In a parliamentary government system the main power is determined by elections. In Hungary, we well experienced five election cycles. Wiener examines how and how deeply electoral behaviour reflects class status, tradition, family networks, religion, moral stand and several other factors and how tendencies developed. He also questions whether established methods and analytical tools really fit to analyse and measure electoral behaviour.

The article sums up empirical research made in 2007 and 2008 focusing on the personality and socialisation patterns of young activists living in the Budapest area, who are engaged in NGOs that follow political goals of left/green or extreme right.

The author reconstructs the history of the genesis of Marx's Grundrisse and analyses the importance of this work in Marx's Capital and his intellectual evolution.

The original interview was published on Alternatives International September 16, 2008.

As the global financial and credit crisis evolves, the famine will take further millions of lives and aid programs designed to counter famine will fall more to political manipulations. Only few know, that rocketing food prices pushed additional 75 million persons under the famine level, thus the estimated total number of underfed people in the globe reached 923 million in 2007. It is important but different problem how the weak resistance against the abuses of the capitalist system expresses itself in Hungary in the behaviour of the youth. An interesting sociological study addresses this question analysing the political attitudes of the left and extreme right. A further and comprehensive article examines the class determination of voters in the free elections in Hungary. This issue of Eszmélet also publishes articles on the theory and movement of socialism by internationally respected Marxist thinkers: Samir Amin and István Mészáros.

Cover image:1980 Wold Press Photo of the Year: Mike Wells, UK: Starving boy and a missionary, Uganda, Karamoja district, April 1980.

Table of contents

1. Tütő László : Even the only one party was too many – The Left Wing Alternative turns 20
2. Wiener György : Class situation and electoral behaviour after the system change (1989-2006)
3. Szalai Erzsébet : Flash-back of the past and dividing future – Young left, green and extreme right activists in present day Hungary
4. Mészáros István : The communal system and the principle of self-critique
5. Immanuel Wallerstein : Where is the world headed?
6. Benyik Mátyás : Dollarization, euroization and financial instability?
7. Tütő László : How not to protect our state?
8. Walden Bello : Manufacturing a food crisis
9. Alexander King, Anette Groth : Whoever controls food …
10. Marcello Musto : The dissemination and the reception of the Grundrisse in the world. A contribution to the history of Marxism
11. Marcello Musto : The current importance of Marx, 150 years after the Grundrisse – interview with Eric Hobsbawm