Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Documents
other groups—the influence of the party is the strongest among old skilled workers. The party’s influence is equally below the average among the men who became skilled workers at the time of the economic boom during the war, that is, around the forties, and have therefore had no experience of the periods of capitalist crisis which so disastrously affected the working class. The mass influence of the party is substantially weaker among the unskilled workers than among the skilled. This is partly due to the fact that there is a constant turnover among unskilled workers, and that they are backward in their general political education and in the standards of their trade. There are in addition many employees among them who lead a “double life”, who are more or less beyond the reach of the educational work of the party organization and the workers’ collective in general, because they spend most of their time after work in commuting and working about their home. And the greatest number of the declassé are to be found among the unskilled workers. The declassé, those expressly hostile among the working class are not a numerically insignificant group. But the political influence they can exert is far more important than their number, because they carry out their hostile propaganda in the guise of the worker usually backing it with “popular” demands. In their conduct and their view of life, they represent an attitude in the ranks of the working class which is cynical to every good cause, and concerned only with momentary advantage. Hooligan elements emerging from the working class often come to grief under the influence of these declassé elements. A Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt Budapesti Pártbizottságának Archívuma [Archives of the Budapest Party Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party], B/8/1958, Executive Committee meeting of August 4th, pp. 1-16. XXXIII The importance of Budapest in the industry of the country ... On December 31st 1960, 527 of the 1,338 nationally owned industrial enterprises were operating within the confines of the capital. Taken in relation to the number of enterprises, it means that 39 per cent of the country’s industrial enterprises are concentrated here. Yet the number of enterprises in itself is no adequate index to the extreme importance of Budapest in the industry of the nation. The distribution of manpower by enterprise tells us substantially more in this respect. More than half the industrial undertakings employing over 500 workers are in Budapest, and the balance is weighted in favour of the provinces only in the number of smaller enterprises. It is also a fact that many industrial enterprises today with headquarters in Budapest own a fairly large number of enterprises in the provinces. For in recent years the independence of quite a number of provincial undertakings was abolished in order to simplify industrial management, and they were merged with Budapest factories manufacturing similar goods as affiliated enterprises. It appears from a survey made late in 1960 that of the 2,226 plants of enterprises with headquarters in Budapest 421 are outside the boundaries of Budapest. Some of the workers 128
