Category Archives: Periodical

Former issues

The political economy of the North-South conflict

Frank interprets the Gulf war mainly as a reaction to the recession in America. He loo, stresses the role of oil Going through the history of American interventions, he proves that starting the war in the Gulf was based on a pretext and that the American superpower has not intervened in defence of "democracy" but it has done so at different spots of the world only there and then when ft served its own interests. He quotes as another cause the need to create a new enemy image after the downfall of communism.

Marx Centouno, No. 4. February 1991

Former issues

The “Gulf” imperialism. Thoughts and assumptions on the present stage of development of the capitalist mode of production

Bonzio questions those standpoints which consider the Gulf War as simply a North-South conflict. He argues that behind the North-South conflicts, there are North-North ones (that is those between the big powers in the centre). He differentiates between the horizontal and vertical conflicts within the capitalist world. Similarly to the regulation school, he thinks the engine of development are the changes of age of technology and organisation which also determine the conflicts. He links the vertical conflicts to the period of relative stability, while the horizontal ones to the changes of epoch proving that ultimately, it is always the North-North conflicts that are decisive. He thinks the capitalist world economy is the entity of centripetal and centrifugal movements, this first of the two being overweight While underlining the two-directional nature of the movements, he criticises the oversimplifying theory of exploitation of periphery. He stresses that it is the totality of centre-semi-periphery-periphery relations that ensures the reproduction of the capitalist world economy.
Former issues

No. 12 | (Winter 1991)

Eszmélet organised the 1st Theoretical Conference of Journals of Social-critique at the Youth Centre in Csillebérc Budapest on April 10-12, 1991. In this issue, we present selected writings of the participants of the conference (it can be the written version of the speeches made or a different study) and of invited persons who could not come (like Bidet, Laibman, Mészáros or Samary).  We ask our readers to take into account that the original audience of most of the articles translated here were domestic readers of foreign journals, where the authors live. Nevertheless, we hope that articles reflecting the views of British, American, Italian, Austrian, French of Polish authors do have interesting points for Hungarian readers, since most of the studies focus on developments in East Europe, where we live.

In addition to articles related to the conference, we present two writings of André Gunder Frank from the Netherlands. This the continuation of our series presenting the 36 most renowned leftist thinkers that was started with publishing writings from Immanuel Wallerstein and that will be continued soon with articles from Samir Amin. (We have to note that the two articles of Wallerstein, the studies of Gunder Frank and the articles to be published from Amin all were sent to Eszmélet by the authors themselves.)

Table of contents
  1. Conference of journals of social-critique, Budapest 1991- Brief account
  2. Gus Fagan : Hungary – The collapse of Kadarism
  3. Andrea Komlosy, Hannes Hofbauer : Restructuring (Eastern) Europe
  4. Luciana Castellina : Remaning an Italian communist – reflections on the “death of socialism”
  5. Vietorisz Tamás : The global information economy, privatisation, and the future of socialism
  6. Jacques Bidet : A metastructural theory of modernity
  7. Barry K. Gills, Andre Gunder Frank : The cumulation of accumulation
  8. Andre Gunder Frank : Marketing demokracy in an undemocratic market
  9. David Laibman : Toward a working theory of the socialist economy
  10. Mészáros István : The decreasing rate of utilisation and the capitalist state
  11. Catherine Samary : The necessary self-government
  12. Bartosz Julian : Deep down – for undisjoinable values – Theses for the conference in Budapest on April 11-12, 1991
  13. Hungarian literaure on the system change 1989-1991
  14. Short introduction of journals present at the conference on April 11-12, 1991
Former issues

Hungary and state capitalism – Thesis concerning the interpretation of the economic paradoxes of our history after 1949

The author joins those approaches which do not regard the system left behind as socialism from the point of view of formation theory but determine it as state capitalism. He depicts the analogies of this „state capitalism" in various third world economies and analyses the operation of these systems as their inner structural-power relations. He arrives at the conclusion that the present changes leave the state capitalist structures untouched and this way, it is impossible to break out from the mistaken circles of the „third world". The author sees the solution in a mixed economy kept in balance with antimonopoly measures which is characterised by private property of small enterprises as well as workers' ownership of large companies.