In Hungary, a selective educational system has evolved and seems to have stabilized, which is incapable of providing social equality even on the lowest level. The factors, which have pushed the quality of mass education "upwards", such as technology constraint, raison d'état, and labour movement, have disappeared. If it represents the fundamental values of public education (liberty, democracy and solidarity), is there a chance for progressive pedagogy to meet the political left again?

Death has a volatile "exchange rate" on the "world market", while politics systematically distorts values and proportions, and also exaggerates interests. Is it only the threatening with death, extermination and the prospect of mass destruction that could impede death, extermination and mass destruction?

Miskolc, 4-5 April 2003

Michael Hardt-Antonio Negri: Empire, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass and London, 2000

István Mészáros: Socialism Or Barbarism: From The "American Century" To The Crossroads. New York, Monthly Review Press, 2001.