The historical review continues from the grand return of the "left of the left" in the 90s induced by social security system reforms. Trotskyism had a chance for meaningful revival in France over the past nearly two decades when the political spectrum has been reshaped. How could it happen and what are the results?

The article is only available in Hungarian.

The author shows in her writing that – contrary to many bourgeois interpretations – the Marxism of Sartre is not a negligible "disability" in his existentialism but integrant part of his thinking. The Marxism of Sartre becomes exactly fundamental in the humanism of his existentialism as the conscious and deliberate choice for responsibility of a human and intellectual. Thus the Marxists writings and thoughts of Sartre are not detours but in practice logical results of his oeuvre.

On the surface of our social experience we mostly meet phenomenon that were produced or ordered to be produced to manipulate us. The writing attempts to illustrate how contents of public interest can be made inconsumable for the public by dressing them in professional or thought-be professional terms.

The article is only available in Hungarian. You can order a copy of the issue.

The current issue of Eszmélet is likely of interest to all of our readers, because it focuses on the fate of workers in East Europe, especially in Hungary, the former Soviet Union and Poland. Many contributions are made to understand the problem why after the working class after the system change was unable to resist the social degradation by capitalist expropriation. The ‘social integration' of the working class was determined by state suppression for decades, almost making impossible to acquire working class consciousness, because this consciousness remained the monopoly of the ‘socialist' state/party. Two articles conduct lessons from the demolition of ‘welfare achievements' – the background of the fate of the working class after the system change – and the ineffectiveness of capitalist use of human, material and natural resources, the parasite character of this system. Within this framework the problem of Roma people gained a particular role, of which ‘anthropological' aspects also addressed.

Table of contents

1. Lewis H. Siegelbaum : The late romance of the Soviet worker in Western historiography
2. Mark Pittaway : Retreat from collective protest: Household, gender, work and popular opposition in Stalinist Hungary
3. Tóth Eszter Zsófia : Commuters in Hungarian documentaries – Black train, Gyuri Cséplő, The protégé
4. Vera Trappmann, Rafal Towalski : Polish workers: how to live when everybody wants to forget about you
5. Eszmélet : A new quarterly: Fordulat
6. Tamás Gáspár Miklós : The ghost of the welfare state
7. Binder Mátyás : Roma nation building – from historical and cultural antrophological approach
8. Artner Annamária : The dotted ball and the ineffectiveness of capitalism
9. Balázs Gábor : A French passion: Trotskyism (part 2)
10. Ana Bazac : Sartre and the adventures of the concept of shortfalls
11. Tütő László : A tale about aunt Mary and the spectacle

The renowned Sovietologist and labour historian examines the question how the Soviet labour history writing developed in the West, what were the major paradigms of historiography and what direction the research tends now. He concludes that the "golden age" of workers in historiography has ended too; while earlier they were depicted (and celebrated) as heroes of the revolution but the trendy catchword now is "people's impulsiveness"; they are in the end victims of their "own" revolt against oppression. Nonetheless of this pessimistic picture of historiography the author – at the end of his study – describes certain promising research fields which can offer (also) new perspectives to labour history writing.