The contents of this issue – not for the first time in the journal’s history – reflect upon the contradictions and tendencies of the changing world order of our time, building upon the experiences of the last 25 years. In the last quarter of a century wars and genocides – often waged under the banner of democracy – have remained a part of the life of many nations around the world. Peripheries and semi-peripheries have suffered the most under the different processes of change as the very structures and hierarchies of their societies reflect their subordination to the centers of the world-system. Even most movements attempting to decouple and gain more elbow-room are more often than not misguided extensions of this developmental trend.

We look back at the fate of left-wing, anti-capitalist intellectual initiatives by dissidents in the era of state socialism, with the benefit of hindsight we have today. Should we reconcile ourselves to hopelessness?

We pay tribute to our friend and colleague, the economist András Vígvári, who died recently.

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Table of contents

1. At the social crossroads (about capitalism and socialism)
2. Mészáros István : Reflections on the New International
3. Szabó Tamás, Fülöp Ádám : People without land, land without people. Material and spiritual expropriation of land in Hungary
4. Fred Magdoff : Twenty-First-Century Land Grabs Accumulation by Agricultural Dispossession
5. Mônica Dias Martins : Learning to Participate: The MST Experience in Brazil
6. Laurent Delcourt : The expanding techniques of agrarian business on the South hemisphere
7. Jancsó Miklós : This silly profession. An interview by Andrew James Horton
8. Krzysztof Rucinski : Two men against history A comparative analysis films by Miklós Jancsó and Andrzej Wajda
9. Barta Tamás : The early period of the Hungarian folk-dance movement – social ideology or national art?
10. Fóris Ákos : The Holocaust in the area of the Western Group of Occupation Forces. Account of the Solicitor Division of the State Protection Authority in the case of Nándor Pápai, 12th of January, 1950.
11. Bartha Eszter : Collective farms in the grip of the state
12. Tütő László : Head Party – Belly Party

Table of contents

1. The past and future of Eszmélet. Frequent readers answer the question of the editors
2. Eleonora de Lucena, Mészáros István : Barbarism on the horizon. An interview with István Mészáros by Eleonora de Lucena
3. Szalai László, Lugosi Győző, Búr Gábor : Repression is cawing in a murder. Győző Lugosi talks to Gábor Búr and László Szalai
4. Szigeti Péter, Andor László, Krausz Tamás : Capitalism has not been created by the EU… Lászó Andor answers Tamás Krausz and Péter Szigeti
5. Szigeti Péter : Constructing the Political. The Problem of Political by Carl Schmitt, Marx, Weber and the Neo-Marxists
6. Tütő László, Terbe Teréz : Transition Movement
7. Peter North : Surviving Financial Meltdown: Argentina’s Barter Networks
8. Eszterhai Viktor : The Guanxi in Asian Interstate Relations. Rethinking the China-centred Feudal Aid System
9. Chris Hann : Time’s Arrow in Tázlár (and in Anthropology)
10. Zolcsák Attila : The Chilean Student Movement
11. Farkas Péter : In Defence of System-based Critical Economics
12. Bartha Eszter : “I am Hungarian but a European”
13. Tütő László : Two Insurrections
14. Szarka Klára : Capa 100
15. Appeal for an Egalitarian Europe
16. Stéphane Madelaine, Vincent Liegey, Christophe Ondet, Anne-Isabelle Veillot : Degrowth Project, Manifesto for an Unconditional Autonomy Allowance

The article is the 4.1 chapter "Material Transformations and Ideological Forms" of the book Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness Vol II  by István Mészáros. Monthly Review Press 2011.