The chapter values the work of non governmental organisations (NGO) in Latin America mostly from a political angle, presenting the tendency that community-based and grass-root organisations are gradually replaced by operational and professional ‘development agencies', which in fact promote the agenda of globalisation and neoliberalism. While left-wing movements aim to change the structure of social injustice, NGOs prefer keeping the poor away from politics and see the solution in investing in personal human capital.
sz szilu84 összes bejegyzése
Present-day popular fronts
The study reviews the history of popular fronts between the two World Wars, focusing mainly on criteria of interpreting it, and also discusses the reality of ideas and tactics of popular fronts after World War II until recent times. The study aims to rise questions, which induce optimal political answers against present right-extremist and authoritarian global tendencies.
Europe − for cartoon heroes On Aleš Debeljak: Europe without Europeans
Critical remarks to the idea of „democratic centrism”
After the victory of the October Revolution, revolutionary socialist parties and groups all over the world tried to follow in their organisation structure the so called "Leninist party model". The author of the discussion paper argues that this special Leninist party model never existed – the Bolshevik Party followed especially organisation standards of western social democratic parties. What subsequent revolutionary movements regarded as the ideal model was in fact the simplified version of the Bolshevik Party's structure, which developed after the party had taken the power and which was infected with bureaucratic distortions. Insisting on this wrong organisational model has greatly contributed to the defeat of revolutionary socialism in the 20th Century.
No. 70 | (Summer 2006)
This issue of Eszmélet addresses two major and historically relevant topics: the popular front, of which actuality is given by the anniversary of the Spanish civil war, and the second is the so-called organisational issue that is unresolved internationally as we entered into the new era of globalisation. In order to contribute to raise the level of intellectual debates of the political left in Hungary, it is important to sum up the relevant aspects of the oeuvre of Lenin concerning this topic.
In Hungary, so far no unbiased analysis was made on the international support to the forces of the Spanish Republic, the division and reasons of the split in the Spanish left, the role of anarchists, the weight of Soviet help in the civil war etc. Conclusions from the articles published can be relevant to restore unity of the present left. The Leninist experience on the organisational issue can also be linked to this question. What are the traps to be avoided by the present left? What were the profoundly different structural features of party development before and after 1917? Have we faced the progressive heritage of pre-Stalinist Marxism? Have we wasted 18 years since the system change? On historically and theoretically analysing the past probably we have not but concerning lessons to be learned – certainly yes.
Table of contents
- Harsányi Iván : Popular front – looking back over 70 years
- Farkas Miklós : When World War II began? The military coup against the Second Spanish Republic broke out 70 years ago
- Mezei Bálint : Soviet officers in the Spanish Civil War
- Konok Péter : Is the enemy of my enemy my friend? The failure of the Spanish popular front in May 1937
- Zolcsák Attila : Anarchist federalism and Spanish regionalism
- Ana Bazac : Present-day popular fronts
- Bánki Éva : Europe − for cartoon heroes On Aleš Debeljak: Europe without Europeans
- Joaquín Bustelo : Critical remarks to the idea of „democratic centrism”
- Michael A. Lebowitz : The politics of assumption, the assumption of politics
- Krausz Tamás : Lenin and the „organisation question” – historical reconstruction