This issue of Eszmélet addresses the consequences of the global power of the capital, the crisis in the operation and control of the world system, the special features of regional developments, the causes of hierarchy and how to change it. China and Africa gained a new position in the world system but this shift has not reduced inequalities, on the contrary, it expanded them both at regional and national levels. Contradictions created by neoliberal "technologies" to govern the global order are also shown in the tension between developments into an empire and the "death" of national states. Articles dealing with this issue also show possible resistance, and self-defence against it. The existence of the national state on the (semi)-periphery becomes more and more "virtual" that invoked the forms of resistance resembling to ones in the middle age: the religious and national "renaissance" fits into this trend. The neoliberal economic project, as a historically determined form of class power, is organised on a global level. Our articles also examine the historic, economic and market relations of this organised power and compare the development of the East with the West. Further studies deal with the traditions in the labour movement like the reception of the now 160 year old Communist Manifesto in Italy and unknown aspects of the history of the Ukrainian revolutionary tradition.

Table of contents

1. Don Kalb : From flows to violence: Politics and knowledge in the debates on globalisation and empire
2. Giovanni Arrighi : Historical Perspectives on States, Markets and Capitalism, East and West
3. Giovanni Arrighi : The African crisis – World Systemic and Regional Aspects
4. Samir Amin : Fall of the Europe Project?
5. Rémy Herrera, Luciano Vasapollo : Mass movement and class organisation in present Latin America
6. Andor László : Bright-side economics
7. ATTAC Európa : ATTAC’s statement on the financial crisis and democratic alternatives
8. Vincze Ibolya : East Europe, Russia, China – Experience of transition countries from a comparative view
9. Tütő László : Unpopular “popular history” – or how to protect our state
10. Rob Lyon : China, Tibet and the world economy
11. Marcello Musto : Dissemination and Reception of the Manifesto in Italy – From the origins to 1945
12. Christopher Ford : Clash of social emancipation and national liberation – on the views of Mikola Pors

According to the author, the spread of the neoliberal agenda was the product of the now broken alliance between political and free-market liberals. The power of the emerging transnational class changes its form – proletarianization of the world population, de-legitimation of the state and parochialization of post-citizens – our pasts, ethnic or religious, are becoming our future now because categorical values, beliefs and loyalties are taking the place of the universalist modernisms gone awry.

The article originally was published in Anthropological Theory, Vol.5, No. 2. 176-204. (2005)

The current issue of Eszmélet is likely of interest to all of our readers, because it focuses on the fate of workers in East Europe, especially in Hungary, the former Soviet Union and Poland. Many contributions are made to understand the problem why after the working class after the system change was unable to resist the social degradation by capitalist expropriation. The ‘social integration' of the working class was determined by state suppression for decades, almost making impossible to acquire working class consciousness, because this consciousness remained the monopoly of the ‘socialist' state/party. Two articles conduct lessons from the demolition of ‘welfare achievements' – the background of the fate of the working class after the system change – and the ineffectiveness of capitalist use of human, material and natural resources, the parasite character of this system. Within this framework the problem of Roma people gained a particular role, of which ‘anthropological' aspects also addressed.

Table of contents

1. Lewis H. Siegelbaum : The late romance of the Soviet worker in Western historiography
2. Mark Pittaway : Retreat from collective protest: Household, gender, work and popular opposition in Stalinist Hungary
3. Tóth Eszter Zsófia : Commuters in Hungarian documentaries – Black train, Gyuri Cséplő, The protégé
4. Vera Trappmann, Rafal Towalski : Polish workers: how to live when everybody wants to forget about you
5. Eszmélet : A new quarterly: Fordulat
6. Tamás Gáspár Miklós : The ghost of the welfare state
7. Binder Mátyás : Roma nation building – from historical and cultural antrophological approach
8. Artner Annamária : The dotted ball and the ineffectiveness of capitalism
9. Balázs Gábor : A French passion: Trotskyism (part 2)
10. Ana Bazac : Sartre and the adventures of the concept of shortfalls
11. Tütő László : A tale about aunt Mary and the spectacle

The renowned Sovietologist and labour historian examines the question how the Soviet labour history writing developed in the West, what were the major paradigms of historiography and what direction the research tends now. He concludes that the "golden age" of workers in historiography has ended too; while earlier they were depicted (and celebrated) as heroes of the revolution but the trendy catchword now is "people's impulsiveness"; they are in the end victims of their "own" revolt against oppression. Nonetheless of this pessimistic picture of historiography the author – at the end of his study – describes certain promising research fields which can offer (also) new perspectives to labour history writing.

The author examines – through historical documents – the forms of workers resistance in Hungary in the 50s reactions to the state cutting back on workers' income by increasing production norms and shortages in state organised supply caused by forceful collectivisation in agriculture. According to the study, the retreat from and later absence of collective protest cannot be explained by strong suppression only. Workers and especially women have invested more and more in their private sphere that completed the uncertain and low income from the state sector securing the living of families. Not even the most successful families were completely self-sufficient but the experience gained in the 50s became a key factor in the development of the ideal of social privatisation.