Sean Figg, Committee for a Workers’ International
Viktor Orbán conceded defeat in Hungary’s parliamentary elections on 12 April, ending the first and longest ‘experiment’ in right-populist government in this era. The scale of Orbán’s defeat is huge. In the party-list component of the election, his Hungarian Civic Alliance, known as Fidesz, contesting in alliance with the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP), lost over 800,000 votes compared to the 2022 elections, falling from over three million votes to 2.2 million.
In total, Fidesz-KDNP lost 79 seats in the 199-seat parliament. This was on an 80% turnout, the highest in the history of capitalist democracy in Hungary, introduced in 1990 after the end of Stalinist one-party rule.
The opposition Respect and Freedom party, known as Tisza, secured a super-majority of 136 seats, i.e. over two-thirds of the seats in parliament, giving it the power to amend the constitution. This was a position enjoyed by Orbán in all four of his parliamentary terms too. He used it to make substantial changes to the Hungarian capitalist state and its laws in order to build a so-called ‘illiberal democracy’. However, the verdict on ‘Orbánism’ after sixteen years in power is that it failed to solve any of the fundamental issues confronting post-Stalinist capitalism in Hungary.
Why Tisza?
Tisza has been the beneficiary of an electoral revolt, driven primarily, but by no means exclusively, by the younger generations in the cities and big towns. Despite increases in average wages and a decline in unemployment during Orbán’s rule, a cumulative inflation since the Covid-19 pandemic of 57% has weakened or wiped out many of the gains. Corruption scandals became more frequent and ever more scandalous towards the end of his rule while the wealth of a section of society with connections to the government was exposed. Linked to this there has been significant deterioration in public services.
All of this has led to a mood of frustration and anger which was able to coalesce around Tisza because it appeared ‘new’. It positioned itself firmly against Orbán and Fidesz, but also against the established opposition parties. However, whilst Tisza was a new choice on the ballot paper, and its MPs will be new faces in parliament, the politics behind Tisza are anything but ‘new’.
Péter Magyar, the leader of Tisza, is a former Fidesz politician and Tisza is largely a personal vehicle tightly controlled by him. This is a right-wing political project, at best ‘Orbán-lite’. Tisza’s election manifesto promised a domestic policy focused on tackling corruption, improving healthcare, education, welfare, child protection and transport.
It also included proposals on a wealth tax and tax cuts for those on low incomes. But Magyar sang from Fidesz’s anti-migrant song sheet during the election campaign. He has also been silent on LGBTQ+ rights and whether a Tisza government would repeal Fidesz’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.
Why did Orbán accept defeat?
Across capitalist governments of all political shades there has been a trend towards increased repression and attacks on democratic rights. This is generally sharper under right-populist governments, its politicians unapologetic about it, with some, like Trump, or Orbán, embracing their ‘strongman’ role. Understandably, many wonder how far this process can go, asking, “is this the road to a fascist government?”
When talking about capitalist democracy and democratic rights, right-populists use a political vocabulary sharply at odds with the well-established – and thoroughly hypocritical – ideas of universal freedoms and universal human rights used by their liberal capitalist rivals and even traditional conservatives, behind which the ruling classes have cloaked the dictatorship of capital for decades. This is a conscious political choice to emphasise right-populist parties’ distance from the ‘old’ political establishment. Upon winning the 2018 elections, Orbán declared: “The era of liberal democracy is over”. He continued, “We have replaced a shipwrecked liberal democracy with a 21st-century Christian democracy, which guarantees people’s freedom, security.” However, Orbán’s acceptance of electoral defeat in these elections shows that, whatever he intended by his remarks, he was not declaring the end of capitalist democracy.
This did not of course mean that democratic rights were ‘safe’ under Orbán. Throughout his sixteen-year rule his governments gerrymandered, manipulated state institutions, appointed ‘loyalists’ to key public offices, and used the law and repressive apparatus of the capitalist state to intimidate opposition and attack minority groups. But as the CWI has pointed out before, right-wing populism does not stand for the destruction of the workers’ movement or the abolition of democratic rights and elected governments in general. Using Fidesz’s supermajority to replace capitalist democracy with a fascist dictatorship was never floated, despite the formal opportunity with the introduction of a new constitution in 2011.
This is not least because right-populism in Europe is primarily an electoral phenomenon. One of the roles that right-populism attempts to play in this era is to rally a social base for capitalism that the traditional capitalist parties have been incapable of maintaining. They do this with an appeal to conservative social and family ‘values’, nationalism and other backward ideas. Simultaneously, right-populists posture against out of touch ‘elites’, including capitalism’s traditional political representatives, giving some outlet to the class anger in society. The strength of the different ingredients in this reactionary cocktail varies from country to country depending on the national situation.
But right-wing populist parties are not engaged in charity work for the capitalist class. They are also building their own electoral base from which to wrest the management of capitalism from its traditional political representatives, the parties and politicians whom the right-wing populists hold as responsible for leading capitalism into crisis. An electoral mandate from ‘the people’ is considered crucial by right-populists for their legitimacy as the real representatives of ‘the nation’. This electoral legitimacy also serves as a social base, albeit a shallow one, that allows them to deal more decisive blows against their capitalist rivals than they could otherwise. Odious as it is, attacks on the rights of minorities, such as migrants or LGBTQ+ people, and increasing repression against different anti-government protest movements, are used to rally and consolidate the ‘real nation’ as a social base for capitalism and an electoral base for right-populist governments in particular, not as a step toward the abolition of democratic rights and elected government in general. Gerrymandering and other forms of electoral manipulation, including intimidation and suppression, has always been a feature of capitalist democracy. It is increasing everywhere under the pressure of the crisis of capitalism and is firmly part of the right-populist ‘playbook’ too. But this has definite limits at this stage which are shaped by the balance of class forces in each country and globally.
Orbán, when in opposition, manoeuvred Fidesz into a prominent role in anti-government protests between 2006 and 2010. But like all right-populist politicians, and capitalist politicians of all ideological shades in general, he prefers politics to be limited to a spectator sport. Only the political elite are meant to play on the field. If Orbán had attempted to defy what was clearly a decisive electoral revolt against his rule he would have guaranteed a pitch invasion by the spectators – in other words he would have provoked a mass movement. This is what happened in South Korea in 2024, stopping an attempted military coup.
In Hungary, Budapest Pride went ahead in June 2025, with over 200,000 attending, despite having been banned by Orbán’s government. This mass civil disobedience would have been nothing compared to the response any attempt to defy the election outcome would have provoked. All mass movements have the potential to threaten the stability of capitalism and the wealth and power of the ruling class. In Hungary, this would have included that of Orbán and his clique. When it came to it, Orbán conceded defeat before ballot counting was even finished.
However, the CWI has warned that there is a ‘grey zone’ connecting right-populist parties and far-right and fascist groups. The latter do build their organisations with a perspective for eventually waging a ‘battle for the streets’ through mass mobilisations and the building of armed wings. Emboldened by the growth in electoral support for right-populist parties, these groups can lead an increase in political violence and attacks on minority groups. The balance between the populist-right ‘mainstream’ and this far-right ‘fringe’ can, of course, change in the future as the crisis of capitalism deepens and class struggle escalates. In the 1920s and 1930s capitalist politicians of all ideological shades acted as handmaidens for the formation of fascist governments when the alternative was the overthrow of capitalism by the revolutionary working class. But this is not the balance of class forces in Europe at present.
Sixteen years of Orbánism confirms the CWI’s analysis that right-populist government does not yet mean a qualitative change in the form of capitalist rule in the way that fascist regimes and Bonapartist police or military dictatorships do. However, Marxists do not deal in rigid and fixed categories. There are elements of Bonapartism in every capitalist democracy. These elements can become more dominant, producing regimes of parliamentary or presidential Bonapartism.
In these, repression plays a greater role, democratic rights are more restricted, and the institutions of bourgeois democracy are increasingly sidelined, subordinated or neutralised. Orbán travelled a considerable way down this road during his sixteen years in power.
What happens next?
In the short term, Orbán’s defeat is a boost for the pro-war European ruling classes’ militarisation programmes and determination to wage war in Ukraine against Russian imperialism. Magyar is unlikely to continue with Orbán’s policy of delays and vetoes to block military aid to Ukraine or additional sanctions on Russia. This did not mean that Orbán was ‘the peace candidate’, despite trying to posture as such during the election campaign, cynically playing on legitimate fears in Hungarian society. Orbán’s policy toward the Ukraine war amounted to a backdated cheque for Russian imperialism’s war of territorial conquest and an acceptance of its right to annex territory by force. This is not a ‘peace’ policy.
We are in an era where capitalist democracy is in crisis. Orbánism was both a product of that crisis and, during its sixteen years in power, accelerated it. One of the functions of capitalist democracy, as well as easing the tensions between the classes, is to allow the disagreements between the different wings of the capitalist class to be mediated. One of the means of doing this is changing governments following an election. In periods of relative capitalist stability, this was a relatively straightforward technical task governed by rules that all political parties abided by and facilitated by a professional cadre of capitalist technocrats. This is increasingly breaking down and changing governments is becoming an increasingly fraught and contested process. Rather than lowering the temperature of class anger and reducing the pressures in society, a change of government today can also pave the road to fresh political and constitutional crises. This is just one of the many ways that right-populism is a source of instability from the point of view of the capitalist class. It also increases polarisation in society more generally, adding to the difficulties of achieving stable capitalist political rule.
Poland is another ex-Stalinist country that is today part of the EU and has seen a right-populist government come and go. The right-populist Law & Justice party (PiS) was in government for two terms between 2015 and 2023. Like Orbán, it too made substantial changes to the capitalist state and its laws before also stepping aside from government. However, the coalition of capitalist parties that replaced PiS failed to secure a supermajority and lacked the legal power to remove PiS loyalists from key positions in the capitalist state. Crucially, PiS still controlled the presidency and its veto powers. Their willingness to use these positions to frustrate the new government has led to political deadlock. Rapid disillusionment with the new government allowed PiS to retain control of the presidency for another five years in elections in 2025. This leaves the country hanging on the precipice of a political or even a constitutional crisis.
Back in Hungary, Magyar has already called on Fidesz appointees in key positions in the capitalist state – including the highest courts and state prosecutor, the audit, competition and media authorities, as well as Hungary’s president – to resign before their terms of office end. It is unclear whether they will heed this call. Fidesz may be out of office, but it may not wish to surrender all the reins of power it has gathered, especially with the possibility of an anti-corruption drive leading to prosecutions. If they do not resign, Magyar would be faced with the choice of accepting some level of political deadlock or using his supermajority to enact constitutional changes to make their removal possible.
However, this ‘majoritarianism’ is precisely the ‘crime’ Magyar accuses Orbán of! In every scenario, the Hungarian ruling class is unlikely to avoid some degree of political or constitutional crisis in the future as a legacy of right-populist government. As we have pointed out in relation to the US, in this era, control of the capitalist state – the executive committee of the ruling class – is contested between its different wings in a way not seen in generations. This is another potential source of major instability for capitalism. The social ferment provoked by political and constitutional crises – splits in the ruling class in other words – are fuel to the class struggle and can pave the way to mass movements and even revolutions.
For independent working-class political struggle
In Hungary, as elsewhere, the working class and middle classes are again dissatisfied, frustrated, and seething with anger. The same moods that swept Orbán and Fidesz into power have now swept them out again. Peter Magyar and Tisza will not be spared this anger either when their pro-capitalist policies inevitably lead to disappointment. Confidence in capitalist political parties and the institutions of capitalist political rule has been undermined everywhere. In Hungary and other ex-Stalinist countries these were introduced within living memory, their social roots shallower than in many other capitalist countries. It is the ‘underwriting’ of the profit system by the stronger European capitalist classes that dominate the EU that brought Hungarian capitalism into existence and sustains it.
The biggest factor keeping it alive is the huge political vacuum that could be filled by an independent mass working-class political party. The defence of democratic rights against the right-populists and other reactionary pro-capitalist political forces that can grow in their wake is crucial in this era. But this struggle needs to be conducted under the leadership of the working class, independent from all wings of the ruling class. Only a political alternative on this class basis is capable of solving the crisis of capitalism in the interests of the majority in society. This will require a programme for the replacement of capitalism by a democratic and working class-controlled socialism.
