Today I looked at five recent interviews with András Schiffer, founder of LMP, who retired from active politics in the summer of 2016 and about a month ago left the party altogether, claiming that he no longer has anything to do with what LMP has become. It is hard to know why Schiffer, after almost two years of silence, felt compelled to give all these interviews, especially since he repeated everywhere that he is not at all interested in the affairs of the party or ever becoming involved in politics again.
Plowing through these interviews was arduous enough, but making a coherent whole of his ideology was even more difficult. Nevertheless, it was not a useless exercise because Schiffer’s assorted thoughts on politics can serve as guideposts for the kind of political behavior that might be expected from LMP in the future. Even though I have been following LMP from its foundation and think I have a fair understanding of the worldview that informs its policies, reading Schiffer’s multiple expositions of his political principles brought home to me the ideological rigidity and basic conservatism of the party.
The key phrase in Schiffer’s political vocabulary is “regime/system critical party” (rendszerkritikus párt), which is thrown all over creation without further explanation. Suffice it to say that there is only one true regime critical party in Hungary, and that is LMP. Or, more accurately, LMP used to be a regime critical party before it strayed from the straight and narrow. All other parties believe that “the governance between 2010 and 2018 was not in small measure but qualitatively and in its entirety worse than that during the 2002-2010 period,” and therefore they accept the existing system.
What are the features of the “system” that Schiffer hates so much? The first problem is the capitalist mode of production, about which he speaks in Marxist terms. Even worse than old-fashioned capitalism is its recent variety: global capitalism, which, in Schiffer’s opinion, will soon collapse. He is against the free movement of capital, and therefore it is in the nation that he sees “the last line of defense against globally organized big business.” LMP is at heart a nationalist party which, like Jobbik, supports Fidesz’s nationality policies and its nationalistic approach to politics. One of Schiffer’s problems with Viktor Orbán, in fact, is that he only pays lip service to national ideals while allowing foreign businessmen to get rich off the labor of Hungarian workers.
When it comes to Schiffer’s ideas about LMP’s place on the political spectrum, his signals are mixed. In the interview given to atlatszo.hu, he talks about the mistake LMP made when, on the advice of Ron Weber, the party’s campaign guru, LMP moved “toward the cultural left.” Schiffer always insisted on LMP keeping an equal distance between left and right, and he hoped to get votes not just from the left but also from disappointed, disillusioned Fidesz voters. Yet in the interview he gave to 24.hu, he talks about twenty-first-century parties of the left, among them LMP, which must be “inevitably national and not international.” Schiffer obviously doesn’t consider either MSZP or DK to be a modern party of the left. In one of his interviews he even uses the word “bal-lib” (left-lib), which is a somewhat pejorative description of the present Hungarian left. Unfortunately, in none of his many interviews did Schiffer say anything about his views on liberalism, but I doubt that they are complimentary.
Naturally, a lot of the questions addressed to him were about the election of 2018 and the mistakes the opposition parties made. Most of his comments were the usual fare, which has been circulating ever since April 8. But there were a couple of interesting points. Schiffer apparently was not in constant touch with Bernadett Szél, although outsiders were sure that he was still the one who was running the show in the party. According to him, he talked to Szél on the phone only twice. His only advice was that LMP should cooperate with Jobbik in certain districts. Thus, MSZP and DK would be a center of the left opposition while LMP and Jobbik would form a right opposition of sorts. Schiffer believes that with such a strategy “perhaps even a change of government would have been possible.” A rather strange suggestion coming from a man who has been so adamantly opposed to any cooperation with others.
I was amused when I read that at the time of his retirement Schiffer said that LMP, even without him, could get 6-8% of the votes, but even with him couldn’t get more than 8-10% unless the party does something about its organizational structure. What Schiffer is referring to is the concept of “bázis demokrácia” (Basis Democracy), which is the organizing principle of LMP. Schiffer now calls the concept “idiocy,” arguing that it renders decision making well nigh impossible in the party. As Schiffer said in an earlier interview, “political responsibility and organizational power are sharply divided in LMP; others risk life and limb, not the ones who make the decisions.” This structure is still in place, and I’m almost certain that a change in that structure would further tear the party apart.
András Schiffer is a very bright man and an excellent lawyer, but I’m afraid he has done a lot of harm, including his sharp opposition to MSZP and DK. A party that in its present configuration can get only 6-8% of the votes must look for allies, even if they are not “regime critical parties” in the sense in which Schiffer uses the word.