This issue of Eszmélet addresses two main topics. The first seeks (and hopefully finds) answers by our authors to the question raised by the editors "Why the political left is sick in East Europe?" It can be seen from the some dozen contributions that the ‘sickness' has three main reasons: there is no movement behind system critical thinking; the political left is captured in all countries in this region by ‘neo-liberalised' socialist or social democratic parties – still maintaining their names – but actually being bourgeois institutions; the system critical left is sailing between Scylla of neo-liberalism and Charybdis of sectarian inner circles. Is there any ‘third way'?

The second topic is of economic questions: first of all the critique of the neo-liberal dead-end of development confronting it with the living tradition of Polanyi, Keynes, Galbraith and Hodgson. Two articles review – with different critical attitudes – the memoirs of János Kornai the emblematic figure of Hungarian neo-liberalism. An article links the theoretical performance of Milton Friedman with the dictatorship of Pinochet. A study examines the general questions of migration concluding that the EU should at least partially maintain its welfare achievements instead of following the US way of migration policy.

Table of contents

1. Szalai Erzsébet, Kunfi Frigyes, Kállai R. Gábor, Szerdahelyi István, Z. Karvalics László, Mark Pittaway, Agárdi Péter, Tamás Pál, Krausz Tamás, Artner Annamária, Harsányi Iván : Why is the left in East and Central Europe sick?
2. Eric J. Hobsbawm : A child in Vienna – Excerpt from the autobiography of the historian who is 90
3. Walden Bello : Globalisation in retreat
4. Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Carlos Mallorquín : Geoffrey M. Hodgson and institutional economics – Interview by Carlos Mallorquín
5. Greg Grandin : Milton Friedman and the economics of empire – The road from serfdom
6. James K. Galbraith : Mission: Control. Why can’t economists admit that corporations serve themselves, not the market?
7. Kari Polanyi-Lewitt : Keynes and Polanyi: the 1920s and the 1990s
8. Tütő László : Remarks on János Kornai’s article ”What the change of system means?”
9. Andor László : Dilemmas and contradictions – Additives to the political economy of cold war apropos on the autobiography of János Kornai
10. Szarka Klára : A new US moral lesson story but now on bad capitalists – On John Perkins: Confessions of an economic hit man
11. BAL-Zöldek : Declaration on locating the NATO radar on Peak Tubes
12. Richard de Zoysa : Immigration to Europe and the US – a joint problem or a separate way for the US?

What is the reason for the lack of an anti-capitalist left in Hungary and in fact overall in East and Central Europe? What are the objective and subjective factors, the historical-ideological or maybe psychological reasons that lead to this situation? Why is it possible, that strong leftwing anti-capitalist movements and organisations exist in Germany, France and also elsewhere but not in Hungary? Why in South America the populist – or so called – anti-capitalist left could gain the power while even the names of these movements are hardly known in Hungary? What can replace the communist and social democratic movements? Maybe we have to trust in their revival? And what can we do until then?

What we still now about the time we lived in asks Hobsbawm in his autobiography, partly asking himself and partly the public, drawing attention to all self-confident not-knowing. "Who is this Trotsky anyhow?" illustrates him the not-knowing of that time. "He is only a young Jew called Bronstein," was the answer in cosmopolitan Vienna hanging on its past after its Empire has collapsed.

This issue of Eszmélet focuses on ‘gender studies'. Articles address how gender policy and gender studies acquired their institutions in East Europe and examine why this process is not linked with little potential for social criticism. On the other hand, articles prove that it is possible to master gender studies with critical thinking on our society – addressing questions in past and present day Hungary. Illustrations of the current issue show women movement and women emancipation fights in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

Other articles not matching the main gender topic include a comprehensive study on the contemporary Hungarian films, explaining the anti-art feature of the (neo)capitalism in Hungary through the film culture after the system change. The recent death of excellent football player Ferenc Puskás inspired an article on the lethal intertwining of football with politics and business.

Table of contents

1. Claudia von Braunmühl : Gender mainstreaming: Reconstruction of a trip around the world
2. Susan Zimmermann : The institutionalization of women’s and gender studies in higher education in Central Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space. Asymmetric policies and the local-global constellation
3. Loutfi Anna : Hungarian family law and the struggle for “gender order”, 1848-1913
4. Hock Bea : Mrs. Bridgeman who herself builds no bridges. Women and/in Hungarian cinema (industry) in the past sixty years
5. Varga Anna : Films: one hundred years of solitude. The hostile policy of Hungarian
6. Bartha Eszter, Konok Péter, Székely Gábor : “Childhood disease … in communism?” Leftist radicalism in the 20th Century
7. Krausz Tamás : Futball = politics and business? To the death of Ferenc Puskás
8. Zsigmond Anna : Miscarriage of Justice
9. Domány András : Poland 1981. Remarks on the article of Miklós Mitrovits
10. Mitrovits Miklós : Answer to András Domány

Gender mainstreaming made its debut on the stage of women politics in the European Union as late as in the 1990s, while looking back at more than thirty years of history in global development policies and debate. The study explores how, whilst travelling from South to North, the concept lost much of its critical potential. As gender mainstreaming goes through the various stages of "EUization", it becomes even more difficult to develop a sustained critical-constructive attitude.