Around the 1970s, the French Left has organised lively intellectual and political debates about the possibilities and conditions of a self-regulating socialism. The socio-economic conditions and metamorphosis of this anti-state and anti-capitalist intellectual movement is worth the scrutiny. The question of the retrospective analysis is whether the principle of self-regulating radical social organisation can be incorporated into the current alternative social movements.

The history of the theory and practice of the voluntary productive associations – so-called co-operatives – in a nutshell; from the early capitalist association forms to the organisation of the solidarity (social) economic sector of the European Union.

The article presents the changes of the complex institutional relationship between the actors of labour (employers, employees and their interest organisations, and the state as an employer, owner, distributor and consultant) from the Hungarian transition to the present.

The genetic knowledge accumulated in the last few years represents an enormous value in biological and medical research. Therefore, it was and is only up to the collaboration of devoted scientists, that the genom of the human race has not been "privatised" – that is, it has not been sold to private laboratories.

In 2002, the American legislation adopted a new agricultural bill, under which $18 billion per year is given to promote American agriculture. It seems, however, that the highly concentrated food industry, owned by a few multinationals, will be the only beneficiary of the support, and not the farmers themselves.