NIWGE · New industrial workers of a globalizing Europe: Right-wing populism, working-class power and the legacy of state socialism in East Germany and Hungary
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2020-01-01 → 2022-02-06
- EU contribution
- €162,806
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
New industrial workers of a globalizing Europe: Right-wing populism, working-class power and the legacy of state socialism in East Germany and Hungary
Objective of the project The main aim of my project was to interrogate the question of why “elite” workers, who are better paid, enjoy higher job security, better working conditions, and more “voice” at the workplace than workers of small and medium-sized, “domestic” enterprises , and who can be termed as “opinion-leaders” at their workplace, are responsive to right-wing, populist discourses and politics. I have therefore selected the automotive sector. The loci of the case studies in Hungary were Győr (Audi) and Kecskemét (Mercedes), where contacts have been established with the local trade unions, and pilot projects were conducted (2015-2016). The sites of the fieldwork in Germany were Dresden and Zwickau. Here I received important and essential support from my supervisor, Professor Thomas Lindenberger, the director of the host institute, my student assistant, Johann-Christoph Landgraf, and the Technische Universität (TU) Dresden, which has very strong contacts to the leading industries of the city (“Dresden-concept”). Why is it important for society? The project contended that the specific Eastern European historical legacies alongside a longue durée perspective should receive more emphasis in the research. The specific historical legacy of state socialism not only included the “dictatorship of the proletariat”; it also encompassed a specific lifestyle and mentality. Kopstein and Ziblatt (2006) showed that this division continued to be present also in the political sphere, e. g. between Eastern and Western Germany, which triggered “unlikely” coalitions instead of the traditional party alliances. The radical left – and nowadays the radical right – “performed” better in Eastern Germany than in the Western provinces. However, while the far-right wing forces are very far from grasping the political power in Germany, in the Hungarian case,e. g. Gábor Scheiring speaks of authoritarian capitalism (The Retreat of Liberal Democracy: Authoritarian Capitalism and the Accumulative State in Hungary, 2020). My contention is that labor studies can contribute to the understanding of the retreat of liberal democracy in Hungary, and can support new policies in order to “win” Hungary and Hungarian workers back to democracy instead of the “illiberalism” that the ruling party has been advocating.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The research seeks to interrogate the question as to what extent the newly formed, skilled industrial “elite” workforce mainly driven by global capital in East Germany and Hungary, is attracted by right-wing, populist ideologies and political forces, and what factors can be identified that account for the decreasing appeal of the “old left” in this stratum of the workers. The German-Hungarian comparative project is expected to: (a) contribute to an emergent literature, which seeks to reorient research towards a global labour history (Linden 2008), namely new directions in political sociology, labor sociology, social anthropology and gender studies; (b) facilitate new strategies of labour revitalization, which are considered to be vital for a deeper understanding of the mobilizing power of right-wing populism. I contend that the transfer of the “best practices” of the German model of co-determination into semi-peripheral countries such as Hungary can be an important means in this process; (c) generate a wider social dialogue on labour and democracy, which is targeted primarily at a non-academic public.There has been a widespread criticism of the lack of working-class agency as an analytical focus in recent literature. I use an agent-centred, working-class power (WCP) approach on the basis of Wright’s analysis (2000). Further, I contend that the specific Eastern European historical legacies should receive more emphasis in the research and that a complex, interdisciplinary study of these legacies transmitted through family histories and collective memory and the everyday life-history experience of work and work-based communities is needed to account for the increasing appeal of right-wing populism in postsocialist countries. East Germany is an exemplary case here because albeit with the unification it became part of a Western country, the state socialist past still distinguishes the region politically and economically from the former West Germany (Kopstein 2001).
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET DRESDEN · DresdenCoordinatorGermany
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union