Reflections on how and why revolution was thrown to the rubbish dump of history as a political concept and alos its concrete examples.

From the most well-known paragraphs of the Communist Manifesto one can derive some less well-known conclusions once we place the 150 year old text in a contemporary framework.

The article compares the concept of capitalism in the Communist Manifesto with the contemporary developments in world capitalism the end of state socialist experiment in Eastern Europe and the increasingly hierarchical structures of the capitalist world-system.

In 1848-49, the fate of the Hungarian revolution and war of independence depended primarily on the events in Germany. Since the German revolution did not have a "Paris" or "Koblentz" its defeat and hence the Europe-wide dynastic restoration were inevitable.

The celebration of anniversaries tells a lot more about the present than the past. Because the pendulum of history swang into extremes in Eastern europe more often then elsewhere, the role of symbols has also been greater than in other regions. In the debates on the 100th anniversary of the revolution the relationship between class and nation was a crutial theme.