Manufacturing a neoliberal "consensus" in social sciences has been a matter of a few decades. Origins date back to early post-war years and financial roots lead up to the foundations of big US corporations.

Two unexpected voices articulated their concern in the public last year about the neoliberal economic era warning on the tragic consequences – the Catholic Church and George Soros. It is known that none of them has recently developed their "social concern" and Soros cannot be considered neither as a left-wing personality nor progressive. Articles in the present issue of Eszmélet, study the relationship between the church and social problems presenting examples from different periods and continents on churches trying to ease the misery of the poor and their relationship to left-wing political forces. Thinking of Soros, often depicted in the global press as "philanthropic", on the mechanism of market economy is presented in the book review section compared to progressive economists like Marx, Keynes and Schumacher.

Table of contents

1. alfabeta : Benevolent churches and benevolent citizens?
2. Gergely Jenő : Is the church a social institute? (Interview with the historian)
3. Benoit Guillou : The “theology of prosperity” – religion and neoliberalism in Peru
4. Zsumbera Árpád : The social activity of early Christian communities
5. Illés László : Against the deadly flow of death – Social teachings of the Church and the Hungarian Catholic press in the early 1930s
6. Balogh Margit : Churches and church policy in the Kadar era
7. Lugosi Győző : Liberation theory
8. Lugosi Győző : Sects
9. Balogh Sándor : Jozsef Mindszenty – a cardinal-politician
10. Mester Béla : Gyorgy Bretter the philosopher
11. Bretter György : Fact and theory
12. Hild Márta : Re-dicovering Marx in the 20th century
13. Lóránt Károly : on Georg Soros: The alchemy of finance
14. Magyar Jenő : Is science harmful? – on Schumacher’s books: Small is beautiful and Good work
15. Susan George : How economic thought became unlinear?
16. Richard Gott : The missing year of Che Guevara

Ernesto Guevara was killed 30 years ago. This article, first published in The Guardian and in a longer version in New Left Review tells the story of the year he spent in Africa attempting to help the anti-imperialist struggle of Africanguerillas.

In August 1996, the Hungarian Catholoc Church published an ancyclical for a more fair and fraternal world. Since then, it can be suspected that the church wants to take over the traditional role of the political left. The big question of teh future is, like in the past, whether the conservative, ideological-political role of teh church would be replaced by the need for a "social church" and the "service of society".

It is still a question to what extent the church provided support to society in periods of capitalist development, when exlusion, impoverishment and peripherisation were prominent features of social life. Can we count on charitative activities of the church, and under what conditions, during the contemporary socio-economic transformation?