A great challenge for the
left is how to comply with both Marxist (especially Gramscian) and
post-structuralist (Laclau-Mouffian) ideas about politics. How can this be
realized in Hungary, where the political left after 1989 has never been Marxist
and where ‘discursive politics’ is mastered by the far-Right? Attila Antal argues that the success
of Hungarian right-wing populism should be a spur for the left to use populism
more effectively: the core agenda for the European left should be to reconcile
class and mass without xenophobia.
The left in
Hungary (and maybe in other parts of Eastern Europe as well) is the victim of a
paradoxical phenomenon – the success and failure of political transitions. On
the one hand, the consequences of 1989 and the failure of the party state
system forbade the subsistence of a Marxist alternative in the new liberal
settlement. On the other hand, the liberal transition failed and the Left did
not know how to cope with the silent anger which opened space to the rise of
the Right. Instead of seeking new ideological and intellectual roots, the Left
embraced the neoliberal project and has become a servant of globalized
capitalism without any critique on the imported institutions of liberal
democracy. In Hungary, the Left has lost its intellectual and ideological
identity and overlookd the social and critical theory which emphasise new
perspectives. This proved to be a serious mistake, because the Left has lost
its traditional class-based supporters and the rest of the working class has
been captured by the Right.
The Gramscian
scholar Marco Briziarelli pointed out, in conjunction with the success of
Podemos in Spain, that there are several tensions between the Gramscian
tradition and the Laclau-Mouffian theories on left-wing populism(2018:
98–122.). Certainly, the unprecedented success of Hungarian Right-wing populism
proves that we cannot overlook the necessity to combine the class-based and
mass-based traditions, however challenging this might be for the left —as Anton
Jäger argues has already argued for The New Pretender in the American context.
I am convinced that the main factor of the unprecedented breakthrough of the
Right-wing populism in Hungary is the specific situation where the formerly
moderate Fidesz and the radical Jobbik have
found a way to be populist from both a Gramscian (creating a hegemonic bloc and
constructing hegemony) and a Laclau-Mouffian (creating political identities
from the masses) perspective. This could be paradoxical, but it brutally
shows what the main challenges for the Hungarian (and maybe Eastern European)
Left are.
Bereft of
Marxist Tradition
Since 1989,
the largest party on the Hungarian Left, the Socialist Party has hardly considered
class-politics. Nevertheless, the traditional aspect of the working-class has
fundamentally changed and the proletariat has become more and more invisible as
it suffered from precariousness. The post-Communist left accepted neoliberalism
and so-called modern neoliberal reforms. Liberal democracy became a
hegemonic political-legal framework in Hungary which also means that the
neoliberal elite is totally anti-populist. Given this, the Hungarian Left
remained mostly uncritical towards global and local inequalities caused by the
neoliberal hegemony, both at home and in the European Union. This ‘reformist
anger’ has overloaded societies.
Although a
deeper analysis is required, I wish to recall theargument of Béla Greskovits,
who, in 1998, argued that the situation would come to ‘the end of patience’ in
Eastern Europe. Indeed, according to Greskovits, Eastern Europeans, in the
decade following the fall of communism, refrained from protesting violently
whilst slowly ‘shifting to second, informal economy’ or relying on ‘their
employers’ capacity to enforce protective state intervention”. Likewise, in
politics, Eastern Europeans, ‘slowly turned to protest voting and channeled
their demands through democratic institution, abjuring other tactics’.
Meantime, the
world changed, and the Hungarian Left failed to embrace a renewed Marxian
approach as an answer to the economic crisis of 2008/09. Instead, the Hungarian
Left remained impotently incapable of taking advantage of the “end of
patience”. This resulted in the collapse of the Hungarian social-democracy in
the elections of 2010. This situation, of course, was not limited to Hungary or
Eastern Europe; in fact, the demise of the social-democraic left extend to both
sides of the Atlantic. As Jan Rovny pointed out: ‘[i]n shifting its focus to
the new middle classes, the left let the new precariat [precarious proletariat]
fall towards nationalist protectionism, where it became fertile ground for the
populist radical right.’
Right-wing
Hegemony
While it may
appear that the turning point of the Right-wing breakthrough in Hungary was
2010, the process began much earlier. Indeed, the Hungarian Right spent over a
whole deacde (the 2000s) to create a right-wing Gramscian hegemonic structure.
This is the most perverse and terrible political procedure which can be
imagined, because it shows how the Hungarian Left betrayed not just the
working-class but the whole Left political tradition.
The politics
and tactics of Fidesz, the leading Right-wing party since 1998, can be analysed
from a Gramscian perspective. Fidesz began as a party in government (between
1998 and 2002), and then became the main opposition party (between 2002 and
2010) after a dour struggle on political, economic, cultural fronts. The party
managed to build a complex political and economic network as a historical bloc,
which it has used to create a national popular movement (‘civil circles’), thus
politicizing masses. The Right claimed that the successive social-democrat
governments (first from 1994 to 1998, then from 2002 to 2010) caused an organic
crisis, in the Gramscian sense, as it was framed within an economic and social
crisis which turned into a crisis of hegemony. This overlapping crisis
culminated successively in 2006 (when the Right-wing blew out rough street
movements because of the moral crisis caused by the scandal surrounding the
lies of the incumbent Socialist prime minister), in 2009 (when the Left-Liberal
governing coalition collapsed) and in 2010 (when Fidesz reached two-thirds in
the parliament for the first time).
This was a
time of crisis, indeed. Whereas the Left lost its grip on the superstructures,
the far-right put forward innovative ideas, perspectives, and practices.
Although, the hegemonic project of the right abounds in nationalism,
antagonizing rhetoric and xenophobia, it reflects a Gramscian way of thinking.
In this sense, Viktor Orbán has emerged as a ‘post-modern Prince’, which is ‘a
political subject that could form a collective will out of diversity and
difference, in a social, cultural, and political context’ (Briziarelli, 2018:
106.).
When the
Right is the Left
Fidesz can be
seen as a counter-hegemonic project against the Left. This is also true for
Jobbik, which is the leading extreme Right-wing opposition party in Hungary.
Moreover, Jobbik has showed that besides the Gramscian framework, the
Laclau-Mouffian prspective (often mentioned in The New Pretender) can also be
applicable in Hungary. Jobbik realized this project in a radically reactionary
way, but in many respects the party has taken the place of the Left. The
Laclau-Mouffian theory of populism is based on ‘the heterogeneous, precarious,
and volatile subaltern, which is formed by people who feel they have fallen
outside society’s social contract’ (Briziarelli, 2018: 106.). What makes the
populism of Jobbik so remarkable from a Leftist perspective is the fact that
Jobbik reacted to the transformation and liquidation of the working-class: its
populism goes beyond class-based politics and embraces a nationalistic-nativist
discursive strategy. Jobbik put the emphasis on the making of sub-cultures,
which offered the replacement of narrow ideologies with populist
transversalisity. This kind of populism based on catchwords and ’empty
signifiers’ (Laclau) is capable of merging several sources of discontent
together to create a strong protest identity. Based on the Laclau-Mouffian
populist model, Jobbik successfully expropriated from the Left, its critique of
globalized capitalism and of EU’s neoliberal institutions.
The Price of
Confusion
The Hungarian
Left has resigned from populism and the main Right-wing populist parties have
learned the lessons of Left populist theories. The populist Hungarian
Right-wing has reconciled the class-based and mass-based aspects of populism.
But what price should be paid for it? Briziarelli warns us about the tension in
the case of Podemos, where the reconciliation of Gramscian and Laclau-Mouffian
assumptions caused internal tensions and an unstable accommodation of both
perspectives (2018: 98.). The situation is terribly frightening in the case of
the Hungarian right, because the successful reconciliation required
nationalism, xenophobia, racism, a politics of hatred based on a political
cleavages created by the populist radical-Right government. Because of the
hate-campaign against refugees, Hungarians are less tolerant of foreigners and
minorities. According to the Pew Research Center successful Right-wing populism
has made eight-in-ten citizens believe refugees are a burden on the country
because of the threat to jobs and social benefits, and three-quarters believe
that refugees will increase the likelihood of terrorism.
* * *
I am
convinced that the Left must err away from any sort of right-wing
populism. Nationalist and xenophobic sentiments must remain a taboo for
the left. Instead of this, we should consider to coalesce the Marxist
(especially Gramscian) and the post-structuralist (Laclau-Mouffian) assumptions
into a transnational framework, first at the European level. I am afraid that
without such a perspective, Left populism at the European level will deal with
similar problems as Hungary: it will have no future or even worse, it could go
down the nationalist slope. We should be hopeful however, given the recent
emergence of a post-Marxist and post-structuralist tradition in Eastern Europe
based on organic intellectuals who aim to renew the political Left.
References
Briziarelli,
Marco (2018): Podemos’ Twofold Assault on Hegemony: The Possibilities
of the Post-Modern Prince and the Perils of Passive Revolution. In: Óscar
García Agustín – Marco Briziarelli (eds.) (2018): Podemos and the New
Political Cycle. Left-Wing Populism and Anti-Establishment Politics.
Palgrave Macmillan. 97–122.
Greskovits,
Béla (1998): The Political Economy of Protest and Patience: East
European and Latin American Transformations. Central European University
Press.
I am lecturing at Rethinking crisis, resistance and strategy, Historical Materialism Athens Conference 2-5 May 2019, Panteion University. My thoughts go on the crucial questions on "A Hegemonic Project Against Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Authoritarian Right - Some Experiences from Eastern Europe".
