One up for science
An important success in efforts made for resumption of publishing the complete works of Marx and Engels (MEGA).
The “Gulf” imperialism. Thoughts and assumptions on the present stage of development of the capitalist mode of production
Bonzio questions those standpoints which consider the Gulf War as simply a North-South conflict. He argues that behind the North-South conflicts, there are North-North ones (that is those between the big powers in the centre). He differentiates between the horizontal and vertical conflicts within the capitalist world. Similarly to the regulation school, he thinks the engine of development are the changes of age of technology and organisation which also determine the conflicts. He links the vertical conflicts to the period of relative stability, while the horizontal ones to the changes of epoch proving that ultimately, it is always the North-North conflicts that are decisive. He thinks the capitalist world economy is the entity of centripetal and centrifugal movements, this first of the two being overweight While underlining the two-directional nature of the movements, he criticises the oversimplifying theory of exploitation of periphery. He stresses that it is the totality of centre-semi-periphery-periphery relations that ensures the reproduction of the capitalist world economy.
The tragedy of the American democracy
Burbach too, explains the Gulf War with the oil interests. He enumerates the American interventions and provides new examples to prove that they have not happened in the interests of "democracy". He proves by the example of Latin America (with the detailed analysis of the recent past of Nicaragua and Mexico) that the neo-liberal policy has failed to consolidate the democratic institutions of the less developed countries. Then discussing the American foreign political activities in Eastern Europe, he shows how does the Latin Americanisation of Eastern Europe serve direct American interests. The author who comes from the United States calls attention to the fact that an inner society which is in crisis in many ways is behind the USA's foreign policy. He sees the future of the American democracy in its broadening, "socialisation" and in the increase in the weight of the civil society.
"The Tragedy of American Democracy," in Low Intensity Democracy: Political Power in the New World Order, London: Pluto Press, 1993.
War against the environment in Central America
The short news taken over from the international press discusses the fact of environmental destruction in Central America showing to what extent it is the consequence of the activities of the American monopolies, poverty they have induced as well as the (colonisation type) war forced onto the peoples of the region.
No. 12 | (Winter 1991)
Eszmélet organised the 1st Theoretical Conference of Journals of Social-critique at the Youth Centre in Csillebérc Budapest on April 10-12, 1991. In this issue, we present selected writings of the participants of the conference (it can be the written version of the speeches made or a different study) and of invited persons who could not come (like Bidet, Laibman, Mészáros or Samary). We ask our readers to take into account that the original audience of most of the articles translated here were domestic readers of foreign journals, where the authors live. Nevertheless, we hope that articles reflecting the views of British, American, Italian, Austrian, French of Polish authors do have interesting points for Hungarian readers, since most of the studies focus on developments in East Europe, where we live.
In addition to articles related to the conference, we present two writings of André Gunder Frank from the Netherlands. This the continuation of our series presenting the 36 most renowned leftist thinkers that was started with publishing writings from Immanuel Wallerstein and that will be continued soon with articles from Samir Amin. (We have to note that the two articles of Wallerstein, the studies of Gunder Frank and the articles to be published from Amin all were sent to Eszmélet by the authors themselves.)
Table of contents
- Conference of journals of social-critique, Budapest 1991- Brief account
- Gus Fagan : Hungary – The collapse of Kadarism
- Andrea Komlosy, Hannes Hofbauer : Restructuring (Eastern) Europe
- Luciana Castellina : Remaning an Italian communist – reflections on the “death of socialism”
- Vietorisz Tamás : The global information economy, privatisation, and the future of socialism
- Jacques Bidet : A metastructural theory of modernity
- Barry K. Gills, Andre Gunder Frank : The cumulation of accumulation
- Andre Gunder Frank : Marketing demokracy in an undemocratic market
- David Laibman : Toward a working theory of the socialist economy
- Mészáros István : The decreasing rate of utilisation and the capitalist state
- Catherine Samary : The necessary self-government
- Bartosz Julian : Deep down – for undisjoinable values – Theses for the conference in Budapest on April 11-12, 1991
- Hungarian literaure on the system change 1989-1991
- Short introduction of journals present at the conference on April 11-12, 1991