The anarchist author discusses the basic thesis of anarchism that the management of society and order do not necessitate a separate power. He quotes examples from various aspects of social life and history to illustrate that both in revolutionary times and in the organisation of everyday life, elements of (anarchist) self-organisation are present which have proved to be more successful that other principles of organisation.

The author analyses the emergence of what is called the "left wing opposition" in the Soviet Union. He states that the "leftists" who made a series of political mistakes did not have a lot of chances against the Stalinists which he traces back to the acceptance of the one party system and the fact that the mass basis which still existed during the revolution slowly diminished and melted away from behind the "pioneer guard" of the revolution as a result of the meagre conditions.

The author provides a portrait of the somewhat forgotten left wing, social democratic leader, Pal Justus. Justus who was sentenced to life imprison­ment by Rákosi, criticised the then policy of the Hungarian Communist Party from the left, from a basis of principles of consistent, Marxist principles. By presenting Justus's main ideas of principle, the author warns that social de­mocracy does not only contain the social democratic right, the revision of the Marxist concepts but – in a significant trend – also the consistent re­presentation of exactly these concepts. A topical message of Justus is that social democracy is not one single ideal: the bourgeois and the so­cialist ideas of democracy represent two rival concepts.

The authors analyse two types of the concrete and broad ranging self-go­vernment initiatives in Spain: the system of cooperatives and the "partner­ship owners". They describe the structure in which these work, the scopes of authority and especially the possibilities they provide for the workers to acquire practice in the management of affairs through these forms of parti­cipation.