2011 was a good year – in a political sense – for the world left. They managed to change world discourse, moving it away from the ideological mantras of neo-liberalism. For the first time in a long time, ordinary people were discussing the very nature of the system in which they lived; they were no longer taking it for granted.

The study is addressing the ever deepening structural crisis of world capitalism that needs profound structural change if a sustainable solution is searched. This structural crisis has not begun in 2007, when the subprime mortgage crisis in the US burst but four decades earlier (what was already announced by the author in his analyses at the end of the 1960s). Clear distinction should be made between the different types of the crises of the capital system, whether it belongs to the class of temporary-business cycle crises of a given social sphere or it is of a more fundamental one. The main difference is that a temporary crisis passes by and can be solved within the given structure but a fundamental crisis undermines it. "Naturally, historical dialectic in the abstract cannot offer any guarantee for a positive outcome. To expect that would mean renouncing our role in developing social consciousness, which is integral to the historical dialectic. Radicalizing social consciousness in an emancipatory spirit is what we need for the future, and we need it more than ever before."

We are living in a chaotic situation. Due to the structural crisis of the capitalist world economy, standard solutions for managing a shrinking economy do not work anymore, despite that politicians and experts keep assuring that the recovery is just around the corner. Fluctuations in everything are large and rapid and this applies as well to social protest. This is what we are seeing as the geography of protest constantly shifts.

A special and unique form of capitalism has evolved in Eastern Europe after the post-socialist transformation. This form is characterised by the unusual weak SMEs sector, an agricultural sector with few efficient capitalist large farms and many weak small farms often producing for self-subsistence and very weak labour in general. In these new systems, in addition to multinational companies, technocrats have a large weight in the evolving domestic capitalist elite, coming from the second rank of the former nomenclature and often with inherited bourgeois cultural capital.

In fact, the 'second edition' of capitalism is being created in Russia rather than of its 'restoration'. While pre-revolutionary Russia, although feudal-capitalistic and underdeveloped, was progressing, the present, now capitalistic Russia in turn is losing its population, declining in culture and science. Assembly lines now are advancing in sectors requiring advanced technology and scientific background. Industries, which were regarded progressive 30-40 years ago now stagnate. The traditional collective cultural activities of the Soviet times have disappeared, and are replaced by passive, individual free-time activities made at home, which characterise atomised societies. It is a special second edition, as global capitalism placed Russia on the semi-periphery, launching regressive and degrading processes.