Social reproduction, far-right politics, and capitalist crisis: Centring surplus populations in Hungarian illiberalism

This article sketches out a general theory on the relationship between capitalist crisis, far-right politics, and social reproduction. Such an engagement is made through anchoring at the heart of the analysis the experiences of ‘surplus populations’: those rendered outside the wage economy and conceptualized here more broadly as existing on the margins of society. I argue that a sufficient understanding of the contemporary emergence of the far right requires making sense of, first, historical changes to social reproduction wrought by financialized capitalism and, second, the role played by surplus populations and relations of racialization, gender, and exclusionary politics. Hungarian illiberalism is used as a case study for exploring these dynamics, with a focus on the experiences of Hungary’s largest minority group, the Roma. The research contributes to Marxist theory by parsing out the significance of social reproduction and surplus populations in shaping the intersections of capitalist crisis and far-right politics.