Following the keynote essay of Peter Szigeti, the substance of the state socialist system the historic reasons of its failure and the theoretic possibilities of the perspective of socialism have been outlined in several studies. The most acute debate unfolded about the essence of the old regime in the conceptual frameworek terminological debate concerns all fundamental questions of the past and present including the interpretation of the system change. The study takes a stance in many theoretical questions, while only offering hypotheses in others suggesting that the debate inevitably continues.