Professional Documents
Culture Documents
22
Močnik
What is New in the New Forms of
Nationalism? The Case of Hungary
Abstract
In the past, nation was a bourgeois form of emancipation. It se-
cured the reproduction of social formations split into three rela-
tively autonomous social spheres, where the freedoms of con-
sciousness and expression belonged in the ideological sphere,
liberty and equality in the juridico-political sphere, secured inequal-
ity and exploitation in the economic sphere. In the 20th century, na-
tion was again the emancipatory form embraced by the peoples
fighting against colonial and imperialist rule. When the bourgeois
democratic nation-state proved unable to secure the reproduction
of capitalism, bourgeois nationalism supported the fascist re-artic-
ulation of the state. Now that the operational capacity of na-
tion-states has been severely limited and is increasingly patronized
23
by the institutions of Gesamtkapital, bourgeois nationalism is again
mobilized in contradictory ways. On one side, comprador bourgeoi-
edited volumes
sies use it to support the reproduction of peripheral and semi-pe-
ripheral capitalisms. On the other side, it is the ideology of nation-
al bourgeoisies fighting against stronger fractions of Gesamtkapital.
Our hypothesis is that the formerly emancipatory national con-
struction has degenerated into identitary community. The identi-
tary trend is propelled also from below, as a spontaneous survival
strategy of the working-class households. In the situation of uncer-
tain and heterogeneous sources of income, households strength-
en their cohesion with the means of religious and ethnic identities,
with traditional authority – which results in the re-affirmation of
patriarchal oppression. – The new nationalism seems to be an
“identitarianism” that secures social cohesion in situations of his-
torical and societal weakness.
Keywords: fascism, Hungary, nationalism, populism
thus disqualifies any easy analogy with the liberal nationalisms of the
19th century, or anti-colonial nationalisms of the 20th.
Ideological elements are mostly old, but their collage is new,
and the present nations’ and their states’ real functioning differs from
the way nationalism worked in anti-imperial struggles of the 19th cen-
tury and in anti-colonial endeavours of the 20th century. We may sur-
mise that the operations of the ruling class alliances in the nation
states, their political economy and ideology, are new and specific.
1
The case of Greece suffices to justify this assertion. During the negotiations,
European Commission and European Central Bank, together with the Inter-
national Monetary Fund, brutally pressed (often ill-funded) interests of
French and German private banks and transnational speculative funds (see
Truth Committee 2015). – We should note that not all “nationalisms” have a
negative attitude towards EU. If we add the attitudes towards the US impe-
rialism, we get a matrix where all possible combinations apply – with the
meaningful exception of EU-, US-. (e.g.: Croatian and Slovene governmental
ideologies: EU+, US+; Polish: EU-, US+; Serbian: EU+, US- ; etc.). The absence
of what Greimas would call “terme neutre, neutral term” (the minus-minus
combination) indicates that these fractions of a not-yet-composed ruling
class need a hegemon. In the sequel, we shall explain why.
Populism?
edited volumes
would be anachronistic, one particular feature deserves our atten-
tion: in historical populisms, local bourgeoisies resorted to the
state apparatus to compensate for their economic and social weak-
ness.2 On the ideological front, they accordingly mobilized patrio-
tism to rally popular masses behind their class-project.
In the European Union, “populism”, it seems, is now the label
attached by the mainstream to the politics and politicians who gain
massive support, but whom the EU bureaucracy does not like. On
European periphery, the inverse seems equally true: those politics
and politicians gain massive support whom the EU bureaucracy vili-
fies. Although only intuitive, the two observations yield a good
starting point: it seems that the present “populism” results from
the interference of two otherwise heterogeneous processes – a
factional strife within the ruling groups above, and a mass move-
ment below.
2
An apt formula was proposed for this strategy: “the state should lead and
the bourgeoisie follow” (Schneider 1999, 276–305). Other analyses ex-
plicitly refer to the state bureaucracy (Yin-wah 2016).
Fascism?
edited volumes
We can measure the limitations of historical analogies and
begin to construct a theoretical concept that goes beyond the in-
tuitions about contemporary nationalist populism, if we examine
the Fidesz government in Hungary. Viktor Orbán’s party won
three consecutive elections with the program of “economic de-
colonization and national revival” (Gagy and Gerocs 2019). They
have kept “fiscal discipline” and lowered foreign private and pub-
lic debt, increased GDP and net wages, increased domestic con-
sumer and investment demand, and earned favourable ratings by
rating agencies. Fidesz governments have “reduced external vul-
nerability” (Koltai 2018) and shielded the country from political
attacks from those capable of delivering painful blows (interna-
tional financial markets and rating agencies). They brought na-
tional bank under government control and thereby provoked
3
An important indication of this trend is the complicated construction of
the European Union that blurs the distinction between the executive and
the legislative.
protests from the EU bureaucracy and international liberals.
Their control of the media and of all levels of decision-making
gave rise to liberal lamentations about their anti-democratic poli-
cies. However, liberal domestic opposition and its international
allies remained inefficient until the “Slave Law”, passed in De-
cember 2018, triggered a sharp confrontation with the work-
ing-class masses.
The December 2018 law that allowed companies to request
from workers up to 400 hours of overtime work per year (instead
of 250 hours before) and delay payments up to 3 years, was only
the last in a series of measures against the labour introduced by
the Fidesz government over the eight years of their rule.4 While de-
stroying the resistance capacity of labour, Fidesz has been support-
ing, on the other side of the class barrier, the formation of a layer
of domestic entrepreneurs, mainly through government contracts
and by channelling EU funds towards this group of oligarchs in sta-
tu nascendi.5 Together with the “biopolitical” measures, such as the
virtual criminalization of homelessness, the state incentives to fam-
28
ilies with many children in order to compensate for the lack of la-
bour power,6 Fidesz policies seem to converge towards the forma-
Močnik
edited volumes
therefore domestic sectors such as tourism, retail, agriculture, media and
some infrastructure projects where there is more elbow room for the
government to build up its own economic support base. We are seeing
the birth of a new state-dependent bourgeoisie that cannot afford a
change of government, as they owe their wealth to the current leader-
ship through myriads of shady deals.”
8
Mihály Koltai, op. cit.: “Hungary continues to have one of the most open
economies in the EU (indeed the whole world), with very high export-to-
GDP and FDI-stock-to-GDP ratios.” – Gagy and Gerocs, op. cit.: “[…] corpo-
rate taxation among the European Union member states has become the
lowest in Hungary. The official corporate flat-tax rate is 9%, but the ef-
fective tax which companies pay after various allowances is only 7.2%,
whereas the 30 largest multinationals dominated by German manufac-
turers pay an effective rate of 3.6%. The counter-effect of such low cor-
porate taxation with high subsidization of companies – many of these
provisions are undisclosed – is the European Unions’ highest 27% VAT,
the burden of which is put on wage-earners […].”
9
Mihály Koltai, op. cit.: “[…] the basic structure of Hungary’s economy has
not changed and it is still dominated by transnational capital, concentrat-
ed in manufacturing, whose interests Orbán has not significantly
touched, and arguably has done his utmost to create ideal conditions for
profit extraction. While the enrichment of figures such as Mészáros is
hair-raising, we should keep in mind the proportions on a macro scale. As
the capitalist system. Politically, too, the country’s national sover-
eignty is severely limited by its membership in the EU and the
NATO. Keeping financial markets at peace and rating agencies sat-
isfied, as well as making charitable concessions to transnational
capital, is consequently vital for the Fidesz political economy and
general societal politics.
Viktor Orbán calls this political model “illiberal nation state”,
and quotes Singapore, China, India, Turkey, Russia as its successful
examples.10 The question is, does this political model have a solid
social class base, and has it succeeded in building a coherent politi-
cal economy?
edited volumes
ganizational capacity of the classes in confrontation. In the last in-
stance, that means upon their capacity to construct themselves,
and to reproduce themselves as social groups, and not merely as
short-term political agglomerations.
11
gainst this, Mihály Koltai, op. cit., suggests that “economics of ‘Orban-
A
ism’” is a specific regime of accumulation: “Unlike his erstwhile liberal
adversaries Orbán did come up with a ’régime of accumulation’ and a
system of class alliances that has been able to reproduce itself so far and
shows no obvious signs of disintegration in the near future.”
12
f. the breakdown of big domestic retail chains in Slovenia, Croatia,
C
Bosnia-Herzegovina, and partly in Serbia, and the expansion of core-
based transnational chains in these countries; Chinese penetration into
infrastructure construction in the Balkans; appropriation by ownership
or concession of airports in the region by foreign firms; etc.
13
espite their similarly chaotic character, manifestations in 2012–2013 in
D
Slovenia gave rise to a new anti-capitalist and socialist formation that
entered parliament in 2014 and is now a respectable socialist party
(Levica – The Left).
Class-composition of antagonistic classes
14
For a general information see: Bellofiore and Tomba 2011; Bologna
2014; Trotta and Milana 2008; Wright 2002.
15
“Here, then, we have a mathematically precise proof why capitalists
form a veritable freemason society vis-à-vis the whole working-class,
while there is little love lost between them in competition among them-
selves” (Karl Marx 1999).
16
For this reason, contemporary post-socialist bureaucracies are structurally
stronger than were the bureaucracies in the post-capitalist (“historical social-
ist”) societies. In Marx’s theory of class domination, reproduction of the
ruling class as class coincides with the reproduction of the relations of pro-
duction of the dominant mode of production. The structurally obstructive
character of post-capitalist (“historical socialist”) bureaucracies originated in
the fact that the mechanisms of reproduction of bureaucratic domination
did not coincide with the mechanisms of reproduction of socialist processes.
Even worse, mechanisms of bureaucratic domination were not congruent
with the reproduction of any mode of production in general. Consequently,
bureaucracies that emerged after socialist revolutions were not a class; they
were only dominating social groups. However, they were particularly obnox-
ious, because they were bureaucracies without a ruling class. Bureaucratisa-
tion of the juridical-political apparatuses is a spontaneous process involving
institutional logic. However, in all pre-socialist states exists a ruling class,
which more or less successfully controls the state as the instrument of its
class rule. Contrary to this, in post-capitalist (“historical socialist”) states, the
bourgeois ruling class had been destroyed and the working class was ex-
The alliance between transnational capital and local compra-
dor bureaucracies is most often ideologically produced and repro-
duced by identity politics. This is one source of the present trans-
formation of nations into identity communities. The other source is
on the opposite side of the class divide. To present its mechanism,
we need a conceptual digression on the class-composition of work-
ing-class masses.
On the side of the labour, Italian operaists introduced the dis-
tinction between technical composition of labour power and politi-
cal composition of working class. Technical composition of labour
power is how capital submits the immediate producer by making
her/him produce surplus-value under the specific technological con-
ditions of the moment. Technical composition of labour power is
the imprint upon the producer’s body and mind of the specific his-
torical unity of means of production as the means of producing sur-
plus value, i.e., as means of exploitation. The workers’ resistance
against the technical composition of labour power gives rise to po-
litical composition of the working class (Tronti 1966; Bologna 1972).
33
While political composition of the working class results from
the workers’ struggle under the conditions primarily determined by
edited volumes
technical composition of labour power, the technical composition
of labour power results from the class struggle of the capitalist
class combating the working class political composition. According-
ly, the technical composition of labour power is a response from
the capitalists’ class struggle to the historically antecedent political
composition of the working class. This would mean that working
class has historical initiative against capitalist class under the condi-
tion that it succeeds in its political class composition.17
18
The concept of “social composition of labour power” as a combined
effect of various technical compositions of labour power in a social for-
mation was proposed in Močnik 2011. According to Italian operaists who
developed the concept, “technical composition of labour power” is the
effect of the subsumption of labour to capital. Capital as technology
determines educational level, skills, social habitus of the labour power,
etc., in order to integrate it into the production process. Under Fordist
regime, there is a general tendency towards homogenisation of the
technical composition of labour power (standard employment contracts,
labour laws, public education, national economic strategy, consumerism
etc.). Under post-Fordist regimes, the general tendency is towards het-
erogenisation of technical compositions of labour power (non-standard
employment, civil law substitutes labour law, importance of private
education, limited national strategies, austerity), and the over-all social
composition of labour power becomes an important foundation of the
domination of capital.
The present social composition of labour power has so far
prevented the working class class-composition in post-socialist soci-
eties, and has significantly eroded it in the EU core countries. To
keep profit rates from falling during the recession phase of the
“American” cycle of accumulation,19 neo-liberal counter-offensive
targeted labour along several strategic lines. For one, it preserved
and intensified traditional modes of over-exploitation, like unpaid
domestic work, provided mostly by women. Another line of attack,
particularly relevant for our discussion, was the fragmentation of
the modes of subsumption of labour under capital.20 Formal sub-
sumption reappeared, as in various “cognitive” activities. In a larger
sense, however, new forms of “non-standard” employment con-
tracts were introduced (based on juridical fictions, as the substitu-
tion of labour-law employment contracts by civil-law contracts) and
new forms of unfree labour were institutionalized, such as agency
work, or non-citizens’ (“migrant”) work (Brass 2018). The combined
effect of the plethora of modes of over-exploitation has been the
fragmentation of the social composition of labour power that has
35
until now importantly obstructed the class-composition of the
working class both in the capitalist core and in post-socialist (semi-)
edited volumes
periphery.21
19
or the concept of the “cycle of accumulation” and an historical over-
F
view, see Arrighi 2010. For the falling profit rates and increasing rates of
exploitation, see Husson 2008a and Husson 2008b.
20
nder the concept of “subsumption of labour under capital” Marx distin-
U
guishes “formal subsumption of labour under capital” (where capital
controls labour without intervening into the direct production process,
which remains the same as before being submitted to capital as in, e.g.,
handicraft production), and “real subsumption of labour under capital”
where capital directly intervenes into the production process and sub-
mits it to permanent technological revolution. Cf. the chapter “Absolute
and Relative Surplus Value”, Capital, Vol. I.
21
As an illustration, I list some of the various modes of integration of labour
into the capital process: 1. Classical industry; “Fordist” and competitive labour
market: labour power is separated from material and intellectual means of
production; technology and management dictate the organisation of labour.
2. “Toyotism”: labour power is separated from the means of production;
important parts of the organisation of the labour process are assumed by the
working teams; solidarity of the working team is induced by “emotional
engineering”, loyalty to the firm, by “pre-capitalist” mechanisms of social
cohesion (family enterprises, ethnic business). 3. Subcontracting, small and
medium enterprises – shared risk: labour power separated from the means
This immediate structural effect has been enhanced by the
response of households to the heterogeneity and insecurity of
their income, resulting from the fragmented social composition of
labour power. This is the second source of identity politics that
transforms contemporary social formations into agglomerates of
identity communities.
Identity politics
edited volumes
community by superior instances (the “international community”,
the EU, etc.).
A spontaneous “bottom-up” process supplements this “top-
down” mechanism. Households with precarious and heteroge-
neous resources need to exert strict control over their members,
and to discipline them into solidarily assembling the means of sur-
vival. Control and discipline especially target the young and the
women, as they are willing and able to emancipate themselves
from family constraints on one side, and, on the other, are promis-
ing contributors to the household income and objects of
22
he “traditional nation-state” is here referred to in the ideal-type sense:
T
it is the state that secures the achievements of the French Revolution
(e.g., freedom of assembly, i.e., political pluralism; or freedom of con-
sciousness, i.e., ideological pluralism). This juridical-political construction
is supported by the national social form: standard national language,
national educational system, national culture when it comes to “super-
structure”, and for the “infrastructure” side – national economy. – As its
limitation, this construction creates the problem of “national minorities”.
23
For an early definition of the “politics of recognition”, see Taylor 1992.
matrimonial strategies. Households help themselves with the avail-
able mechanisms: patriarchal domination, religious constraint, eth-
nic discipline. The combination of these “traditional” means of co-
ercion yields “identity”.
The combined objective pressures and operations of the
identity politics from the top down and from the bottom up yield
identity communities that seem to be in the process of replacing
traditional nations.
Identity community is monistic and inwardly oppressive. Its
outward stances are contradictory: it is aggressive, since it believes
itself to be in possession of a secret and exclusive knowledge and
culture, and feels superior to non-members and neighbours. On
the other hand, identity community is incessantly in need of recog-
nition, and searches for an authority that would bestow it. The con-
tradictory character of identity ideology makes it an efficient mech-
anism of reproduction of the contradictory systemic position of
comprador ruling groups. Identity ideology is also an efficient
mechanism of domination, as it supports spontaneous survival
38
strategies employed in working people’s households, and repro-
duces their position of the oppressed and exploited.
Močnik
24
We have based our analysis on the case of Hungary. Developing the
same concepts, the analysis could eventually be extended to Poland,
Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria. The differences, we assume, would mostly
be ideological, while the socio-economic pattern is more or less the
same. In Slovenia, this pattern is a historical tendency that slowly
makes its way against strong resistance (from the trade unions in the
nineties, from popular movements around 2010, from the organised
left after 2014).
Bibliography
Alavi, Hamza. 1982. “The structure of peripheral capitalism”. In Introduction to the So-
ciology of “Developing Societies”, edited by Hamza Alavi and Theodor Shanin,
Macmillan Press, London–Basingstoke.
Arrighi, Giovanni. 2010. The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of
Our Times. London: Verso.
Bellofiore, Riccardo and Tomba, Massimiliano. 2011. “On Italian Workerism”, https://
libcom.org/library/italian-workerism, last accessed February 8, 2019.
Bologna, Sergio. 1972. “Composizione di classe e teoria del partito alle origini del
movimento consiliare”. In Operai e Stato. Lotte operaie e riforma dello stato
capitalistico tra Rivoluzione d’ottobre e New Deal, edited by Sergio Bologna et
al. Milano: Feltrinelli.
Bologna, Sergio. 2014. “Workerism Beyond Fordism: On the Lineage of Italian Work-
erism”. Viewpoint Magazine, December 15, 2014, https://www.viewpoint-
mag.com/2014/12/15/workerism-beyond-fordism-on-the-lineage-of-ital-
ian-workerism/, last accessed February 8, 2019.
Brass, Tom. 2018. Labour Markets, Identities, Controversies. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
39
Dimitrov, Georgi. 1935. “The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist Inter-
national in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism. Main Report
edited volumes
delivered at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International”,
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.
htm , last accessed February 8, 2019.
Gagy, Agnes and Gerocs, Tamás. 2019. “The political economy of Hungary’s new
‘Slave Law’”, http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/the-political-economy-of-hun-
garys-new-slave-law/, last accessed February 8, 2019.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International
Publishers.
Husson, Michel. 2008a. Un pur capitalisme. Lausanne: Page deux.
Husson, Michel. 2008b. “The upward trend in the rate of exploitation”. International
Viewpoint n°397, February 2008, http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/
spip.php?article1421 or: http://hussonet.free.fr/parvaivp.pdf, last accessed
February 8, 2019.
Koltai, Mihály. 2018. “The economics of ‘Orbánism’”, http://www.criticatac.ro/left-
east/the-economics-of-orbanism/, last accessed February 8, 2019.
Kržan, Marko. 2016. “Teorija prehoda med družbenimi formacijami” [Theory of transi-
tion between social formations], Postface to: Ernest Mandel, Prehod v social-
izem [Transition to Socialism], Ljubljana: Založba.
Kržan, Marko. 2017. “Kaj se lahko socialisti 21. stoletja naučimo od oktobrske revolu-
cije?” [What can we socialists of the 21st century learn from October revolu-
tion?], http://www.levica.si/kaj-se-lahko-socialisti-21-stoletja-naucimo-od-ok-
tobrske-revolucije/, last accessed February 8, 2019.
Marx, Karl. 1999. The Capital (Vol. III, Ch. 10), edited by Friedrich Engels. http://marx-
ists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch10.htm, last accessed February 8,
2019.
Močnik, Rastko. 2011. “Tržište radne snage i sastav radničke klase” [Labour power
market and composition of the working class]. In Kroz tranziciju. Prilozi teoriji
privatizacije [Across the Transition. Contributions to a Theory of Privatisa-
tion], edited by Željko Popović and Zoran Gajić. Novi Sad: Alternativna kultur-
na organizacija, https://www.rosalux.rs/sites/default/files/publications/Kroz_
tranziciju.pdf, last accessed February 8, 2019.
Orbán, Viktor. 2014. Viktor Orbán’s speech at the XXV. Bálványos Free Summer Uni-
versity and Youth Camp, 26th July 2014, Băile Tuşnad (Tusnádfürdő), Roma-
nia, https://budapestbeacon.com/full-text-of-viktor-orbans-speech-at-baile-
tusnad-tusnadfurdo-of-26-july-2014/, last accessed February 8, 2019.
Orbán, Viktor. 2019. “State of the Nation Address”, 10 February 2019, https://www.
40
youtube.com/watch?v=a1qaMhvLpQo, last accessed February 15, 2019.
Schneider, Ben Ross. 1999. “The Desarrollista State in Brazil and Mexico”. In The De-
Močnik
41
edited volumes