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Extract

I hope I will meet with sympathy if I state here that my task as a discussant is a difficult one. Faced with four lengthy, excellent, and basically different essays, I am now expected—and within twenty minutes at that—to criticize, to laud, to summarize, and to incite further discussion. Let me therefore take the bull by the horns and challenge the very topic of this discussion. It is my contention that the subject of this debate is neither justified nor valid and that it is precisely because of the contradiction inherent in the topic that our four participants used widely divergent methods and arrived at widely divergent conclusions. I would argue that there were no dominant nationalities in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. There were only dominant classes, estates, institutions, interest groups, and professions. True, German and Magyar nationals formed the majority of these dominant strata of society, but the benefits they derived from their privileged position were not shared by the lower classes of their own nationality. If the Austrian Germans-but not the Magyars–generally enjoyed a relatively high living standard, this was due to their geographic position and their industry and not to legislation or to the allegedly dominant position the Germans as a whole occupied in the monarchy. While Profs. Barany, Hanak, and Whiteside were very much aware of the distinction between class privilege and national privilege, they could not, directed as they were by the title of their discourse, fully develop this distinction.