2008–2018: Válság és hegemónia Magyarországon
2008–2018: Crisis and Hegemony in Hungary

Summary/Abstract: In this introductory article to the special issue, we join debates on the nature of the current Hungarian regime from a perspective that understands local processes in terms of their integration into the development of global capitalism. We see the present Hungarian regime as a local, temporary hegemony that developed in the context of the long downturn of the postwar global economic cycle, and particularly in the phase of the crisis that followed 2008. This local hegemony is characterized by a temporary, but successful compromise between the requirements of external integration and the capitalization of a new local oligarchy. As the conditions of internal and external accumulation in the context of the crisis can only be secured through increasing pressure on labour and the conditions of its reproduction, this regime is also characterized by the tools it employs to create and control the social conditions necessary for its functioning. The article discusses the structures of internal end external accumulation that provide the political economic base of the regime together with the social changes and tensions they produce. We identify four aspects of the regime’s policies which serve to create the conditions of accumulation and control the tensions arousing from the accumulation process: (1) measures that maintain macrostability (the stability of external integration); (2) measures that serve to capitalize the national oligarchy, (3) measures to strengthen and integrate the middle class into the regime’s structures; and (4) measures to control dominated classes. In terms of the main contradictions or tensions produced by the regime’s functioning we stress its dependence on external growth, and a growing crisis of social reproduction.

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