It is not possible to resolve the problem of child poverty if we separate this issuefrom the wider issue of exploitation. By doing that, we shift the responsibility onto the world system that makes these and other extreme forms of exploitation. The article was first published in Dollars and Sense September-October 1999.

Child poverty and income inequalities among families with children have increased steadily in the co-called developed countries of the West too. Recently, there is a threat that these differences will increase sustantially. Mainstream experts usually justify this process by ecoinomic necessities. This paper demonstrates these trends on the example of East European countries.

Conspiracy theory as a part of everyday thought has deep historical roots in Russia. It appeared in a great variety from racism to Stalinism. The Stalinist style of making politics incorporated conspiracy as a method. The Stalinist tradition survives in the contemporary generations, particularly in the East European region. The ideologies of the new system continue it under an anti-Stalinist banner.