The critical analysis of the Lula epoch is a complex task. The former workers' movement leader, who became a charismatic president, announced intense reforms and part of them were actually realised. Nevertheless, he could not break away from the past, or the history of Brazil, in many respects. The fact that Brazil now is probably the most influential country of the periphery does not mean at all that its internal conflicts were eased.
This issue of Eszmélet presents the lessons from the defeat of the socialist left and the workers' movement in new contexts. This defeat has not eased the internal crisis of capitalism and the capital system but weakened the strength of forces opposing the system for a humanist alternative. In the light of recent research results, the link between the European and global scale cannot be more ignored. While bourgeois ideology is speaking about the death of Marx for decades, after a retreat he is returning in Eastern Europe as well in many different ways. The death of Eric Hobsbawm deprived Marxist history writing from its last man of encyclopedic knowledge but his work remains us inspiring.