During the rivalry between the advancing conservatism and the liberal approach, solutions offered by neo-Marxist social thought have the value of novelty. The regulated rivalry of forces in a standard form, within the frame of the rule of law, cannot be replaced by the exception of extraordinary circumstances or by the antagonistic contradictions of civil war situations or revolutionary conditions. The author describes the dynamic creation of the political as a dualism of political power and social-economical class rule. Reaching this end, he moves the focus from the static inner complexity of the world of phenomena to dynamics of constructing the political, where two directions are distinguished in the dialectic determination: an upstream (I) and a downstream (II).
Category Archives: Former issues
Transition Movement
The ultimate goal of the transition movement is to develop a social-economic form by practice, which is able to satisfy social needs for everyone in a sustainable way, in an environment of shortages created by the climate change and increasing energy prices, a consequence of the depleting oil reserves. This requires radical cut backs on globalised production and transport and also meeting food and energy needs mostly from local sources in global network of local communities talking to each other. This vision contradicts the logic of global capitalism, although the movement is making an attempt to establish parallel economic and social institutions without open confrontation.
The main topic of this issue of Eszmélet is the "structural crisis of capitalism". Historical and theoretical analysis is presented on the social-economical features of "new capitalism" of Easter Europe or by the words of A. Tarasov on the "second edition of capitalism" on the semi-periphery. One crucial element of these is the regression in the agricultural development: the extreme weakness of the SME sector, that is a severe step backwards even comparing to the state socialist era. Although there is a historically determined inherent tension between the socialist-communist ideas of emancipation propagated by the state socialist system and its actual reality but a sophisticated judgement on the system is made in relation to the concurrent developments in Western Europe. The shadow of Solzhenitsyn, who is well known or even a star in the West, still hides the oeuvre of Varlam Shalamov, the representative of Gulag literature overgrowing him. The importance of him can be compared of Gogol, Platonov and Bely. Shalamov, until the end of his life, insisted on the ethos of the Trotskyist opposition of the 1920s and the revolutionary message of the Russian intelligentsia on the "unity of words and act" – not matching anti-Stalinism with anti-Soviet theories.No. 96 | (Winter 2012)
In the documents section a letter of József Szigeti is published from his archives, which casts light on the background why Ágnes Heller defamed István Mészáros. The sociographic photos of Lewis Wickes Hine from the "dark past of America" illustrate that the historical foundations of the most modern capitalism are still working this days despite any change in its present forms.
Table of contents
Patricio Guzmán Campos the Recorder of the Life in Chile
The Unavoidable Solitude. Varlam Shalamov and the Theoretical Heritage