The outstanding Hungarian born American social psychologist discusses the psychological conditions of genocide in this study which was so successful at the 2nd European Congress of Psychologists. He primarily relies on the experiences of the massacre of the Armenians early this century, the Cambodian reign of terror, the Argentine military dictatorship and the persecution of Jews in fascist Germany. He shows the process by which groups under social frustration get to the relief of murder inhibitions – arriving there step by step from the stage of the devaluation of scapegoat groups -, and on the other hand, he analyses the psychological changes of the "bystanders", as the passivity of these people is an important precondition of carrying out the aggression. At the end, he calls attention to the fact that the same mechanisms can be mobilised against the minority selected to be the scapegoat, be they ethnic, religious or political groups.

Different from our previous practice, this double issue of Eszmélet is organised around not only one but three main topics: "Religion and leftism", "Capitalism for beginners" and the "Hatered and the psychology of genocide". The three thematic blocks follow each other in this order.

Starting out from the fact that privatisation is a world trend, the study discusses the theoretical basic elements and functions of privatisation. The author compares the different privatisation practices of the various West European countries and stresses that the East European privatisation starting out from a completely different basis, should be considered to be different. He underlines the sources of conflicts involved and reviews the privatisation practice of each East European country. He concludes that privatisation in East Europe is not guided by economic rationality rather it serves the redistribution of power.

The study warns that the Gulf war can be the overture to a "new barbarism". The main danger of that war lies in the fact that it loosens the almost existing concensus concerning the rejection of war solutions. We live under unprecedented conditions from the point of view that today the crisis of capitalism coincides with the theoretical-practical crisis of anti-capitalism. The Gulf war can also exemplify that fear itself can promote drifting to war. A factor increasing the dangers is that once again it has been proved that by nature, capitalism is unable to exclude war solutions.

The founder of the Christian base-community movement called "Bokor" [Cluster] discusses the determining experiences of his life. He was sentenced to a total of nine years in prison in the Rákosi and Kádár regimes but with his conviction he has also invited the anger of the official Church circles. Bulányi is a sovereign thinking piarist monk-teacher. He discusses the realisation of the need to stand up against intolerance and the importance of freedom and loyalty in solidarity and thinking.