Description

 The Historical Materialism and International Relations seminar series seeks to explore and develop the multiple points of contact between Marxist theory and international relations, most broadly defined. It does so with the double aim of investigating the critical and explanatory potentials of Marxism in the domain of international relations, as well as to probe what an engagement with ‘the international’ might contribute to Marxist theory. The seminar series is associated with the journal of Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory and its forthcoming ‘Historical Materialism and International Relations’ book series. Convener: Alexander Anievas.

Abstract: Hungary has for long been a poster boy of neoliberal transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). However, since the negative effects of the global economic crisis started to be felt in 2008, its bon renommé in international policymaking and business circles quickly evaporated; indeed, the international business press has singled it out as a ‘black sheep’ of the current crisis. This ‘return to fame’ stems from the fact that the signs generally associated with the global crisis – financial meltdown, falling levels of production, growing unemployment and social inequalities, imposition of drastic austerity measures deemed necessary in order to return to a path of ‘sustainable’ growth, and, as a result, widespread disillusionment and public anger (often, though not exclusively, under the guise of rabid reactionary politics) – are all present in an exacerbated form in Hungary. This paper argues that the current economic malaise of Hungary necessitates a Marxist critique of the particular model of capitalist ‘development’, which has reigned since its ‘transition to the market’. In order to so, this paper will be structured in the following way: it begins with an overview and critique of mainstream narratives of the transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) since 1989, focusing in particular on neoliberal and Varieties of Capitalism (VOC) approaches. Against these readings, an alternative approach is suggested, based on the central tenets of Marxist political economy and building on the notion of uneven and combined development, as developed by Leon Trotsky. This interpretation situates the transformation of CEE economies in general, and Hungary in particular, within a broader historical process, emphasising the unevenness of their integration within the global economy since the 1970s and the way in which international and domestic social forces have mediated, contested and shaped this process. Finally, we ask whether Horace’s famous dictum – de te fabula narratur –, which Marx borrowed in the Preface to the First Edition to Capital. Volume One, might apply here as well (but turned on its head): does Hungary provide an example for a new configuration of capitalism and the state in times of crisis?