Category Archives: Former issues

Former issues

No. 83 | (Autumn 2009)

This issue of Eszmélet is investigating three topics. We are continuing the presentation of a reading of the systematic change according to which all the negative consequences of the capitalist restoration had been – in essence – foreseen already in 1988-89. This approach had also shown a community-socialist alternative to the catastrophic economic and social developments that have occurred.

In our world the fate of political Islam is an important topic, and its future development according to some (leftist) authors is still open, that is there is a possibility of a leftist scenario while the traditional Marxist approach cannot imagine such a scenario taking into account the reactionary tendency of this current and considers political Islam finally serving the logic of imperialism.

At last, this issue also addresses the question of the internal and external conditions of the practical problems related to the development of the "Bolivarian socialism" in Venezuela. What are the plausible social-political perspectives of this unquestionably spectacular and attractive attempt for emancipation?

Table of contents
  1. Tütő László : Social Philosphy Alternatives in Transforming the System in Hungary – Part 1.
  2. Mitrovits Miklós : The Fal of Self-Governance – The Neoliberal Systemic Change in Poland
  3. Mészáros István : Bolivar and Chavez – The Spirit of Radical Determination
  4. Kalocsai Kinga : Venezuela: from Bolivarism to Socialism
  5. Samir Amin : Political Islam in the Service of Imperialism
  6. Tariq Amin-Khan : Analysing Political Islam – A Critique of Traditional Historical Materialist Analytic
  7. Samir Amin : Comments on Tariq Amin-Khan’s Text
  8. Nicolas Dot-Pouillard : Nationalism, Islamism, Communism – Concordance of Political Ideologies and Movements in the Arab World
  9. Nathan Coombs : Ali Shariati: Between Marx and the Infinite – An Islamic Utopian
  10. Katona Magda : The establishment of the Party Structure in Afghanistan
  11. Kéri Elemér : On the selected essays of István Kristó Nagy
Former issues

Gaza: questions of international law

Had Israel the right to launch an attack against Gaza? Was it really an external attack that the Jewish State protected itself? By legal standards, were the Israeli military actions proportional and were they in accordance with the norms of international humanitarian law? The renowned international lawyer answers all the above questions with a definitely positive yes.
Former issues

The long shadow of Ariel Sharon

The Gaza War was the consequence of the policy of force rooting in the revisionist Zionism of the 1920s and expanding after Ariel Sharon took power in 2001 – a policy that was backed by the Bush-doctrine securing the solid support of a superpower over eight years. It would be too early to answer the question how the apparently diverging US and Israeli politics in the region – after Barack Obama set his new priorities in the Middle-East – can be consolidated.
Former issues

Whither antropology without a nation-state?

The science sociology and methodology study is aiming to answer the question what is the reason behind the supposed "supremacy" of the dominant western anthropology over the anthropology (ethnology, sociology and social science in general) research in the former state-socialist countries especially in Poland. Placing his argument in the context of world system analysis, the author concludes that the reason is that the political economy conditions of science have changed namely scientific knowledge became a product as well.

The original article is of Kacper Pobłocki: Whither Anthropology without Nation-state? Critique of Anthropology, Vol. 29, No. 2, 225-252 (2009). See it at CEU.

 

Former issues

Conversations with a Polish populist – globalisation, class, “transition” somewhat closer to the skin

The author of the study has examined the history of a group of workers, working in a home appliances manufacturing and other companies in Wroclaw between 1997 and 2007, and who were related to trade union Solidarity. He tries to answer the important question how the attitude of skilled and semi-skilled workers in East and Central Europe, maybe the most significant social segment in the society, developed to reject more and more bitterly the liberal elites that were their allies in the 1980s, while – lacking a credible left wing in politics – they became more and more open to neo-nationalist ideologies and parties propagating them. In the frame of a deep interview made with a worker-activist the author also tries to present what were the "self-defence" strategies applied by the workers in the storms of re-structuring and privatisation and how these strategies failed.