In recent times, not only the US but also other western democracies can be described as "two-rightwing-party-systems" or in practice as one-party-systems – monopolising political decision making by an institutional structure based on self-legitimising consensus. What are the social grounds and structural reasons that develop the negative tendencies in politics and justice – putting away political liberties, because they cause only trouble? The spoor leads to the structural crisis of the capitalist way of social reproduction.

The article argues against several points of G.M. Tamás' essay theoretically representing antileninist anticapitalism. Interpreting the past by G.M. Tamás is not linked to the newest findings of the field, thus showing historical stages in state socialism has not been solved in his theoretical frame – he cannot make a difference between Lenin and Stalin as historical phenomena. Presenting state socialism as a type of "non-market capitalism" is problematic not only theoretically but also leads to political simplifications, because dictatorship and democracy are rigidly confronted. In fact, he mixes radical social theory with liberal political philosophy leading to an eclectic standpoint.

Regardless to the permanent crisis of capitalism, it has proven to be more crisis-resistant than the existed model of socialism. The political left still has not found the tone and content to address people – in a state of art when the relative "civilised" operation of capitalism is also in question.

Péter Agárdi: "Having a past such as this to confess"* National culture – leftist tradition, Argumentum Kiadó, Budapest, 2006.

(*Attila József: By the Danube, 1936 translated by John Székely)