Blackwell Reference Online

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Count Ervin Batthyány was well known in the higher circles of Hungarian society. Following his school years in Budapest, he studied at London and Cambridge universities. He was influenced in this direction by reading such authors as Edward Carpenter, William Morris, Leo Tolstoy, and Peter Kropotkin. He was most sensitive to Kropotkin's communist anarchism, besides Morris's “ideal free communism.” In 1904 he set out the anarchist viewpoint at one of the debates of the Társadalomtudományi Társaság (Social Science Society) concerning the direction of social development. According to his definition, By anarchism – freedom from rule – we must understand a social order based purely upon the free, fraternal cooperation of the people, with no external power or violence. In place of the system of rule based upon violence, which wins expression in the coercive institutions of property, law and the state, the forms of anarchist society come into existence through the solidarity concealed in human nature and through the freedom, equality and voluntary cooperation that flow from it. ( Batthyány 1904 : 23) Batthyány's key concepts were equality, fraternity, solidarity, and natural needs. He confronted theocratism with anarchism, which he saw as the source of social harmony in individuals. According to the new moral worldview, Batthyány explained, social harmony could not arise through regulation ... log in or subscribe to read full text