There will be — but it is unlikely to arise from the current so-called “left-wing” parties. The European Parliamentary elections have shown that the Democratic Coalition (DK) has not, after all, become the strongest force in the opposition — not even after taking the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) and Dialogue for Hungary (Párbeszéd) under its wing. They have all merely shrunk simultaneously. Has the political left collapsed? On the contrary: it may now have a real chance to be born.
What should the left be like?
If there is ever to be a viable political left in Hungary again, its foremost task must be to reconstitute the majority — and to do so, it must organise its politics around the conditions and needs of the workers. At its core should be the guarantee of livelihoods, work, and housing, alongside the fight against dispossession.
Such a left must consistently take the side of workers and employees in opposition to employers — regardless of whether that employer is the state, a private entrepreneur, a domestic company, or a transnational corporation, i.e., any faction of (private) capital.
In every situation, it must stand with the workers – those who carry out the work. It must be the party of labour and the working class, opposed to capital and to the state — that is, to all employers.
Who are the workers? Those who actually perform the work
When someone hears the word “worker” or “working-class,” they often think of (hard) physical labour and industrial workers — of overalls, spanners, and blue collars. The political left must recognise that this group is far broader than such conventional images suggest: workers are all those who actually do jobs.
The category of workers encompasses not only industrial and agricultural labourers — though it certainly includes them — but also those in the service sector. It refers not only to manual workers — though it includes them as well — but also to those engaged in white collar jobs. And it includes not only those in paid employment, but also those performing unpaid work: running a household, doing housework and home maintenance daily, raising children, caring for the elderly, and looking after others — these, too, are all forms of work that must be done.
Waged labour and other forms of work
Waged labour refers to work performed in exchange for wages or a salary. This may take formal, contract-based forms (formal waged labour) or informal, uncontracted ones (informal or non-formal waged labour). Yet beyond wage labour, there exists a wide variety of other forms of work: unpaid or outright non-remunerated labour, invisible or even unseen tasks, unrecognised or outright devalued forms of activity.
These include semi-formal, informal, social reproductive, and care-related forms of work. They are just as useful, just as productive of value, as is work recognised through wages. Indeed, without them, formal waged labour could not take place at all.
There is no waged labour without clean clothes, groceries procured and breakfast prepared, dishes washed, and dinner cooked — in other words, no worker ready for employment without care work.
So when we speak of workers, we do not just refer to wage labourers. We also include those who receive no pay, no salary, no recognition or respect for their activity, yet whose labour is indispensable to enabling waged workers to sell their labour power. Above all, this includes the caring labour of many women — mothers, wives, and grandmothers.
It also includes pensioners who have worked for most of their lives; students currently in education; mothers “at home” with their children; those engaged in intellectual labour; interns, part-time, or auxiliary workers; and self-employed individuals (often working under duress). From this perspective, we perform an immense quantity of labour every day — most of it neither paid for nor recognised by employers. On the contrary, it is taken for granted, and no one treats it as a political issue in Hungary.
It is the political left that must make this a matter of politics. It must speak in the name of the workers.
The best point of departure is the “dull compulsion”, the compulsion to engage in waged labour. To survive, people must sell their labour power and their time. In exchange for wages or salary, they must surrender a substantial part of their lifetime and energy — nearly half of their waking hours. This is the compulsion of waged labour.
Yet for someone to engage in waged labour, a whole range of additional informal and social reproductive tasks must also be carried out for which the employer does not pay. These tasks, too, weigh upon the same workers as a second form of workload.
Altogether, this reality constitutes the livelihood of millions of people in Hungary. Everyone knows it, everyone suffers from it, yet we are told this suffering is inevitable, natural, self-evident. We are told that this is normal — though it is anything but.
Where can we find the workers? First and foremost in their workplaces and in their neighbourhoods and communities. That is why the left must be present in both spheres — in the sites of (waged) work and in the everyday lives of workers. It must offer support and assistance in the domains where social reproduction takes place: in homes and households, too. The political left must stand — in all circumstances — with those who bear the burdens of the compulsion to perform (waged) work.
Subjugation and exploitation
During their working hours, workers are subject to the authority of their employers. This is true even when that authority is exercised by others on the employer’s behalf — by algorithms, HR personnel, managers, colleagues, or by the employer internalised within us as a superego, that is, the internalised compulsion to work (in the form of workaholism or work addiction).
The employer possesses and exercises power over the employee during work time and in the workplace. It is the employer who dictates the terms. Workers, in turn, are told they must accept this as “natural” and “not a political issue.” However, this too is political.
In addition to overwork, exhaustion, burnout, and the experience of being drained and exploited, it is the rule of the employer — the dictatorship in the workplace — and the subjugation entailed by (waged) work which determine far too much of our waking lives. Workers are taught that this is just the way things are: if you want to make a living, if you want to keep your job, you must accept it. Yet this is not natural either — and it is up to the left to expose that fact.
How does the National Cooperation System fight the left in Hungary? A look at its mythology
According to the mythology of the National Cooperation System (NER)1, or the Orbán regime in Hungary, the “Hungarian man” is the centre of the world. He stands at the heart of the cosmos and embodies the norm — and whatever the NER says about him defines normality. Yet this “Hungarian man” — so the mythology goes — is under constant attack from all directions (from outside and inside, from below and above), and only the Hungarian Government, the leading political party coalition (the Fidesz and the KDNP), the NER itself, and of course Viktor Orbán can protect him and the “Hungarian people”. In this mythology, Orbán is the guardian of normality.
The “Hungarian man” stands not only at the centre of the universe, therefore, but also in the crosshairs of threats. He is threatened and disturbed by everyone. Fortunately, however, according to the NER mythology, the axis of the Hungarian world is the NER itself — its rotation casting a magical, protective spell around the “Hungarian man”, shielding him from all harm. Above all, it preserves peace.
The “Hungarian man” — as imagined by this mythology — is an honest, decent, middle-of-the-road, well-off, white, Christian, heterosexual, family-oriented, entrepreneurial, middle-class man who hates to be disturbed, and yet is constantly being disturbed. For the NER, defending the “Hungarian man”, the Hungarian family, and the sovereignty of the Hungarian nation is all one and the same cause: the defence of peace, security, and the social order.
Who threatens the Hungarian people, according to the NER mythology?
In this mythology, the central figure — the “Hungarian man”, along with the Hungarian family and nation — is under constant attack:
· From outside and above: foreign others, external enemies — Soros, Brussels, the EU, IMF, CIA, American Democrats, federalists, internationalists, gender ideologues, advocates of war and migration, and so on.
· From inside and above: foreign-aligned insiders, internal enemies — a rootless, externally funded opposition, liberals, NGOs, etc.
· From outside and below: foreign others, external enemies — migrants, terrorists, impoverished immigrants, international antifascists, communists, internationalists, etc.
· From inside and below: foreign-aligned insiders, internal enemies — subversives, troublemakers, violent agitators, domestic antifascists, civil society actors, homeless people, criminals, communists, paedophiles, etc.
According to this mythology, the foreign threat attacks from all four directions at once in a coordinated assault. These external and internal enemies are portrayed as attempting to impose foreign interests from within, undermining the nation, the family, national sovereignty, the social order, the white-Christian-Hungarian majority, and naturally, peace itself.
Whenever the NER perceives any emerging political left as posing even the slightest threat, it seeks to locate it within this mythological framework. Primarily, it assigns the left to the quadrant of those threatening from inside and below, while insisting that this left represents foreign interests.
In NER mythology, the left consists of subversives, terrorists, violent antifascists, paedophiles, communists — enemies of the nation, the family, peace, security, and the social order — and above all, they are not truly Hungarian, merely “Hungary-based” agents of foreign powers seeking to destabilise the country from within.
What should the left propose in response?
The left should assert that it genuinely represents the majority. It stands for those who are working here right now, who have worked here in the past, and who will work here in the future — whether they are Hungarian or not, white or not, young or old, women or men. Its politics should focus on protecting livelihoods, labour, and housing, and on resisting dispossession.
This left should also speak for those who do not live in Hungary proper or who were forced to leave the country to work elsewhere — in other words, for Hungarian workers abroad, wherever they may be in the world. This left should take pride in what workers take pride in: the work they have carried out together. It should recognise that it is we who built this world and that, despite all obstacles and hardships, it is our work that keeps our shared world running.
