divisions within the Gypsypopulation but not with the intention of uncovering diverse needs andaspirations. Rather, the brute fact of diversity was presented as therationale for refusing Gypsies the quasi-constitutional status of ethnic oreven national minority.8 Self-ascriptions by Gypsies were in effect passedover and instead the party relied solely on non-Gypsy sociological criteriato distinguish three groups:

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142 MARKET ECONOMY AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN HUNGARY

(a) 'the assimilated' (beilleszkedeti) who have 'reached the averageeconomic and cultural level of the population, given up the Gypsy life-style and for the most part live dispersed. Thirty per cent of Gypsies fit intothis category'.(b) ' Gypsies in the process of assimilation' - also 30 per cent of the total -who 'live in hovels on separate settlements at the edge of towns andvillages, working for the most part only occasionally; their cultural level isreally low'.(c) The non-assimilated, half-settled or wandering [vdndor] Gypsies ofwhom 'a significant part have absolutely no work, avoid respectable jobs,live from day to day, or sponge off society. They frequently changeresidence and live at the lowest cultural level; most of them are illiterate.Forty percent of Gypsies belong to this group'.'The assimilationist policyclearly only applied to the latter two categories. There were severalfeatures to the assimilationist party policy, including provision of school-ing, proper housing, and improvement of the health of the Gypsies. Butthe key to the policy, the economic base upon which the cultural infra-structure would be built, was to integrate Gypsies into regular socialistwage-labour. Even for a figure such as the ethnologist Kamill Erdos, fromwhom one might have expected a complex, non-reductionist view since hespoke Romany and had spent time among Gypsies, the matter of assimi-lation was a simple one. There was no more to the matter than theapplication of a formula: (Gypsy) + (Socialist wage-labour) + (Housing)= (Hungarian worker) + (Gypsy folklore). The law in Hungary requiredthat all able adults must have a registered, permanent place of employ-ment and those who avoided this were branded as 'publicly dangerouswork-shy' (kdzvesz&yes munkakerulo). 'Non-assimilated' Gypsiesappeared to be openly flouting this law. Slightly less objectionable, butstill unacceptable to the party, were those in the second ('assimilating')category who were 'occasionally employed'. The only truly righteousGypsy was he who had a registered and permanent workplace, for such aGypsy would be indistinguishable from his fellow Magyar workers.10

As far as the party was concerned the Gypsy way of life had meantavoiding 'honourable work', living from day to day from the dubiousearnings of 'dealing'. Gypsies had traditionally been excluded fromlabour deemed respectable within the feudal social code. From the time oftheir 'appearance' in Eastern Europe in the late fourteenth century theyhad provided skills such as blacksmithery and musical entertainment,activities which had been in some ways 'infamous' or 'sacred'.11 During thenineteenth and twentieth centuries the demand in Hungary for traditionalGypsy skills declined and a difficult situation was accentuated by theinflux of thousands of Gypsies from the Balkans. Between 1900 and 1960 itappears that many Gypsies became worse off relatively, and possibly inabsolute terms as well. Occasional agricultural employment which hadtraditionally supplemented craft-earned income became the sole sourceof cash or goods for many families.

So it was still as horse-dealers and traders in shady goods, in the

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GYPSIES. WORK AND CIVIL SOCIETY 143

purchase and sale of which it was thought that a quick buck might bemade, that Gypsies were publicly imagined. They were thought to beunconscientious in their work and incapable of prolonged effort. Theirimagined sins did not end with the acquisition of their meagre wealth, forthey would rapidly fritter away their winnings from their dubious deals indrinking and gambling binges. With the dismantling of the Stalinisteconomy in the 1960s it was widely assumed that Gypsies would re-discover their old niche.12

Data from recent fieldwork make a point that is valid for the whole ofthe socialist period in Hungary. A Gypsy woman in Harangos who has apermit to scavenge for scrap in the town pointed out to me that her work islike 'occasional' (Hungarian: alkalmi) work, but because she has apermit, 'the police can't say a word to me*. She is lucky to have a permit,for as a council worker on a scrap yard explained to me, ' in this society theparty and the government have decided that one may only live from anincome derived from a registered work-place'. Pointing to the Gypsywomen scavenging on the tip behind him, he added that 'they areconverting these things into money, they are making usury [UzSrkednekvele], this isn't work'. As the sociologist Gdbor Havas has put it, ' . . .when the council official says that giving out such and such a permit isvery harmful because it gives vagrancy a legal basis he unambiguouslyexpresses the point of view of the majority society, according to which inthis society a lifestyle that preserves the traces and remnants of nomadismis undesirable, and which holds that the Gypsy who is in possession of awork-place, and who can be supervised and generally "kept under one'seyes", is more desirable'.14

By offering the Gypsies work the party hoped they would regain theself-respect it was presumed that they had lost as their old occupationshad been eliminated. In terms that are remarkably reminiscent ofpeasant work-ethics that were prominent in pre-war Hungary, the newCommunist ideologues suggested that physical work would have upliftingqualities, of the sort that academics might associate with intellectualeffort.13 By revealing to the Gypsies the secret nexus by which toil enablesone to reap the fruits of civilization it was presumed they would be 'raised'to the 'cultural level' of Hungarians. There was a socialist tinge given tothis in assertions that in work the individualist Gypsies would feelthe 'effect of the collective' (a hollektiv hatdsa) and under its swaywould gradually grow out of their anti-social traits such as begging,stealing, dishonesty and above all laziness. Because 'working' in a socialistfactory was held to be morally exalting the Gypsies would experience thediscipline of the work process, and the practice of steady, regular work asvalues to be applied to their non-working lives. They would thus 'grow up'from their child-like attachment to the sudden and spectacular earnings ofthe 'dealer' (kupec) and the profligate consumption that goes with thatlife-style.16

The emphasis that the economic aspect of assimilation received is notsimply a product of a crudely materialist reading of Marx. More specifi-

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cally it reflected the almost sacred place that 'labour' and the act of'production' had come to play in communist ideology. In order briefly tobring out the ideological difference from a capitalist economy let me drawa schematic picture. In England the general public can get a sense of thecondition of the economy from daily reports on the state of the stockexchange, whereas on a Hungarian news report one is more likely to hearabout rises or falls in output in a branch of agriculture or industry. This isone consequence of a view of social reproduction that stresses productionand not exchange as the decisive moment The paradigmatic image is ofthe 'productive' (termelb) work-place, such as a factory, which producesfor the ideally self-sufficient nation or perhaps socialist bloc. The concretelabour of each person is thus directly part of the total effort of theHungarian people.

Work, in other words, according to this representation, is not simply oreven primarily the result of a private commodity exchange betweensomeone selling their labour power to an employer who then becomes itsowner. Rather it is the duty of all people to work and, exceptionalconditions apart, Hungarians have no right not to work.17 As Swain hasput it, under conditions of 'actually existing socialism', 'labour power hasto be purchased since all members of society are expected to work; and itcannot be relinquished simply because of inadequate demand or lowprofitability'.18 Labour power is not a separable part of the human personwhich one can choose to part with or not depending on the state of themarket It is, as it were, the activity which constitutes one as a full memberof society.19 It is in their capacity as workers (dolgozdk) as much as in theirroles as citizens that Hungarians achieve full social status in the processof social reproduction, since by labouring in a factory, each worker is him/herself directly 'building our socialist society'.

The theatrical excesses of the Stakhanovite campaigns, when an effortwas made to heroize labour, may now be remembered in shame. But asrecently as May Day 1988 the party daily had this to say in an articleentitled 'On Work Today': 'Communist Hungary has got away from theviewpoint that "work is something unworthy and degrading"'. Whateverthe excesses of the past, the author went on, 'we must not forget the effectsthat are still felt today of the processes begun then, which mean that workand production have won an importance and value that can no longer beput to question'.20 Thus, even at the very end of the KMix period, undermarket oriented socialism, the ideology was still proclaiming that powerand honour belonged to the 'working class*.

The Policy in Action

On an initial trip to Hungary in 19831 was impressed by the 'proofs', loudlytrumpeted by whichever district council I visited, that the assimilationistpolicy had basically been succesful. Virtually full male Gypsy employ-ment (90 per cent) had been achieved by the late 1970's and employmentof Gypsy women was also increasing. As I prepared one year later to do

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field research in an agro-industrial town of Northern Hungary I waspresented with a statistical breakdown of Gypsy employment whichconfirmed in detail the national picture. In 1964 only 14 per cent of theGypsy men were in work. By 1976 the proportion had risen to three-quarters. In 1983 Harangos Council reported that 92 per cent of the menwere in permanent employment, though only 22 per cent of able-bodiedwomen had jobs, due to the shortage of suitable opportunities for them inphysically light, daytime work. This figure had probably risen to around50 per cent by 1984.21

The statistics made reassuring reading for the bureaucrats and providedthem with plenty of opportunity to boast of their successes in reportswritten for official consumption. They also impressed me; at that stage Iwas all too willing naively to credit the communist regime with powers itdid not and could not exercise, and to accept the assertion that one couldno longer research 'real Gypsies' in Hungary. However, even a superficialacquaintance with the labour market in Hungary rapidly made it clear thatthe relation between government policy and Gypsy employment, far frombeing direct and causal itself, presents complexities deserving of furtheranalysis. Despite the ideological importance attached to 'getting theGypsies used to working', full male employment, it can be argued, was infact better seen as the result of labour market pressures in a plannedsocialist economy, combined with the entirely unintended consequencesof a piece of unrelated legislation.

The party officials who dealt with the figures may have been keen ongetting Gypsies into work, but the enterprise managers who had just beenthrough a harrowing ten years effort breaking the moral back of a newlyproletarianized peasantry were in no mood to do the same for the Gypsies.Enterprises have always attempted to avoid taking on Gypsy labour. In1985 I was told that in Harangos when companies advertise for workersthrough official channels they often tell council officers 'don't sendGypsies!'22 The directors of the Steel Vat Factory are clearly bitter abouttheir position and conclude a report with the words: 'our factory is in avery difficult position; the employment of Gypsy labour is unavoidable,especially in the pouring-shops'. The unremarked problem the factoryfaces is that Magyar workers will not take up this kind of hard and dirtyphysical labour for the pay offered. The situation in this factory is aparticularly bad variant of a common story. While some Gypsies havebeen able to satisfy the local Parquet Factory's demand for unskilledlabour, the management of the factory is by no means so satisfied with itsown side of the deal. In private conversation with me the personnelmanager of this factory said that his works are forced to take on Gypsylabour, which in better market situations they would refuse. The ancient,indeed often obsolete and almost comically labour-intensive machinerythat is still in use in factories in Harangos also allows numerous openingsfor unskilled and semi-skilled operatives.

If the managers have not been ideologically motivated to bring in Gypsylabourers, why do Hungarian state companies continue to employ and

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even seek out Gypsy labour? At least some of the reasons are inherent inthe nature of a planned economy, in which enterprise managers alwayshave incentives to extend production, workforce, and capacity, in order togain increased political clout and thus greater power to determine theshape of the future plans to which they will be subject.23 Many enterprisestake on staff willy nilly whenever they can, and the consequent problemsof 'labour force dilution' have been discussed by many commentators.24

This much is more or less common knowledge in enlightened circles inHungary. Vera KozaTc, the official in charge of Gypsy affairs nationallyand something of an expert in Gypsy labour-market studies, has herselfexplained the increased employment of Gypsies as a direct consequenceof the wage-regulation rules.25 Only now, in the late 1980s, is this processbeginning to be reversed, as the so-called 'cotton-wool workforce' is thefirst to be laid off when companies try to rationalize and restructure.26

Gypsy Jobs in Harangos

Gypsies may have found employment but this was almost uniformly in theleast desirable jobs. The picture in Harangos is characteristic of the rest ofthe country. The training of almost all Gypsy workers in Harangos is lowand only 40 per cent are even semi-skilled, that is have received a minimaltraining on the job.27 From a 1985 breakdown it is clear that both inabsolute numbers and in terms of the workforce as a whole, Gypsiesare found above all in the harder and dirtier jobs. Gypsies are dis-proportionately represented in the Town-Cleaning Department of theCouncil, in the Industrial Machinery and Tool Factory, and in the ParquetFactory, all places where the conditions of work are relatively poor. At theParquet Factory the workers stand in the wood dust all day long with noprotective breathing equipment At the slaughterhouse a Gypsy brigadedoes the foulest work of disembowelling. In all of these places Gypsylabour makes up some 15-18 per cent of all manual labour (as opposed to1.7 per cent of manual labour at the pleasantly situated lung clinic up in thehills above the town).28

The kind of jobs allocated to Gypsies include sand-mixer, productionline assistant, delivery assistant, production-line material conveyor, vat-cleaner, general cleaner, wood-cutter, coke-man, porter, loader, build-ing labourer, builders' mate, street sweeper. It is striking that many ofthese now classically 'Gypsy' jobs are peripheral to the process of pro-ducing things proper. At the Parquet Factory, where many Gypsies Iknow work, the majority is employed right at the beginning of theproduction process, humping raw wood bundles into the factory andcutting them down to size for the skilled (almost exclusively Magyar)workers further down the production line to turn into parquet flooring.29

Although heavy physical labour is better paid than lighter unskilledlabour, being low-skilled the Gypsies remain low-paid - averaging in1984-85 between 3,000 and 4,000 forints, that is some 1,000 forints or sobelow the national average wage. The position of Gypsies is also often

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(though rather variably) made worse by the low productivity of theirlabour or, more frequently, illicit absences from work. On average,according to reports from Harangos, Gypsy labour achieves 70 per cent ofMagyar productivity.

There are counter-examples and, understandably, officials reportingon changes in conditions stress these to show that 'things do improve*. Inthe Parquet Factory, for instance, there is a single Gypsy man who earnsnearly three times as much as his fellows.30 The dominant pattern remainsthat Gypsies earn less than Hungarians. Average figures for the Steel VatFactory in Harangos show that Gypsies earned some 760 forints (that isabout one fifth of the total wage) less per month than Magyar colleagues.Earnings here are largely based on productivity and the differences aredue above all to whole- and part-day absences of Gypsies, their lack ofexperience in the job (many leave within one to two months of starting),and days of sick-leave. In 1984 Gypsy workers there spent an average of 15days absent without leave. The range of days absent without leave washowever from one to 48. An average of more than 25 days sick-leave weretaken, as were four days of short, permitted, absences, significantlymore than their Magyar colleagues, who averaged 17.9 and 1.1 daysrespectively.31

The wage figures mentioned above concern basic wages only, to whichmust be added the payments and benefits accruing to socialist wage-labourers.32 A man with three children who would as a single person earn4,500 forints takes home nearly 7,500. As far as Gypsies are concerned thelatter total is what they work for. When I asked them how much a job paidthey made no distinction between wage and benefit. On top of wages incash there are also in some factories wages in kind. For workers at theParquet Factory this includes some 120 hundredweight of firewood everyyear. For workers in other factories this may include less legitimatebenefits, such as access to tools or materials for personal gain. Paidmaternity leave (now at nearly full-pay for one year, with lower rates paidfor a further two years) is given to women who have worked for one yearcontinuously, prior to claiming. Various loans for raising animals, buyingfurniture and house-improvements or house purchase are also availableto people who have been working for a whole year and so have a'permanent work-record' (dllandd munkaviszony). It is also, for theGypsies, the sine qua non of any assistance from the local council.

Fighting Back

I have so far stressed the way in which Gypsies are placed at the bottom ofthe socialist wood pile. Their position is however not entirely determinedby uncontrollable forces in the wider political economy. The very fact thattheir labour is needed has allowed them to develop, in the absence of anysuitable formal political/labour organizations, other forms of exertingtheir will. They have achieved this most notably through the use ofdevastating^ intense job-hopping. It is not at all surprising to find Gypsies

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leaving a workplace within months, and sometimes weeks or even days oftaking up employment A look at some of the work-records of Gypsies Iknew which I managed to copy out of their 'work-books', will give someidea of the diversity in labour histories:

(A) A man bom in 1940

Building LabourerWater WorksLight Machines FactoryHeavy Machines FactoryMeat ProcessingMeat ProcessingParquet Factory

24- 5-1960 -9 - 2-1965 -8- 7-1969 -4-10-1970 -7-11-1971 -3 - 1-1974 -1-10-1974 -

(B) A woman bom in 1942

Railway Line Factory

(C)

No permanent workMeat ProcessingParquet Factory

(D)

Electricity CompanyFurniture FactoryFood ProcessingWater WorksRubbish CollectionRailway Line FactoryCar WorksPipe LayingLight IndustryHospitalFurniture FactoryLight MachinesLight MachinesRubbish CollectionLight MachinesLight MachinesLight MachinesElectrical GoodsLight MachinesFurniture FactoryFurniture FactoryFloor-board CompanyWater-WorksFurniture FactoryNo work/Sick

9- 8-1969 -

A man bom in 1952

1966 -June 19751- 1-1979 -

A man born in 1945

27-10-1966 -17- 5-1967 -8- 8-1967 -

21-10-1967 -9-11-1967 -

30- 8-1968 -10-10-1968 -26-11-1968 -17- 6-1969 -9-10-1969 -

19- 2-1970 -23- 3-1970 -21 - 7-1970 -

1- 6-1971 -21-10-1971 -

8- 3-1973 -3 - 1-1976 -

14- 8-1976 -15-11-1976 -

1- 3-1977 -8- 2-1983 -

14- 3-1983 -3-10-1983 -

16- 7-1984 -20- 4-1985 -

10- 7-196013- 2-196526- 1-1970

5- 6-197125- 1-197324- 5-1974still there.

still there.

197524-12^-1978

the present day

31-10-19669- 6-1967

11- 9-196727-10-196730-11-19679-11-1968

31-10-196827- 3-19692 - 8-1969

19- 1-197014- 3-19709- 4-1970

31-12-1970*10- 8-19711- 3-1973

31-12-197526- 6-19764-11-1976

25- 2-19771- 2-19833 - 3-1983

22- 8-198330- 3-198419- 4-1985

the present day.•includes period spent in reform centre/prison.

These individual cases illuminate some of the patterns behind thepractice which overall has a quite profound effect in industry. At the local

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factory producing steel-vats in Harangos between 30 and 40 Gypsies maybe employed at one time as semi- and unskilled workers. In 1984 32Gypsies left (68 per cent of the total employed) and 44 (93.6 per cent)joined. The corresponding figures for non-Gypsies are 40.3 per centand 35.4 per cent. Note that this lower figure may simply reflect thegreater number of skilled and office workers among the non-Gypsies,suggesting that the phenomenon of the 'wandering birds' (Hungarian:vdndormadarak), as job-hoppers have been officially rebuked in themedia, is a feature of work rank and not ethnic group.

None the less it is popularly held that Gypsies are somehow inherentlymore likely to job hop. One popular explanation of this asserts thatGypsies are attached to a 'nomadic* or 'unsettled' lifestyle. This is mainly areflection of ideological prejudice, for there is no evidence whatsoeverthat the Gypsies most likely to job-hop are not settled residentially.33

Gypsy nomadism is a thing of the distant past in Hungary.34 Anotherofficial explanation is that people move in search of wages and lessdemanding work, but since individual workers often return to the sameworkplace after a break elsewhere (see case D above) there may be moreto the matter than cash and comfort.

A fascinating article by Mdria Lad6 and Ferenc T6th suggests somenon-economic roots of job-hopping.35 They show that in an economybased on shortages, within any one work team a 'core' group of workersmay be engaged much of the time on replanning and redesigning theexecution of tasks with the materials available, and obtaining these fromtheir contacts in the company stores. An internal division of labour arisesamong manual workers which creates the conditions in which unskilled('peripheral') labourers may move frequently and willingly from oneworkplace to another, while the core remains in one place. During theworking day 16 unskilled labourers might execute the tasks of the originalgroup of 20, releasing the four 'core' workers to do the necessary pre-paratory work.36

The possibility of job-hopping is also linked to the inherent labourshortage in a socialist economy combined with the importance of themarket and private enterprise in Hungary The considerably more relaxedattitude to private initiatives has opened a range of alternative incomes forGypsies, as for all Hungarians, allowing them to maintain economicautonomy as well as become wealthy. Gypsy men who do private buildingwork are exploiting one of the niches opened up in post-reform Hungary.

If we take a look at some slightly more extensive data I gathered duringmy research we will see that what appears to be a common pattern ofGypsy job-jopping in general is in fact more diverse. Table 1 gives a senseof the overall occupation of Gypsies at 'Paris', the settlement where I didmost of my fieldwork. These figures correspond to data from councilfigures which indicate that the figure quoted of 90 per cent of Gypsy menpermanently employed is exaggerated, since the category of permanentwork is defined rather loosely, to include anyone at work when the censusis conducted. If, for instance, for 1985 we look at how many Gypsies in

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Harangos arc 'settled in a permanent job' and assume this to mean thatthey have been there at least one year, we see that the figure of 90 per centfor all men must be scaled down by one-third to around 60 per cent.

TABLE 1OCCUPATIONS OF THE PARIS GYPSIES

Men Women

Soc. Wage-Labour Full-TimeSoc. Wage-labour Occasionally'Retired' and Dealing'Retired* not DealingMaternity Leave

1876*4*-

1206*4*

11"The men all have some form of pension. Officially, the women are 'housewives', sincewomen do not have to work and therefore don't have to be 'retired*. The term 'not-dealing'means that they keep no pigs and do not participate in the marketing of scavenged industrialgoods such as nylon thread. All those on maternity leave have by definition worked full-time in wage-work for at least one year previously.

As Table 1 demonstrates, there is a strong tendency for women to workwhen they do not have pressing other commitments, such as small childrenin their care, and if they cannot earn more by dealing in one item oranother. That two-thirds of the women at Paris have been in permanentemployment is all the more striking given the fact that the council itselfadmits that women have difficulty finding work in Harangos. Consideringthe women without a work record, all except two, both of whom have verylow status, are involved in producing wealth through scavenging, market-dealing and, or pig-raising. All of the women on maternity leave do thesame. In other words all succesful women try to keep a foot in both campsof the economy.

During the early period of a typical household developmental cyclewhen the wife is on maternity leave, her husband will go to work'permanently' in factories. For most men working is unavoidable from thetime they are committed to a family until they are middle aged or older.Cases C and D illustrate this point to some extent, in that the men took upwork when their wives were stuck at home with children. For instancechildren were born to D in 1965, 1968, 1970, and two more a few yearslater. His wife was thus unable to keep up a job and demanded he broughtin a regular cash income.

Before this and after, men may try to avoid 'working', though thereasons may vary. One motive is illustrated by case D, as discussed above.The jobs he had done were all physically demanding and varied from yard-sweeper to vat-cleaner to stores-assistant and navvy. From 1982 onwardsintensifying disease caused him to take more and more sick-leave (up to 20per cent of his work-time), all of which was on the advice of doctors. At thispoint his application to be retired 'early' on grounds of ill-health wasrejected, though the examining doctor expressed regret that 'D' couldnot, due to his illiteracy, take up some form of lighter work in an office. I

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knew the man well and while he was on sick leave we would talk about hisfuture: he would have been happy as a small-scale dealer selling brooms,but he resisted any suggestion that he should go back into industry. On theother hand he lacked both the personal qualities necessary for a success-ful dealer and the 'connections' without which the life of a dealer isimpossible.39 Indeed this man, after my main fieldwork was completed,did receive a permit to make and sell brooms, but found himself incapableof using this opportunity profitably and returned the licence.

His wife, from whom for 'social security reasons' he was officiallyseparated, said that she would not allow him to give up waged-workaltogether and expect her to provide all the money in the family. She usedto say that she was not as stupid as some of the women living at Paris, whoallowed their husbands to sit around talking and drinking all day. On theother hand the fact that she has kept up a job since 1982 has allowed D totake more sick-leave than he might have been able to allow himselfotherwise. Four of the middle-aged men at Paris are in the position Dwould like to be in, of being retired early. Three of them make somemoney in dealing in horses or scrap.40 The fourth man does not deal but hiswife works full time and supports their family, as do the wives of two of theother 'retired dealers'.

The men who work some of the time and job-hop frequently are all intheir twenties and may well behave like C, who took up 'permanent' workwhen he was 23, and A, who did the same when he was 30. None has morethan two children (two of them have no children at all). Three of them tendto work together, joining and leaving a workplace at the same time. In thesummer of 1985 these three each earned a couple of thousand forints aweek doing casual, private, building work. They were paid at the standardrate for heavy physical labour on the 'grey market', which is 500 forints aday. Though they have lucky breaks like this, all of these men live innoticeably worse houses than those men who have permanent work; andthey cannot raise loans for house improvement and purchase of furniture.None of them own their houses and all live in single rooms inside the yardsof other relatives. These young men can keep up this relaxed attitude tostable work because in each case their wife has a regular work-record andtherefore has access to the welfare-like benefits of working which I havementioned. Most interestingly, these men were the only ones not to buyhorses as individuals in the whole time I lived in Harangos; and when twoof them once bought a dying animal jointly, they soon had to sell it to theslaughterhouse!

Pulling together this information we can see a pattern emerging. Sinceworking offers not just wages but all the other benefits of the Hungarianwelfare-state there is a massive premium on at least one person in anyfamily keeping up their work-book. But in fact in most families more thanone person goes out to work for a wage.

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Willing Workers?

The question therefore arises as to whether these Gypsies are in effectbecoming 'workers' in the rather moralistic sense in which the communistparty has used this term. Does increased Gypsy employment prove thatthey have 'got used to working', in the sense of being morally committed tothe idea of working for a wage and being willing to give up their attachmentto more 'Gypsy' ways of making money?

If one asks the managers who deal with Gypsies there is an unequivocalresponse: in the Parquet Factory though the situation was 'better nowthan a few years ago', the Gypsies 'keep very much to themselves',refusing to use the works canteen, sharing their own food with each other,speaking Romany to each other and regularly taking 'days without leavefor various celebrations of theirs', thus disrupting factory work and labourdiscipline. These comments are significant in that they suggest thatdespite long term work-records (some 92.3 per cent of Gypsies here haveworked there for more than one year) these Gypsies have scarcelyidentified themselves with their workplace and their work-teams.41 Fromthe Steel Vat Factory came the following complaint: "The leaders of ourfactory and workshops offer their assistance in all matters, but despite thisthe majority of Gypsies would like to keep up their work-record withoutworking, or working without discipline.' In this factory managementobjects to what it sees as the Gypsies' active sense of their own rights.One manager in a recent survey in Harangos complained about Gypsyemployees' willingness to kick up a fuss when their wages were reduced,implying that this was impertinent given their lack of commitment to theworkplace in other ways. Various sanctions to discourage movement fromone workplace to another (such as the reduction in wages if one leaves aworkplace without working out the 'resignation period' as many Gypsiesdo) have had little or no effect So among the (Magyar) managers whoemploy the Gypsies one finds a strong, indeed almost unequivocal sensethat, despite becoming 'workers' they have not assimilated the correctattitude to work. These men see quite clearly that Gypsies have beenforced by economic and political circumstances into wage-labour, buthave used these circumstances to their own ends and, given the sellersmarket in labour which has prevailed under socialism, have been highlysuccessful.

Gypsies themselves have no simple, unequivocal answer to thesequestions. If we ignore the level of analysis which could unambiguouslydescribe Gypsies as workers 'in themselves' and concentrate instead onquestions of consciousness, we do not find unambiguous feelings. When itcomes to articulating the relationship between work and identity, Gypsiesare caught in something of a bind. Thus they are well aware that wage-labour has become an irreplaceable source of income for most of them.Without work (Romany: butji) they say they would revert to the poverty inwhich they lived only a generation ago, when Gypsy men could be seen on

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the road hauling their horse-carts from village to village looking for work.I frequently heard the assertion 'we all work now'. Occasionally Gypsiestake on the rhetoric of official propaganda, as did a man who was one ofthe keenest 'integrationists' I knew. He said that he worked 'in order toprogress to something better... I don't want to be the last one in the line'.42

A good illustration of the important of waged work (whatever itsrepresentations) is the way that its payment shapes the very rhythm ofGypsy communal life. Most workers in Harangos are paid around thetenth day of each month. There is then a brief flush period, followed bytwo or three barren weeks. In those days women buy all the luxury,expensive items, such as coffee for the whole month, and fruit brandy canbe found in every home at the weekend. A man with a debt to collect willhope to secure payment in the first day or two after pay-day or not at all.Pay-day determines the timing of major Gypsy events like betrothals,weddings and christenings, because it is only on the first Saturday of themonth that one can be sure that men will have the funds to travel to acelebration with enough cash not to be ashamed, should they have to buyalcohol. In the absence of such celebrations, the first few nights after payday are times when men go off drinking in the town and from there,gambling with the Romungro Gypsies (non-Romany speakers) or withthe non-Gypsies. Equally, this is the time when one can expect visits fromrelatives in other villages or make them oneself: one can go in style, that isby 'taxi', and provide the kind of generosity that Rom expect of eachother.

There are Gypsies who have made a virtue of economic necessity andfiercely assert the link between regular work record and wealth. These areoften Gypsies who wish to achieve some sort of assimilation to Hungarianvalues and life-style. However even these people admit that work per se ishardly gratifying and argue that the only motivation for turning up day inday out is the wage-packet at month-end. With the exception of thesepeople there is almost no positive representation of labour. A far morecommon experience of work is one of subordination to Magyar bosses,and to the performance of peripheral and dirty tasks which they know thatnon-Gypsies would rather not do. Gypsies say that their payment is thewages of the Gypsies' 'suffering' (Romany: briga, Hungarian: szenvedis).so if one asks Rom why they work the question is easily answered: 'TrubuVthey say ('I'm obliged to'), employing the form used to distinguish anexternal compulsion from an internal commitment43

If at all possible Gypsies will take the chance to move into private workin the second sector of the economy. This desire to get out of state-controlled wage-labour derives only in part from the Gypsies' culturalpre-disposition to favour trade and dealing to labour. The roots of theirattitudes today lie as much in an assessment of the political economy ofHungary that they share with their Magyar colleagues.

It has been said that 'for the majority of the working people, it isvirtually impossible to live reasonably well on the official wage of a singlefull-time job in the first economy'.44 Resort to the second economy, in so

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far as they can manage, is one way Gypsies try to make ends meet. Indeed,if they can manage to move entirely into the second economy, then theirroute to wealth is made. As one man told me, 'if I had as much money as mybrother-in-law [a big horse dealer] I wouldn't work. I'd circulate mymoney and so turn [money] towards me'. All the wealthy Gypsy families inthe town are wholly engaged in the second-economy, horse-raising,broom-selling and other commercial dealing. Unlike the average Gypsy,the prestige of these dealers extends beyond the Gypsy world into that ofthe non-Gypsies. Such families live in large houses in the centre of thetown and have the widest range of contacts with the Magyars. The onlyGypsies in Harangos who had cars in 1984-85 were those who did no wage-labour at all but worked officially as dealers or 'small-scale producers'(Hungarian: kisiparos). Even at wage-work Gypsies may discover thegreater value of 'dealing' than 'working'. One impoverished man was, as afavour, given the task of removing all the scrap metal from his workplace -where he was employed as a general labourer - and selling it to the scrapcompany. From this one job he netted (legally or semi-legally) more thantwice his monthly salary. With the proceeds from this he was able to buy ahorse for the first time in two years.

But here as well the Gypsies find themselves disadvantaged in com-parison with non-Gypsies. Much though they might like to move into thesecond sector, Harangos Gypsies for the most part have very restrictedpossibilities in this field. In particular Gypsies are far less well representedthan their Magyar counterparts in EEWP production, that is the sub-contracting units that carry out work after normal working hours in returnfor remuneration which may be treble normal wage rates. In the whole ofHeves County only 18 Gypsies had access to these earnings in 1984!46

Gypsies are then restricted to the less strictly legal spheres of the secondeconomy like the building work I mentioned above. There are othersources such as scavenging and selling the wood that Parquet Factoryworkers are given. One man makes horse-carts using in parts materialsthat his sister scavenges for him as part of her scrap work. Another makesbarbecue stoves. But these are the exceptions.

Thus Gypsies might like to move into the lucrative second economy butfor the most part they find their way blocked. It is quite rational for them tomaintain an explicitly two-faced attitude towards the production ofwealth. In so doing they recognize the real symbiosis between the twosectors of the economy. The same cannot be said for the party and otherofficial organs. For them the old 1961 slogan holds: a good Gypsy is one inregular work. The symbolic contrast between first and regular and secondand irregular/casual still holds as far as the Gypsies are concerned. Giventhe presumed predispositions of Gypsies it is thought best if they are keptout of the second economy.

Evidence from Harangos suggests, however, that the Gypsies are rightand the ideologues wrong. The Parquet Factory has been one of thesuccess stories of the Harangos labour market. In 1979 this factorydiscovered that it could encourage Gypsies to remain in a job by offering

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assistance with settlement-purchase and house-building. From this timethe work-force began to stabilize, while absolute numbers increased. Ofall the Gypsy workers, less than 30 per cent left the company in that year.Ironically, these Gypsies who were 'settling down' were also deeplyinvolved in the world of wheeling-and-dealing. They lived on a settlementwhere they have (unlike many Gypsies) been able to buy houses - using ofcourse bank loans. Most Gypsies in Harangos have no hope of being ableto make such excellent purchases of houses with yards, land and a degreeof freedom from non-Gypsy interference. At the Steel Vat Factorythere is an equivalent age range of Gypsies (that is, including men withdependent children and wives) but there is far less labour stability. Thefact that many of the Parquet Factory workers were able to keep pigs orhorses at home meant that they had some basic capital with which to makehouse-purchase or re-building a feasible option. Bank loans are nowadaystoo small to buy or build a house and so a Gypsy needs his own funds to getstarted. The Gypsies of Paris who have other sources of income apart fromwage-labour are in a position to make use of the benefits of permanentwage-labour in one factory, while workers at the Steel Vat Factory live inslum conditions, and it makes little difference to them whether they havethe full socialist wage or not. Job-hopping is more frequent there as aconsequence. In other words it is precisely those Gypsies who have someincome from non-wage-labour activities who are most likely to sustainwage-labour in one job! Yet this combination, so important for millions ofMagyar households, is still deemed reprehensible as far as Gypsies areconcerned in the eyes of the authorities.

The Articulation of Gypsy Interests

In this concluding section I want to suggest some of the historical diffi-culties that any 'reformed' Gypsy policy will have to face. It is nowfashionable to 'listen' to the Gypsies and socially prominent Gypsyfigures have been invited (note: not elected) to represent Gypsies onorganizations such as the National Gypsy Council. There has been ratherless listening to Gypsies on the ground, in the settlements and de factoghettos, and past experience suggests that it will not prove easy to finddemocratic representatives of the Gypsies.

Accustomed to dealing with highly prejudiced Magyar bosses andofficials, Gypsies are all too prepared to spin convenient stories when thetime is right. Thus when I requested my companion in the field, JuditSzego, on a return trip to carry out some interviews about work withGypsies we know, I was at first surprised and disappointed to hear themclaiming rather better work records than I knew them to possess. Forinstance, D claimed to have worked in one place for the past three years.Of course, my original frustration was misplaced, tall stories are them-selves a kind of data. The Rom were talking in Hungarian to a Magyarwhom they knew well, and whom they knew to be familiar with their realwork habits. At the same time they were recording their lives for strangers

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and foreigners, and wanted to present themselves so as to make a suitableimpression.

I had seen the inverse one evening in Harangos when I went to see a filmin the local culture house with a Gypsy friend. The man was partially lame,and had been unemployed for several months and had no intention ofgetting work soon, but was 'getting by' with bits of light casual labouringand his wife's earnings. At the culture house we met a Magyar 'mate'(haver) of his from his last workplace, who asked what my friend was doingnow. The Gypsy claimed that he was making brooms and selling them invillages in the area. He was ashamed to say to a Magyar that he wasunemployed, but at home in the settlement he felt few qualms in frontof his fellow Gypsies about making no effort to look for work. Onlyoccasionally did a Gypsy criticize another Gypsy for not 'working', or forgetting rich from playing cards. In other contexts Gypsies praised the witsof men who had got rich 'without doing a day's work' (Romany: ci her dasbutji, ci pejekh djes).

Confronted by such apparent duplicity and unable to see rationalmotivation for it, even well-meaning bureaucrats lose patience. Less well-meaning ones (and it is they who are in charge of social engineeringpolicies for the time being in Hungary) adopt explicitly aggressive tactics.Such has historically been the case in Harangos where the local councilhas tried through various more or less symbolic gestures to bring thegeneral life-style of Gypsies into line with their intended work-culture,and so alter what may in the worst instances appear as a wilful two-facedness, in which a man might be an 'assimilated' worker (Hungarian:dolgozd) in the day time and yet a 'non-assimilated' horse-dealing Gypsyin the evening.

One such gesture, fittingly, concerns work-records. Despite thesuccesses recorded by 1985, the council noted with surprise 'that in theperiod since the last report there has been no prosecution of a Gypsy livingas a 'publicly dangerous work-shier', that is someone without a place ofwork for more than three months on the trot.47 The image of the goodintegrated Gypsy is one who has totally submitted to the disciplines of theproletarian life, while the image of the 'traditional' Gypsy fits perfectlythe socialist definition of the work-shy. Hence the council officer whobelieves that there are still 'traditional Gypsies' around will expect to seeprosecutions.

An example of council intervention in the mid-1970s concerned theconfiscation of Gypsy horses. A council statement of 1977 noted thatGypsies had 'predictably' gone for work in 'unrestrictive areas' like scrapcollection and animal husbandry where the danger exists that theiractivities 'could become anti-social. Horse-carts are one of the possibletools for carrying out criminal acts and encourage "vagrancy"; keepinganimals, in the absence of land, can be just the same [by leading to theft offodder], apart from being a health and environmental hazard'. Steps hadbeen taken in 1974 to prevent animals being kept: all horse owners weretold they would henceforth need permission to keep horses in the town.

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Cart-drivers and home-based craftsmen were to be allowed to keep them,but people who simply lived from keeping horses (that is, Gypsies) wouldnot. It was for non-compliance with this order that the horses of many ofthe town's Gypsies were confiscated in 1976. No compensation was paidfor the animals on the grounds that the Gypsies had paid no animal tax onthe horses for many years.

Incidentally, this action ended badly for the authorities who had tostable the horses with a local co-operative farm and keep them there atgreat expense until they were sent for slaughter. The income from this byno means met the expenses and the experiment (in trying 'to break theGypsy from their horses' as one Gypsy man put it) has not been triedagain. None the less, the spirit of the council did not change, and in a 1985report concern was again expressed about illegal animal husbandry andthe need to bring it under control.49 The real sense behind these actsagainst the Vlach Gypsies was conveyed to me by the deputy leader of thetown council who explained that there was 'a small minority of Gypsies'operating in a semi-legal, only semi-rule-bound and 'disorderly half-world*. In his eyes special sanctions were necessary to control this. Hisopinion reflects one current in official thinking even today. Up to thepresent day there has been an orchestrated campaign by officials withinthe Interior Ministry, aided by some unlikely allies, to merge thecategories Gypsy, 'lumpen' and criminal in popular consciousness. Butthis repressive policy is visibly not achieving either the integration or theassimilation of Gypsies.50

Today's new 'liberal' advocates of central policies towards the Gypsiesstill want to incorporate them into the machinery of the modern Hungarianstate. So far, with certain interesting exceptions, they have failed.1 Theproblem has lain in their inability to find genuine representatives of theGypsies to work in the committees that are supposed to articulate Gypsyinterests, and this failure is instructive.

Chris Hann has described above the desire that seems to be growingstronger, if not clearer, among some Budapest intellectuals for thecreation of some sort of 'civil society' apart from the state. The model ofchange seems to be that of eighteenth century France. The hope is,presumably, that if a sphere can be created for the bourgeois entre-preneur, then ineluctably and behind the scenes the social conditions willarise in which Hungary's ancien rigime will fall and the, previously half-fulfilled bourgeois in the Magyar population will realize its other, citizenhalf. I sometimes wonder whether the emergence of the new bourgeoisentrepreneur layer in Hungary is itself entirely a blessing, but here it israther the submerged political perspective that I would like to question.

Civil society, as I understand the concept, refers to a sphere of activity inwhich the bourgeois is able more or less freely and privately to contractrelations with others. It presupposes a state (often the representativestate) that is able, somehow, to mediate the interests of all the separateparties in civil society. We have been used to a changing version of this inEngland for perhaps two hundred years or more, in which through such

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idioms as 'one man, one vote' we imagine the mediation of interests as if allinterests were equally weighted and no particular or local (for example,class) interest carried more power than another. I am hardly the first tosuggest that the equality and democracy enacted in this system is oftenformal or ritualistic. So, - and I know the following may sound a bit richfrom this end of Europe - I am less enthusiastic about 'our' state'sinherently democratic potential than my Hungarian counterparts. In thiscontext the words of the early and prophetic critic of civil society, Jean-Jacques Rousseau are appropriate. Discussing the concept of sovereignty(the exercise of the general will) he says:

Sovereignty for the same reason as makes it inalienable cannot berepresented; it lies essentially in the general will, and will does notadmit of representation .... The deputies of the people, therefore,are not and cannot be its representatives: they are merely itsstewards and can carry through no definitive acts. Every law thepeople has not ratified in person is null and void - is, in fact, not a law.

Rousseau continues: "The people of England regards itself as free; but itis grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members ofparliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it isnothing.'52

This point is one that, I would argue, the Gypsies of Harangos havelearned, or at any rate do not need to be taught. During my stay there acouncil member once turned up at the settlement we lived on, in order tocanvass votes in the local elections. I have given the details of this storyelsewhere.53 What concerns me here is that when the council man arrivedhe asked to speak to the 'Gypsy leader' (Hungarian: vajda, Romany:mujalo). One old man leapt at the opportunity to claim to speak for all theRom, but he was ridiculed into silence by his own son, among others. Hewas denounced as a 'fool', an 'illiterate', an 'old drunkard', and thrustforcibly back onto the bed he had been sitting on. In brief, he washumiliated. The Romany term mujalo means both 'spokesman' and 'spy'/'traitor'. The Gypsies brook no 'representation' of their 'general will' tooutsiders. Inside Gypsy communities men who try to command others aresimilarly ridiculed - as if the collective of Gypsies defends the autonomy ofeach individual.

But though Gypsies reject representation of their collective will, thisdoes not mean that they are incapable of articulating social (that is,mediated) interests. Very striking evidence of the Gypsy 'political order',their way of 'mediating interests', comes from their system of justice. Onoccasion, Gypsies in dispute will call a 'trial' (Romany: kris). Cases I havewitnessed concerned disputes over horses, over marriages broken soonafter an (expensive) wedding, and over accusations of deadly cursing. Inthe resolution of these disputes, one or more, normally elderly male and'impartial' Gypsies, are asked to offer an opinion, having heard all sides.There is no formality to the proceedings. At the end there is no bindingjudgement, just an opinion. This opinion has to be accepted by both

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disputants for the kris to be successful. If it is not, a further ¡cris may becalled. There is no 'separation' of powers from the people, no creation of asuperior power (fictitiously) 'above' society.

This brief image of the Gypsies* social order leads me to suggest thatHungarian reformers would do well to look for solutions to their socio-political problems in the, admittedly partial, occasional and all-too-fragile practice of - sometimes denigrated - 'others' (and not just theGypsies) in their own society before (or at least at the same time as)looking for them in the glamorized 'other' of the 'free West'.

NOTES

Michael Stewart studied social anthropology at the London School of Economics, and nowlectures at the University of Cambridge, where he is also Research Fellow at Corpus ChristiCollege. In addition to writing scholarly articles, he has also acted as consultant in themaking of an ethnographic film about the Gypsies discussed in this study (Beyond theTracks; broadcast in the UK by Granada Television, July 1988).

1. In the case of Hungary, the fact that Gypsies are the only sizeable non-Magyar elementleft in the country might lead a cynic to wonder whether the other minorities would havefared as well as they have done, had any of them posed such a visible challenge toMagyar ethnic dominance.

2. See W. Guy, 'The Attempt of Socialist Czechoslovakia to Assimilate its GypsyPopulation' (University of Bristol: unpublished doctoral dissertation, 1978); I.-M.Kaminski, 'The State of Ambiguity: Studies of Gypsy Refugees' (Gothenberg:Anthropological Research, 1980); O. Ulc, 'Communist National Minority Policy: TheCase of Gypsies in Czechoslovakia', Soviet Studies, Vol. 20, No. 4 (1964), pp.421-43;S. Beck and G. Gheorghe, 'From Slavery to Co-inhabiting Nationality: The PoliticalEconomy of Romanian Gypsies', Paper presented at IUAES Intercongress, Amster-dam, 1981.

3. The name of the town has been altered. Fieldwork was funded by the Economic andSocial Research Council. I am also grateful to the Radcliffe-Brown Memorial Fund andthe London School of Economics for assistance at times of need.

4. G. Ban and G. Pogány, 'A magyarországi cigány helyzetéról' (The situation ofHungarian gypsies (Budapest: Ministry of Labour, cyclostyled, 1957).

5. Ibid.6. Cited in B. Mezey (ed.), A magyarországi cigánykérdés dokumentumokban 1422-1985

(The Gypsy question in Hungary 1422-1985) (Budapest: Kossuth, 1986), p.242.7. Ibid.8. The terms national minority (nemzetiség), nation (nemzet) and ethnic group (etnikum)

have been subjected to considerably more formal codification in Eastern Europe thanin the west. 'Nemzetiség' is generally used for diaspora minorities of a population whichhas its own state or similar political community elsewhere, but it can also refer to acertain level of political evolution according to Soviet Marxism (see Yu. Bromley (ed.),Soviet Ethnology and Anthropology Today, The Hague: Mouton, 1974). 'Etnikum' isstill more of a novelty in Hungarian political discourse, and is as vague as its Englishtranslation. For a thorough discussion of communist theory and the gypsy 'nationalityquestion', see Guy, 'The Attempt...'.

9. Mezey, A magyarországi, p.240 (all translations are mine).10. K. Erdós, 'Le probléme tzigane en Hongrie', Études tsiganes, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1960),

pp. 1-10 (2).11. Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages (Chicago, DL: University

of Chicago Press, 1980), p.62, pp.81-2.12. Hungarian taxi drivers are as willing as their English counterparts to shoot their mouths

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off on any subject that comes to mind, and so trips around Harangos with them becamea source of topical comment on the Gypsies I lived with. The theme that came back andback at me was that these Gypsies were only too happy to collect their social benefits,but were unwilling to do their bit in return. 'Their bit' was invariably understood to be'working like normal citizens'. I was assured that 'those Gypsies don't work at a l l . . .they live through dealing in horses and usury, when they are not simply going out to roband steal'.

13. The two Ministry of Labour officials who wrote the draft document for the policy hadurged that Gypsies should be employed in areas of their choice as far as possible; theyrecommended also that permission should be given, as a temporary expedient,for some private craft businesses; but without 'allowing the possibility of dealing'(kupeckedés). The authors also saw that a major obstacle to the new policy would be'the resistance and backwardness' of the officials charged with its implementation (Banand Pogány, 'A Magyarországi', p.27). These and other warnings were never heeded.

14. G. Havas, 'Foglalkozásváltási stratégiák különbözö cigány közösségekben' (Strategiesfor changing occupatons in various Gypsy communities), in M. Andor (ed.), Cigány-vizsgálatok (Gipsy investigations) (Budapest Múvelódés Kutató Intézet, 1982),pp. 185-6.

15. See Stewart, 'Brothers in Song: The Persistence of (Vlach) Gypsy Identity andCommunity in Socialist Hungary' (London School of Economics and Political Science,unpublished doctoral dissertation, 1987); also, for a classic account of the peasant workethic, Edit Fél and Tamás Hofer, Proper Peasants: Traditional Life in a HungarianVillage (Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing, 1969).

16. One of the commonest terms for the programme of action with the gypsies is felnevelni,'to bring up', as parents do their children.

17. For parallels in Soviet conceptions see Caroline Humphrey, Karl Marx Collective:Economy. Society and Religion in a Siberian Collective Farm (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1983), pp.76-7, 92-3, 111-3.

18. Nigel Swain, Collective Farms Which Work? (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1985), p.6.

19. My son's birth certificate arrived with an acknowledgement card bearing the wish that'you raise your child to become an honourable, work-loving and true person'.

20. Népszabadság, 1 May 1988.21. Eger Council, 'Beszámoló a Heves megyében élö cigánylakosság helyzetéról' (Report

on the situation of the Gypsies living in Heves County) (Eger: typescript, 1986).22. The party had in 1961 admitted that 'the majority of companies and cooperatives are

averse to taking on Gypsies, even if they are struggling with manpower shortages'(Mezey, A magyarországi .... p.241). A 1985 report to Harangos Council concludeswith typical lack of embarrassment, 'in some cases this is understandable (e.g. in healthinstitutions and kitchens), but for the most part it is unjustified'.

23. See János Kornai, The Economics of Shortage (Amsterdam: North Holland Pub-lishers, 1980); also Tamás Bauer, 'Investment Cycles in Planned Economies', ActaOeconomica, Vol. 21, Nos. 3-4 (1978), pp.243-60.

24. See, for example, Swain, Collective Farms ...; Gábor Kertesi and György Sziráczki,'Workers Strategy on Income and Career', in R.E. Pahl (ed.), On Work: Historical.Comparative and Theoretical Approaches (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp.305-25(320).

25. V. Kozák, 'A cigány lakosság helyzetének javítása érdekében hozott központihatározatok végrehajtását akadályozó tényezók' (Factors obstructing the implemen-tation of central resolutions aimed at improving the position of the Gypsy population),Szociálpolitíkai Értesitö, No. 2 (1984), pp. 11-35 (27).

26. See, for example, 'Lehet-e a tanulás Ózdon ...' (Is it possible to learn in Ózd?),Romano Nyevipe/Cigány Újság, 15 March 1988.

27. From my talks with semi-skilled workers (Hungarian: betanított), it was clear that thestatus means no more in Hungary than it does in capitalist economies; that it involves atmost a few weeks, but often just a few hours 'training'. See Harry Braverman, Laborand Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984) for a discussion of this

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under capitalist conditions.28. Harangos Town Council, Resolutions and Documents, 1985.29. The fact that this process occurs in the Parquet Factory (thus creating the need for

Gypsy labour) is itself a consequence of the disorganization of 'socialist' production.Similar factories in the West acquire ready prepared wood from forestry companies. InHungary all supplies and quality are uncertain, so it always in the interests of theenterprise to lay its hands on raw materials.

30. It is significant that he works separately and does not socialize with his fellow Gypsies.31. These last figures present a worse picture than the average for Heves County, in which

there is minimal difference between Magyar and Gypsy levels of absenteeism. Thedifference is attributed officially in part to the fact that Gypsies take much longer to sortout their personal bureaucratic affairs than Magyars, who generally have higher levelsof formal education.

32. Because of the special place of labour in the representation of 'actually existingsocialism' the wage relation is only one form of remuneration. Direct payments includenot only the wage paid for work but other sums to which a person is entitled because ofhis status as a worker. The main example is the family supplement (családi pótlék),which in England is given to a person by virtue of being a citizen rather than being aworker. Social security payments are often channelled through employers, holidaysmay be taken at nominal charges through one's workplace, and one's right to councilhousing may also be directly linked to one's work record. Apart from these directsubsidies, a myriad indirect subsidies (covering transport, health care, food andcultural idems) are also conceived as the entitlements of working citizens. This wholesystem is under challenge in Hungary today. Kozák ('A Cigány ...', p.30) has herselfquestioned whether child benefit should not be payable independently of the workrecord of the parents.

33. Havas, 'Foglalkozásváltási...', pp.185-6.34. The last remaining caravans were bumed by the authorities in the early 1960s (personal

communication from Gábor Havas), but my informant's parents had possessed settledhomes before the Second World War.

35. M. Ladó and J. Tóth, 'In the Shadow of Formal Rules', Economic and IndustrialDemocracy, Vol. 9. No. 4 (1988), pp.523-33.

36. For similar discussion on the role of foremen see Ferenc Kovács, 'The Working ClassToday ', New Hungarian Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 103 (1986), p. 192; see Csaba Makó, Atársadalmi viszonyok erbtere: a munkafolyamat (The labour-process: the power zoneof social relations) (Budapest: Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, 1985); MichaelBurawoy, The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism(London: Verso, 1985).

37. Guy describes the various forms of such an initiative in the short period of officialtolerance in Czechoslovakia between 1968 and 1971 ('The Attempt ...', pp.379-82).See abo Kaminski ('The State ...', pp.204-41) for a discussion of Slovakia in the sameperiod.

38. Maternity leave in Hungary involves up to three years of leave away from a workplace,with a flat rate payment of around 1,000 forints monthly during the last two years. Fromthe age of three children are theoretically guaranteed a free nursery place. To avoidmisunderstanding I should make it clear that the family supplement payments do notcover the true costs of child raising in Hungary, in spite of the popular Magyar myth thatGypsies only have children in order to live off the resulting benefits. (See Kozák, 'Acigány lakosság', pp.30-1.)

39. See Havas, 'Foglalkozásváltási ...', p.185.40. The other two men 'retired and dealing' are well past the official age of retirement41. Harangos Council, Resolutions and Documents, 1985.42. This dependence is no new phenomenon. Many of the old people, though they now are

dealers in horses or other goods, also rely on a pension from previous employment,which implies that they must have been employed for a good number of years in thepast. Even in the pre-war period one of the regular and indispensable sources of incomefor Gypsy families was daily labour (Hungarian: napsiám) on the farms of wealthier

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peasants. Nor is this unique to Hungarian Rom. Sutherland, discussing AmericanGypsies, writes that 'farm labour was a major source of income for many Rom families'in the years before full automation. See Anne Sutherland, Gypsies: the HiddenAmericans (London: Tavistock, 1975), p.89. The Rom discussed by Sutherland livedlargely on the 'welfare', but told her that 'they never needed welfare until farm labourfailed to provide enough support for the whole year' (ibid. p.89).

43. The latter form would be Site, as in Si te zavatar, 'I should go', and not Trubul te zavtar, 'Ihave to go'.

44. M. Marrese, 'The Evolution of Wage Regulation in Hungary', in Paul Hare, HugoRadice and Nigel Swain (eds.), Hungary: A Decade of Economic Reform (London:Allen & Unwin, 1981), p. 58.

45. See the contributions by Hann, Kürti and Swain, above.46. Eger Town Council, 'Beszámoló', p.9. Michael Burawoy (Politics of Production ....

p. 193) has estimated that only about 40 per cent of all Hungarian workers can lock intothe second economy.

47. This term refers to a law passed three decades ago, the logic behind which is the workideology already spelled out about the right and duty to work in a socialist society. If onecannot show where one has earned the money one spends, then it is presumedto be stolen or otherwise illegally obtained, hence the term 'publicly dangerous'(közveszélyes). This law was strengthened in late 1984, so that offenders could besentenced to six months' hard labour. The threat is not as great as I (an innocentWesterner) imagined when I first heard of the law; but several Gypsies who had beenout of work for more than three months left a market before the end when they thoughtthat a police check was about to be made.

48. Due to another restriction governing the removal from citizens of their 'sole source ofincome', some elderly persons with no pension were allowed to keep their livestock.

49. If my suggestion above that keeping horses and not working 'properly' are, if anything,inversely correlated is accepted (not one of the job-hoppers bought horses), at least upto a take-off point when full-time trading becomes feasible, the futility of any act ofexpropriation becomes obvious.

50. The well-known sociographer György Moldova, often regarded as critic of the authori-ties, gave public support to this campaign.

51. The 'middle ground' in these debates offers little hope for would-be 'moderates'. CsabaVass, a member of the Patriotic People's Front, is a leading figure in national Gypsypolitics and a promoter of new organizations to articulate Gypsy interests. He had thisto say at a public lecture delivered at the Karl Marx Economics University in Budapestin November 1988:

I don't agree with those who say that the Gypsies drink away the money [that theyobtain in hand-outs]. Rather what does hold is that among the Gypsies it is really onlythe very poorest layers who go and collect their money. Those who are just a bithigher up don't go and loaf or beg (kuncsorogni) and they stay poor instead. This hasa bad effect on the other [Magyar] side too, because they then say that the Gypsiesdon't work, but we are still paying them, they get their money all the same. At thesame time I must say that those people who arc really in need must get support.

This enlightened figure went on to say that in determining

the proportion [of Gypsies] living in poverty, our answer depends on whom one callspoor. If we take this in the Magyar context we come out with a different proportionthan if we look at the Gypsies' internal value system .... If we were to consider thekind of poverty that is usually called relative deprivation, well, this would not reallybe applicable to the Gypsies, since the concept of relative deprivation only applies topeople within the European societal, economic and cultural framework.

And Csaba Vass is someone who puts himself around as a friend of the Gypsies.52. Cited in L. Colletti, From Rousseau to Lenin: Studies in Ideology and Society (London:

New Left Books, 1972), p. 183.53. See Stewart, 'Brothers in Song ...', Ch. 3.

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