The friendly visit of Milton Friedman, the idol of Chicago Boys, to Pinochet was far beyond an isolated episode. The University of Chicago has already started, with state subsidies, the education of market fanatic economic cadres for Latin America as early as in the 50s. With the help of these cadres Pinochet's Chile became the first exemplar of the neoliberal model, from that Reagan's counter-revolution also gained inspiration. Friedman and other neoconservative theorists sought to give a new meaning to the idea of freedom and by this securing respect to the dictatorship of free markets.

Mainstream economics still regards the economy as the free competition between enterprises, which are small enough not to have control over the market. In fact, as John K. Galbraith has proven 40 years ago and that still holds true, developed capitalism necessary produces giant firms, which are not controlled by the market rather they control and manage it according to their self interests. Economic shocks over the past decades have not falsified this basic truth. On the contrary, recent company scandals support the fact that large firms widely manipulate the market.

What is the reason for the lack of an anti-capitalist left in Hungary and in fact overall in East and Central Europe? What are the objective and subjective factors, the historical-ideological or maybe psychological reasons that lead to this situation? Why is it possible, that strong leftwing anti-capitalist movements and organisations exist in Germany, France and also elsewhere but not in Hungary? Why in South America the populist – or so called – anti-capitalist left could gain the power while even the names of these movements are hardly known in Hungary? What can replace the communist and social democratic movements? Maybe we have to trust in their revival? And what can we do until then?

What we still now about the time we lived in asks Hobsbawm in his autobiography, partly asking himself and partly the public, drawing attention to all self-confident not-knowing. "Who is this Trotsky anyhow?" illustrates him the not-knowing of that time. "He is only a young Jew called Bronstein," was the answer in cosmopolitan Vienna hanging on its past after its Empire has collapsed.

It seems that globalisation heralded in the early 90s has lost its power by now. The article analyses the underlying reasons – the fight of capital groups, the reinforcement of national economy frameworks and the resistance against globalisation. According to the author, "from today's vantage point, globalization appears to have been not a new, higher phase in the development of capitalism but a response to the underlying structural crisis of this [capitalist] system of production."