"What kind of job do you find humiliating?" was asked from applicants to a student group. The funniest answer was, "what also a woman or a black can do." Probably this catches the best how privileged groups in society take granted the division of labour between gender and races, the marginalisation of groups with a lower status and everyday discrimination. This phenomenon is not new but a turning point can recently be detected in social science that created an explosion in the number of studies on the increasing multitude of layers of the political and social power structure and that directs progressive social science also towards new directions.

Table of contents

1. rosa : Race, gender and class
2. Adamik Mária, Baráth Erzsébet, Lugosi Győző, Ferge Zsuzsa, Joó Mária : Wonmen in Hungary, 1996
3. Haug Frigga : Feminism and Marxism
4. Helga Heiden-Sommer : Women in macroeconomics
5. Susan Zimmermann : How they became feminist?
6. Robin Blackburn, Tariq Ali : Working class hero – interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono
7. Carter Bob : On classes in the 90s
8. Makai Mária : Ambivalent identities
9. Bánki Erika : Facing the demon
10. Magi István : A true horror story
11. Martin Kovats : The Good the Bad and the Ugly – three faces of the Roma policy
12. Chris Tilly, Randy Albelda : Towards a broader vision: race, gender and labour market segmentation in the social structure of accumulation framework
13. Political correctness
14. Civilian control
15. Csapody Tamás : Illegal tank purchase
16. Andor László : The Euro-Atlantic package

According to often heard warnings, humanity faces the threat of an environmental catastrophe. On the other hand, we find such analyses seldom that link the situation of the environment to social developments. In this issue of Eszmélet, some articles try to place the ecological problem in the frame of the political economy of capitalism. We regret that no articles deal with trends damaging the domestic environment but the presented theoretical writings might induce new approaches to the question.

Further articles examine old and new debates. Is it worth to raise the question of making a new Constitution in Hungary? Made East European countries a mistake not to follow the way of Chinese reforms? (The studies have generated serious debates in the editorial board and we asked experts to react to them.) And at the end: what can be utilised from the economic theory and political oeuvre of globally respected János Kornai?

Table of contents

1. Mészáros István : Capitalism and ecological destruction
2. Pål Steigan : Marxism and ecology
3. James O’Connor : The second contradiction of capitalism
4. Eszmélet : Capitalism, Nature, Socialism
5. Eszmélet : Bős-Nagymaros
6. Eszmélet : Underpollution
7. Eszmélet : Greens
8. Elmar Altvater : Ecological restructuring in Western Europe – Ten theses
9. Andor László : Red and green – interview with Pat Devine
10. Alkotmányelőkészítő Társadalmi Bizottság : Declaration on the guidelines to the new Constitution
11. Szigeti Péter : Comments on the draft of the new Constitution (May 1996)
12. Geoffrey Owen : Lessons of the Chinese reforms
13. Mark Selden : Ways out of the common – Socialist and post-socialist development in agriculture in Russia and China
14. Mitja Saje, Jana Rošker, Polonyi Péter, Nyíri Pál : Is China a good example?
15. Bárdos-Féltoronyi Miklós : Distribution is a political question
16. Szabó László : On the simplification of the “shortage-model”
17. Magyar Jenő : Derrida discovers communism