In 1789, the Declaration of Human Rights declared the equality of people a normative principle of political order. In principle, this also provided foundation for the participation of woman in public life. This, however, did not happen. Woman did not become citizens, so the new democracy excluded more than half of humanity from politics.

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.

The 19th century has been seen as the period of the rise of the bourgeoise and the nation-state. Bourgeois revolutions played a crutial role in this process and also in the exclusion pof women from civil rights. In Hungary, resistance to this new dicrimination was even weaker than elsewhere.

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.