This is a leftist journal, whose editors are convinced that the events of the past decades have got little to do with Marxism if we bracket the hypocritical slogans and, more regrettably, the faith of many people. Therefore the past cannot refute the validity of Marxist principles. The editors of this new journal believe that it pays to live in accordance with these principles but we have to start from the beginning and we have to follow a totally different path than what was taken by the movement, which was organized along the principles of Marxism, in the past 100 years. Consequently the journal intends to participate in the destruction of the established structures but it also seeks to oppose the processes, which Marx characterized as „the reproduction of the old trash” when speaking of the foreseeable failure of the society, which levels people on the basis of poverty.
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Overtrick
Ferenc Tőkei: Dedication
What this journal wants?
What the left will be like tomorrow?
Ágnes Kapitány – Gábor Kapitány: How do we see the world, what we would like it to be like?
The article tries to analyse the essence of the past decades of societies that claim to be socialist and to what extent they have managed to go beyond capitalism? Elements of the new social set up, like new method of production or new mentality have not been created. In the second part of the article the authors discuss social trends which in the current highly advanced western societies point in the direction of a post capitalist alternative.
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Periscope
Tamás Krausz: Notes on perestroika
The author interprets Soviet history as the history of successive attempts of perestroika. Reforms soothing into immediate averting of crisis lead back to the starting point. The realistic alternative is authoritarian restoration (in reform minded or conservative form) or steps in the direction towards self-governing structures (as the authentic socialist alternative), but this latter one exists at present only as an ideology.
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Document
Lev Trockij: The Bonapartist philosophy of state
Written in 1939, the article is a criticism of the Stalinist system which in many ways is a forerunner of the arguments of the ’80 s against Stalin’s Administrative System. (The use of violence by the state is unnecessary, the damage caused by the suffocation of independence, the nomenclature, bureaucracy becoming an elit cast safeguarding its own interests. The Stalinist system is not socialism.
Péter Tálas: A failed alternative – About the 1968 action programme of the Czechoslovak Communist Party
The action programme of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. The author briefly describes the conditions under which the Czechoslovak party programme was drawn up in 1968, the trends inside the party (supporters of Novotny, the centre and the reformers) and the fate of the overthrown Czech experiment, then discusses the essence of the party programme itself.
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From fact to fact
Gyula Fekete: The structure and change of position of low income groups in Hungary
Starting out from the various interpretation of poverty, (those with an income below the average, those living on or below the socially accepted minimum, and the lowest income category), the author presents interesting data on the present scale of poverty. He briefly analyses the causes of getting into the group of the poor, calls attention to the role played by the tax system, the lack of interest and the selling of companies to foreigners in the widening of poverty.
- Analysis
Andrea Szegő: World economic dependence, indebtednes, crisis
The author discusses the international conditions of Hungary’s indebtedness which neglected by the domestic media before. She gives a detailed analysis of the role and responsibility of the international financial institutions (IMF, World Bank) in the emergence of the indebtedness crisis. She discusses separately the emergence of the debt trap from the aspect of the debtor and creditors. She outlines the possibilities of Hungary in juxtaposition to the Latin American processes, and in comparison to the Swedish, Finnish, South Korean or Spanish development model, she writes that the possibilities of Latin Americanization are more realistic. She also analyses the question of what would happen if the debtors denied to repay the debts and the reasons why they do not do that. She reveals that we have repaid the debts many times over!
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Lexicon