Class Structure in Hungary from the Perspective of the World-Systems Analysis

The main argument of this polemic paper (based on the works of Karl Marx, Max Weber, Pierre Bourdieu and E. P. Thompson) is that the key to the analysis of class structure is analyzing the historically formed relations of production and ownership. Statistical and static descriptions which distribute the population into social groups, along with their methodology (rigid categorizations and creating typologies) belong to the research of social stratification. They are not analyses of class structure, which aim to shed light on the dynamics of structural frictions. Class theory also needs to incorporate the analysis of global political, economic and social relations on the level of the world system, with special attention to the longue durée cycles of the historically formed capitalist world economy. The paper tries to characterize the class structure and the politics of class in Hungary, and hints at what relations of recognition and strategies of recognition arise in these circumstances.