The author is expressing his concern that the true essence of the EU is seldom examined. Contrary to its self-definition, which is often accepted by the political left, the EU is not a political union following social principles but a free trade zone. Instead of creating fantasies about the union of national states acting as independent actors, we have to confront the reality of the instability and destruction caused by the expansion of this free trade zone and the neoliberal regulation environment.

The authors in this issue follow this intention, they briefly but thoroughly analyse the harshest contradictions of the global capital structure, that threat with social unrest: the still living and hurting heritage of Thatcherism, the tensions in the developments in Brazil on the periphery and the political economy of the crisis of the EU. The critiques on the monumental work by the Kapitány couple on the spiritual mode of production point towards searching a future alternative to the present.

According to Sartre, the freedom of thought means emancipatory thinking, looking for alternatives and opposing the established structures of life and the institutionalised mainstream reasoning. His search for intellectual and political alternatives always inspired progressive movements to act on personal responsibility. "What is the literature of an epoch but the epoch appropriated by its literature? …You have to aspire to everything to have hopes of doing something."

The heo-Horthyst ideological climate around the celebration of the 70^th anniversary of the catastrophe of the Hungarian army in the WW II is also presented in this issue. Our contribution to the national remembrance is recalling memories on the war crimes committed by the Hungarian occupation forces. This is also part of the fight to change the world, even though if this process is far more complex than that was imagined by earlier generations of Marxists.