The author reconstructs the history of the genesis of Marx's Grundrisse and analyses the importance of this work in Marx's Capital and his intellectual evolution.

The original interview was published on Alternatives International September 16, 2008.

Pors (1877-1944) was a unique and interesting character in the Ukrainian workers movement whose name, due to different political considerations, remained unknown until recently. He represented views beyond the pressures coming from the orthodoxy of the Second International. His main interest was in the relationship between revolution, social and national claims that have strangely become a popular topic again.

This issue of Eszmélet addresses the consequences of the global power of the capital, the crisis in the operation and control of the world system, the special features of regional developments, the causes of hierarchy and how to change it. China and Africa gained a new position in the world system but this shift has not reduced inequalities, on the contrary, it expanded them both at regional and national levels. Contradictions created by neoliberal "technologies" to govern the global order are also shown in the tension between developments into an empire and the "death" of national states. Articles dealing with this issue also show possible resistance, and self-defence against it. The existence of the national state on the (semi)-periphery becomes more and more "virtual" that invoked the forms of resistance resembling to ones in the middle age: the religious and national "renaissance" fits into this trend. The neoliberal economic project, as a historically determined form of class power, is organised on a global level. Our articles also examine the historic, economic and market relations of this organised power and compare the development of the East with the West. Further studies deal with the traditions in the labour movement like the reception of the now 160 year old Communist Manifesto in Italy and unknown aspects of the history of the Ukrainian revolutionary tradition.

Table of contents

1. Don Kalb : From flows to violence: Politics and knowledge in the debates on globalisation and empire
2. Giovanni Arrighi : Historical Perspectives on States, Markets and Capitalism, East and West
3. Giovanni Arrighi : The African crisis – World Systemic and Regional Aspects
4. Samir Amin : Fall of the Europe Project?
5. Rémy Herrera, Luciano Vasapollo : Mass movement and class organisation in present Latin America
6. Andor László : Bright-side economics
7. ATTAC Európa : ATTAC’s statement on the financial crisis and democratic alternatives
8. Vincze Ibolya : East Europe, Russia, China – Experience of transition countries from a comparative view
9. Tütő László : Unpopular “popular history” – or how to protect our state
10. Rob Lyon : China, Tibet and the world economy
11. Marcello Musto : Dissemination and Reception of the Manifesto in Italy – From the origins to 1945
12. Christopher Ford : Clash of social emancipation and national liberation – on the views of Mikola Pors

According to the author, the spread of the neoliberal agenda was the product of the now broken alliance between political and free-market liberals. The power of the emerging transnational class changes its form – proletarianization of the world population, de-legitimation of the state and parochialization of post-citizens – our pasts, ethnic or religious, are becoming our future now because categorical values, beliefs and loyalties are taking the place of the universalist modernisms gone awry.

The article originally was published in Anthropological Theory, Vol.5, No. 2. 176-204. (2005)