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?