The author privides a review of the evolution of the West-European integration, and analyses the idea and programme of single currency within the context of the neo-conservative ear, aimed at the destruction of the welfare state.

Although the state socialist system did not give room for a labour market, there was indeed a reserve army, which was activated or passivised in various periods of economic policy. In this policy the employment of women was given a peculiar role, and the related labour policy was strongly interlinked with social policy and other policy areas.

The author is confronting the opinions claiming that the changes in social structures of the recent years and decades lead to the end of social democracy. Quoting a number of documents and politicians, he illustrates how individual parties and their leaders answered the new challenges in Western Europe, and to what extent the various programmes insist upon the traditions and historic achievements of the century old movement.

Was the emergence of the state socialist system an historic accident? Can we see "those forty years" as a modernisation experiment, or it was only a path of maldevelopment forced upon us by great power agreements? One can often face these questions in public discussions, but now it is leading Hungarian historians who try to give an answer.