Different Scales of Uneven Development in a (No Longer) Post-socialist Hungary

Abstract

The article analyses the causes of spatial inequalities in post-socialist Hungary from a Marxist approach. Socioeconomic and spatial differentiation between east and west of Hungary is a topic of debate that has gone beyond the academia. Regional disparities of the economic development of the country have increased during the postsocialist transition period and have not improved since the entry into the European Union. In this sense, spatial inequalities are, undoubtedly, the geographical proofs of the capitalist mode of production and to understand the current features of the production and reproduction of these inequalities is necessary to analyse the social conditions such as gender and ethnicity. The rise of regional inequalities in the Hungarian economy since the political change has been accompanied by changes in the division of labour and in the capital and, thus, creating new models of regional disparities in the economy. The unequal development of Hungary at different geographical scales shows that is the logic of the capital who rules the inequalities, as regional as urban.