In the early 1990s, we have heared that socialism was the longest path between capitalism and capitalism. It was often forgotten, however, that the new capitalism would be a peripheral one, just like the one before the emergence of state socialism in Eastern Europe.

"Cultural struggle" is said to have been the blind alley that caused the derailing of the systemic change after the promising start of 1989. Tendencies of the early 1990s have also reappeared after 1998. The editorial board asked the renowned literary historian to provxle an analysis of the situation.

During the early period of the systemic change, workers' ownership was seen as the right solution to the crisis of state ownership. Subsequently, employee share programs emerged as the only feasible form of workers' ownership, and, despite the surviving optimism of some, they hardly fulfilled the hopes that had been entertained before. (First published in Nepszava, Hungary.)

The article summarizes the experience of two decades of experiments with employee stock ownership programs in the United States. The author was an active participant of the movement for ESOPs. In his view, the programs did not fulfil the early hopes. The ESOP companies can be found on the periphery of the US economy, and suffer from capital shortage. (First published in Dollars and Sense, US.)

Mitbestimmung, or co-determination, was a major novelty of workplace democracy in post-war Germany. It used to be criticized for its function in eliminating class struggle and increasing the divisions within the working class. The new critics, however, come from the right, and intend to reform this mechanism for the purposes of neo-liberal streamlining.