ABSTRACT
In Hungarian villages, patterns of social differentiation can no longer be defined using a single point of reference - that of the distribution of land - as this was possible in relation to the pre-war period (cf. Fél and Hófer, 1969; Sárkány, 1978; Bell, 1979). By the 1980s the dismantling of the stratification system based on the ownership of land appears to be complete. It has been, if not a gentle, certainly a gradual process, stretched over several decades. Reforms were introduced through successive stages as has been shown in the previous chapters which traced their path in Pécsely from the 1945 Land Reform to the Jókai collective today. Post facto knowledge of what these reforms have actually amounted to is the privilege of the latter day observer; outcomes that are certainty today were a mere probability while in the making. As the government programmes unfolded, the villagers upon whom they were inflicted made adjustments that, at each particular juncture, appeared to be the most appropriate to exploit some newly available advantage or to defend themselves against disadvantages. More than once throughout the post-War period, rural families were forced to rethink their own and others' positions and the prospects open to them. The 'maze effect' applied (Barić, 1978) that is, it was impossible to foresee where any chosen path might lead, since the rules and circumstances were prone to change without warning. The villagers' responses to successive government policy changes helped to form the present-day patterns of social differentiation, endowing the temporal dimension of post-War developments with special significance. Here I am thinking of the sequence of government programmes and reforms and their compression within a relatively short period of time. However, the various material and non-material dimensions of life 242change at an unequal pace - a peasant can become a collective member overnight, but it may take years, even decades, for him to shed the life-style, habits and values of the independent farmer. As was seen in the earlier chapters, development of the different production sectors reflect these inconsistencies in their differing principles of operation, the groups they mobilize and the attitudes to labour and income they foster. Plot farming mobilizes small informal kinship and friendship groups, has precarious status within the formal table of socialist institutions, is a sector where optimal effort and labour pay direct dividends and, finally, remains a repository of traditional values, techniques and networks of mutual help. The collective sector, the socialist answer to the problem that the peasantry as a class represents in the ideology, has failed to realize the promise of grass-roots democratic control by members and of collective ownership; on the other hand it has successfully made the transition towards large-scale modern agricultural enterprise forms. Lastly, sectors of non-agricultural employment have opened up the village to the larger social environment and have introduced aspirations of urban models of living.
