The well-known Norwegian political scientist calls attention to the fact that when discussing terrorism, one must not disregard the phenomenon of state terrorism. He analyses the possible power relations between the states and citizens and the strategies of action following from them. Progress has brought with it the escalation of violence. Galtung offers the Ghandi principle of no-violence to be the weapon of the "weak" to stop the vicious circle of violence.

Mandel discusses the collapse of Soviet socialism on the one hand. He states that the collapse would be foreseen after the development of the world centres diverted from the earlier heavy industry-centred model. He expounds his standpoint that – perhaps with the exception of Hungary – Eastern Europe does not have many chances for the successful integration into the capitalist world system (but rather for sinking back to a semi-colonial state). On the other hand, he also analyses the crisis of the capitalist economy. One form of its expressions is the debt trap.

In connection with four books, the author outlines his opinion that one of the preconditions of the renewal of the left wing is the necessary breach with the opportunism of the representatives who have become officials.

The author claims that the "socialist" system could not have never become the symmetric counter-point of capitalism and for this reason, its collapse was not surprising. Those who had expected the collapse of capitalism, did not take into account that monopoly capitalism is not its last stage: the lasting and surviving tendency has been posed by the organised capitalism. He states that was has ended is presumably the period in which the socialist revolution linked to the working class.

The authors disapprove of the theoretical split within the women's movement. They point out that behind the fruitless controversy of the "subsistence-oriented" and "wage-work-oriented" directions there is a complex and paradoxical social situation of women to which no such one-sided views can do justice.