A round table discussion was organised by Eszmélet and the Left Alternative Association on the structure of contemporary Hungarian society and the living conditions, values, representation and fragmentation of the domestic working class. The participants also presented their views on how social research and politics threats the issue of labour.

In the neoliberal model the most effective cure against unemployment is the flexibility of labour markets. Contemporary neoliberal policy, however, abandons the objective of full employment that used to be among the goals of liberal politics and neoclassical economics until the first half of the 20th century.

The author compares the role of workers and the labour movement in the 1917 and the 1991 historical periods. In his conclusion he suggests that the contemporary disorganisation and political weakness of the working class is a legacy of the bureaucratic system and a consequence of the selfdestructive reforms of "perestroika". In the long run, he he counts with teh perspective of a strengthening labour movement in Russia.

The authors claim that the economic performance of the Soviet Union until the 1980s was outstanding. In their view, it was not the planned economy that collapsed but the Soviet Union was destroyed by political interest.

Countrary to fashionable views the 1917 Russian revolution was dominated by tendencies of self-management and self-government by revolutionary workers' organisations. The article explains how the political authorities that gained increasing autonomy appropriated a majority of the functions of self-managed worker's organisations and nationalised the bodies of workers' self-management.