Beszélgetés Jan Drahokoupillal

Author(s): Jan Drahokoupil,Zoltán Sidó / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 23/2018

Jan Drahokoupil a posztszocialista térség politikai gazdaságtanának szakértője. 2007-ben szerzett doktori fokozatot a budapesti Közép-európai Egyetemen (CEU), jelenleg az Európai Szakszervezeti Intézet (ETUI) szenior kutatója. Az intézetnél ő a digitalizációval és a munka jövőjével kapcsolatos kutatások koordinátora, 2017-ben pedig társszerkesztője volt a Transfer című folyóirat két, a digitalizáció munkaerőpiaci hatásait vizsgáló számának. Ennek apropóján beszélgettünk vele a digitalizáció és a munka kapcsolatáról általában, valamint arról, hogy mindez hogyan érinti a kelet-európai régiót.

Társadalmi reprodukció

Author(s): Gergely Csányi,Ágnes Gagyi,Ágnes Kerékgyártó / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 24/2018

The process during which the reproduction of life is integrated into capitalist production is usually referred to as reproduction, social reproduction, or reproductive labour. These concepts include the process during which capitalism transforms and makes use of the practices of love, sex, care and housework in a way that they fit the logic of capitalist accumulation. In our paper, we summarise the theoretical history of social reproduction: following the original concept of social reproduction of Marx and Engels, we look at ensuing waves of research using and critiquing this concept – feminist research, world-systems-focused research, research focusing on informal labour, peasants, or the exploitation of nature. Then we pose the question of what we may gain from these approaches for the understanding of Eastern-European social relations.

A háziasszony és munkája a kapitalizmusban

Author(s): Wally Seccombe / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 24/2018

One of the significant figures of the “domestic-labour debate” in the United States of the 1970s was Wally Seccombe, who was among the firsts to understand the centrality of housewives’ labour to capitalism through Marxist terminology. He consistently applied the value theory of labour to the reproduction of labour itself, challenging both Marxist and bourgeois economic approaches which did not consider domestic labour as a structural part of the capitalist mode of production, and therefore participated in making the labour and position of housewives ‘invisible’. For Seccombe, the fundamental and unsolved duality of domestic labour is that while it constantly creates value through the reproduction of commodified labour, it is not recognized as productive labour since it is not directly related to capital and does not produce surplus value. Therefore, domestic 258 FORDULAT 24 labour is not renumerated by any wage, which has important consequences for the social position, conscience and possibilities of the housewife. Reproductive work necessary for the sustainment of her husband, her children and herself is presented as a natural female obligation and charity, masking the fundamental deception of capitalism that wage is in fact not meant to be for labour, but for the reproduction of the labour force. Domestic labour signifies her total material dependence from her husband and her isolation from the public sphere, which together limit her possibilities to represent her own interests and to take part in collective resistance. Between the industrial and the domestic domain lies therefore the most remarkable fault line of the working class, which turns members of the same household silently against each other and excludes housewives from the sphere of collective organization and struggle.

A félproletár háztartás a modern világrendszer longue durée-je folyamán

Author(s): Wilma A. Dunaway / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 24/2018

Wilma A. Dunaway is a researcher affiliated with the Fernand Braudel Center Research Working Group on Households, Labor Force Formation and the World-Economy. A particular conception of the household, helping to grasp the process of the accumulation of capital at world-system level, was developed in this working group, as a result of the critiques of Wallerstein’s early historical works. This conception, also applied in this study, exposes the household as the fundamental site for the reproduction of the labor force, which combines various forms of labor, and integrates into the capitalist world-system by maintaining hierarchy between these forms. Through the maintenance of this hierarchy, the household allows capitalists to extract surplus from the household itself, and renders the reproductive or informal labor of women publicly invisible. Here, Dunaway puts forward a systematic analysis of how these two processes take place.

Nem vész el, csak átalakul?

Author(s): Anikó Gregor / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 24/2018

The article aims to apply the concept of neoliberal neo-patriarchy (Campbell 2014) through the example of elderly care and its contextual problems in present day Hungary. According to the theory of neoliberal neo-patriarchy, gender inequalities have been maintained in spite of economic growth and the spread of women in the labor market, contrary to what classic modernization theories had hypothesized. However, as we know from the work of Fraser (2016) and others, in absence of the rethinking and restructuring of the gendered division of reproductive labor, there is an internal tension within the logic of neoliberal capitalism: the woman who is projected to be present on the labor market is the same woman who is expected to perform a variety of reproductive tasks. In the public form of neoliberal gender regime (Walby 2011) the market, namely women from a lower social class, will be the ones undertaking this work, while in the domestic neoliberal gender regime female members of the family will perform it. Based on the results of a recent Hungarian study entitled Women’s Affairs 2018 (Gregor and Kováts 2018) I present how, due to the lack of social services, middle aged Hungarian women are left with the tasks of caring for the elderly, thereby enhancing the reproduction of unequal gender relations in society.

A „jó anya” mítosza Magyarországon a reproduktív munka és a piac globális történetének szempontjából

Author(s): Gergely Csányi,Szabina Kerényi / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 24/2018

Based on Foucault’s theory of the soul, as well as the methodological insights of Fernand Braudel and world-systems analysis, in our paper we demonstrate how the myths of the good and the bad mother were created by certain actors during the various cycles of the capitalist world system, and how these myths have been embedded into the logic of capitalistic accumulation. We show how these myths, on the one hand, contributed to securing the unpaid reproductive labour necessitated by accumulation, and on the other hand, supported a new market segment from the 19th century onwards. First we present an outline of the history of the myth of the good mother at the core of the world system, then we summarise the socialist myth of the good mother. Finally, we use empirical examples to illustrate the contemporary Hungarian myth of the good mother.

A szülés és a reproduktív technológiák értékelméleti megközelítése

Author(s): Kathryn Russell / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 24/2018

Social and technical changes in reproduction are drawing childbirth into the marketplace. People are creating new relations that separate genetic, gestational and social parentage. Reproductive engineering makes options of in vitro fertilization, embryo transfer, surrogacy, and fetal tissue transplants. This paper explores an analogy between childbearing and social labor, arguing that the labor theory of value gives insight into the social functions of childbirth under capitalism. The valorization of childbearing is consistent with other ways of socializing the reproduction of labor power despite the capitalists need for an autonomously functioning private household sector. A value-theoretic approach is necessary to reveal how childbearing is being placed in material relation with other forms of labor under capitalism. Neither reproductive engineering nor biological difference are themselves sources of oppression for women, but when found in a historical context where value can be extracted, childbearing can become a form of alienated labor.

„470-et adott és csak egy kicsit fojtogatott” –szegénységben élő nők a félperiféria és a centrum között.

Author(s): Fanni Dés / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 24/2018

My paper concentrates on women living in poverty originating from semi-periphery countries commuting to core countries to the sex industry. I analyse the phenomenon in the context of the theory of Claudia von Werlhof (2007), which is based on Wallerstein’s (1974) world-systems theory and focuses on the relation system of economy and sexuality. Through a case study, my aim is to point out the structures of oppression through which the countries located at core regions exploit women living in poverty originating from semi-peripheral regions, leading to women from semi-periphery countries ending up in the sex industry in core regions. My aim is to answer the following questions through ten 261 interviews conducted with Hungarian women who sell sex in Zürich: (1) how do these women end up selling sex illegally in a Western-European city where prostitution is decriminalized? (2) What are the economic and power constraints that lead to these women sell sex in a Western-European city? (3) How does the feminization of poverty encourage women’s migration, and a form of commuting where the aim is not to settle down in the host country, but to maintain a life at the country of origin? My further goal is to make the experiences of Hungarian women living in prostitution visible based on feminist empiricism.

Az LMBT+ identitások és mozgalom politikai gazdaságtana a félperiférián

Author(s): György Mészáros / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 24/2018

This article aims to form a critique of the identity-based approach of the mainstream LGBT+ activism to place LGBT+ identities and activism to another, political-economical and anti-systemic frame and to analyse the EU’s mainstream approach together with its Hungarian counterpart. To complete this task the essay analyses some relevant texts and offers autoethnographic reflections. As the analysis of the international documents (such as the Yogyakarta Principles) and of the websites of the largest European LGBT + organizations (ILGA Europe, IGLYO) reveals, the mainstream LGBT+ activism applies a human rights frame and an identity politics- based liberal approach. This frame is followed by the Hungarian LGBT+ activism that often combines it with a discourse that contrasts the progressive “Western” liberal world with the backward “Eastern” world. This ideology focuses on the self-definition of the subject and builds rights and political activities on it, and understands the notion of gender in the dimension of identity. By this approach subjects are bounded to the structures of neoliberal capitalism, and LGBT+ identities are commodified. In the semi-periphery, this is topped by a self-colonizing tendency that presents the “Western” world as a superior one. At the same time anti-systemic authors have shown how gay (LGBT+) identity is embedded into the system of capitalist production and reproduction. LGBT+ identities are the products of capitalism, and its power relations are both reproducing the heteronormative model (especially in the semi-periphery) and incorporating the progressive, free, neoliberal “gay” subjects. Consequently this study argues that material relations should be considered in building the resistance to heteronormativity and capitalism.

Emberi tényező? Az antropocén-narratíva kritikája

Author(s): Alf Hornborg,Andreas Malm / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 25/2019

The Anthropocene narrative portrays humanity as a species ascending to power over the rest of the Earth System. In the crucial field of climate change, this entails the attribution of fossil fuel combustion to properties acquired during human evolution, notably the ability to manipulate fire. But the fossil economy was not created nor is it upheld by humankind in general. This intervention questions the use of the species category in the Anthropocene narrative and argues that it is analytically flawed, as well as inimical to action. Intra-species inequalities are part and parcel of the current ecological crisis and cannot be ignored in attempts to understand it.

A kapitalocén – avagy mibe kerül az olcsó természet?

Author(s): Attila Szigeti / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 25/2019

In the last decades the Capitalocene discourse was emerging in the Marxist ecological thinking. This approach offers a sociohistorical explanation to the current ecological crisis by questioning the historical narrative of the Anthropocene discourse. Authors of Capitalocene are arguing that climate change and ecological crisis was not caused by the collective and homogenous humanity (predetermined by the human nature). According them capitalism’s accumulative and expropriative socioeconomic relations are responsible for climate crisis.This paper analysis how Capitalocene-arguments are applying the Marxist critique of capitalism, especially the labour theory of value and its contemporary expansions and corrections in the understanding of the current ecological crisis. The first two subchapters are summarizing World-Ecology theory of Jason W. Moore, than I interpret the debate of Moore with the Metabolic Rift school (John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett, Andreas Malm and others), and finally I analyse the possible normative ecopolitics from the theoretical perspective of Capitalocene.In the last decades the so-called Capitalocene discourse was emerging in the Marxist ecological thinking. This approach offers a sociohistorical explanation of the current ecological crisis by questioning the historical narrative of the Anthropocene discourse. Authors of Capitalocene are arguing that climate change and ecological crisis were not caused by the collective and homogenous humanity (predetermined by the human nature) in general. According them capitalism’s accumulative and expropriative socioeconomic relations are responsible for climate crisis.This paper analysis how Capitalocene-arguments are applying the Marxist critique of capitalism, especially the labour theory of value and its contemporary expansions and corrections in the understanding of the current ecological crisis. The first two subsections are summarizing World-Ecology theory of Jason W. Moore, than the paper interprets the debate of Moore with the Metabolic Rift school (John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett, Andreas Malm and others), and finally it analyses the possible normative ecopolitics from the theoretical perspective of Capitalocene.

A szén-dioxid mint értékmérő. Hogyan teremt értéket és pénzt a klímaváltozás?

Author(s): Steffen Dalsgaard / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 25/2019

The introduction of the Kyoto Protocol is an attempt to save the climate through a number of schemes, or mechanisms, that commodify carbon. Among other things, these schemes create monetary incentives to reduce carbon emissions through the trade of permits and credits, and they make carbon an object of financial speculation. Most controversial is apparently the potential of carbon thus to be a universal yardstick for value by commensurating moral spheres of human action (the environment, the economy, development, etc.) that some people regard as distinct. This paper explores the consequences of the speculative aspects of carbon as a standard of value and as potential currency.on

Ökofeminizmus

Author(s): Ariel Salleh / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 25/2019

Ecological feminism is sometimes understood as a subset of social ecology. This is true in as much as ecofeminism addresses the interaction of social and natural processes. However, it would be false to suggest that ecofeminism derives from social ecology, or from deep ecology, or eco-Marxism [Chapter 6]. Ecological feminism is sui generis; its first premise being that society–nature relations in the dominant global economy are fundamentally sex-gendered in both material and ideological senses. In this respect, ecofeminism takes a methodological quantum leap beyond other political frameworks. Ecofeminism is also distinct from liberal and socialist feminisms, since these perspectives focus rather uncritically on the pursuit of equality. Ecofeminists are not looking for an equal slice of a toxic pie. Attention to the positive and negative implications of sex-gender difference is prioritised by ecofeminists, before attending to an equality that simply reinforces Eurocentric masculinist values as the universal norm. Likewise, respect for the principle of difference as cultural autonomy joins ecofeminism and postcolonial concerns. Further, the framing of liberal and socialist feminisms has been anthropocentric, whereas ecofeminism is oriented towards oikos and the interconnection of all life on Earth.

Felkészülés az olajcsúcsra: mit tanulhatunk Kuba "különleges időszakából"?

Author(s): Emma Piercy,Rachel Granger,Chris Goodier / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 25/2019

It is against recent experiences of proliferative consumption of the earth's resources that planners and politicians must confront the challenge of peak oil over the coming years. With so few examples of peak oil available worldwide, this paper explores the realities of this in Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 – the so-called special period, which decimated the country's imports of energy, food and other vital supplies. Drawing on primary research collected in Cuba during 2008 and in an attempt to stimulate debate about how western countries and cities might respond to future losses of global resources, this paper examines the policy responses implemented in Cuba in the fields of transport, spatial planning, agriculture and energy. Despite the Cuban situation being politically different from other countries and the fact that the loss of resources during the special period were abrupt and unplanned, it is argued that there is still considerable scope for a wider application of the concepts to other towns and cities, if not countries and cultures.

Gombafonallal szőtt esszék az értékmentő felhalmozásról (Anna Tsing: The Mushroom at the End of the World)

Author(s): Alexandra Czeglédi / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 25/2019

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's book entitled "The Mushroom at the End of the World" could be read from the semi-periphery of the global capital. The supply chains of an Eastern Hungarian mushroom-business leads us to Tsing's book, to the author’s concept of salvage accumulation. By introducing salvage accumulation, Tsing means the process of value creation when it occurs without established control system of capitalism, like as it is managed in factories. Raw materials (coal and oil) are annexed by capital, within the outside sphere of capitalism, which independently occur in nature. This value-saving process, in this way, refers to the capital accumulation which does not depend on controlled conditions of capitalism. Commodification, thus, does not take place on factories’ conveyor belt, rather outside of the social structure, deep in the middle of forests (2015: 62-63). Natural resources were already present before human existence, and reproduce even after the extinction of human species. Although Tsing's book might be a valid critique of David Harvey's accumulation by dispossession, the concept of the reverse primitive accumulation coined by Kalyan Sanyal seems essential for mapping the complexity of capitalism. The reversal of capital accumulation is a political tool which legitimises exploitative processes of capitalism.

A történettudomány válsága és haszna az antropocén témák tükrében: egyenlőtlenség, hatalom, világrendszer, ellenállás és deep history (Bonneuil és Fressoz: The Shock of the Anthropocene; Lewis és Maslin: The Human Planet)

Author(s): Róbert Balogh / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 25/2019

The importance of the books reviewed here lies in their ability to go beyond the Anthropocene versus Capitalocene debate and in describing a framework of notions that lead to the conclusion that the adequate response to the risks that global biophysical changes bring about is a new mode of living replacing the current form of consumer capitalism. The authors of the two books are two ecologists and two historians. Their arguments converge on the point that if we live in the Anthropocene, then the academic response to this condition is a critical theory that includes a new narrative about human history and analysis of the processes that brought about the current condition and that need to be changed. The new ground that the volumes break makes it possible to hypothesize that historiography may overcome its decades-long crisis as a result of increasing sensitivity to socio-natural phenomena and interaction with biological sciences.

A lakhatási válságra adott közösségi válaszok

Author(s): Csaba Jelinek,Zsuzsanna Pósfai / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 27/2020

Since the crisis of 2008, housing is yet again and increasingly becoming a form of profitable financial investment. This tends to dominate over the claim that each person has the need and the right to access affordable, good quality housing. Across the globe this tendency is intensified by state policies as well. However, bottom-up initiatives organizing themselves for collective housing solutions are also gaining ground. These self-organized, „self-help” models open the possibility for economically vulnerable social groups to support each other in finding solutions for their housing problems, and also to collectively access resources that would individually be impossible to reach. This paper presents such an alternative housing solution, notably the model of rental-based housing cooperatives. Rental housing cooperatives are institutions organized in a bottom-up manner with the aim of providing affordable, good quality and stable housing for their members. We discuss two examples from Germany and from Uruguay for successful rental housing cooperative networks, which have existed for several decades. Finally, we present the steps which have been taken in the past years in Hungary and in the Eastern European region towards the establishment of such a model.

A mai pénzügyi rendszer kritikája és reformlehetőségei

Author(s): Sára Lafferton,Gábor Horváth / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 27/2020

In this paper we try to briefly analyse the main working principles and the social consequences of the financial system. In the second part of our article we describe several alternative solutions to the current system: in our opinion, some of these could help and enable the work of establishing a democratic and solidarity economy.

Regional use of European Funds in municipal waste management in Poland

Author(s): Agnieszka Ulfik / Language(s): English Issue: 3/1/2018

Book review

Author(s): Christie Davies / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017