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A Fordulat aktuális a digitális forradalom tágabb kontextusát vizsgálja. Az itt megjelenő szövegek megpróbálják bemutatni, miként változtak a számítástechnikát és az internetet övező ideológiák a hidegháború kezdetétől napjainkig, valamint hogy az elmúlt két-három évtizedben milyen gazdasági-politikai folyamatokba ágyazódott az internet és a digitális ipar robbanásszerű terjedése.
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Jan Drahokoupil a posztszocialista térség politikai gazdaságtanának szakértője. 2007-ben szerzett doktori fokozatot a budapesti Közép-európai Egyetemen (CEU), jelenleg az Európai Szakszervezeti Intézet (ETUI) szenior kutatója. Az intézetnél ő a digitalizációval és a munka jövőjével kapcsolatos kutatások koordinátora, 2017-ben pedig társszerkesztője volt a Transfer című folyóirat két, a digitalizáció munkaerőpiaci hatásait vizsgáló számának. Ennek apropóján beszélgettünk vele a digitalizáció és a munka kapcsolatáról általában, valamint arról, hogy mindez hogyan érinti a kelet-európai régiót.
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Social and technical changes in reproduction are drawing childbirth into the marketplace. People are creating new relations that separate genetic, gestational and social parentage. Reproductive engineering makes options of in vitro fertilization, embryo transfer, surrogacy, and fetal tissue transplants. This paper explores an analogy between childbearing and social labor, arguing that the labor theory of value gives insight into the social functions of childbirth under capitalism. The valorization of childbearing is consistent with other ways of socializing the reproduction of labor power despite the capitalists need for an autonomously functioning private household sector. A value-theoretic approach is necessary to reveal how childbearing is being placed in material relation with other forms of labor under capitalism. Neither reproductive engineering nor biological difference are themselves sources of oppression for women, but when found in a historical context where value can be extracted, childbearing can become a form of alienated labor.
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The introduction of the Kyoto Protocol is an attempt to save the climate through a number of schemes, or mechanisms, that commodify carbon. Among other things, these schemes create monetary incentives to reduce carbon emissions through the trade of permits and credits, and they make carbon an object of financial speculation. Most controversial is apparently the potential of carbon thus to be a universal yardstick for value by commensurating moral spheres of human action (the environment, the economy, development, etc.) that some people regard as distinct. This paper explores the consequences of the speculative aspects of carbon as a standard of value and as potential currency.on
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Ecological feminism is sometimes understood as a subset of social ecology. This is true in as much as ecofeminism addresses the interaction of social and natural processes. However, it would be false to suggest that ecofeminism derives from social ecology, or from deep ecology, or eco-Marxism [Chapter 6]. Ecological feminism is sui generis; its first premise being that society–nature relations in the dominant global economy are fundamentally sex-gendered in both material and ideological senses. In this respect, ecofeminism takes a methodological quantum leap beyond other political frameworks. Ecofeminism is also distinct from liberal and socialist feminisms, since these perspectives focus rather uncritically on the pursuit of equality. Ecofeminists are not looking for an equal slice of a toxic pie. Attention to the positive and negative implications of sex-gender difference is prioritised by ecofeminists, before attending to an equality that simply reinforces Eurocentric masculinist values as the universal norm. Likewise, respect for the principle of difference as cultural autonomy joins ecofeminism and postcolonial concerns. Further, the framing of liberal and socialist feminisms has been anthropocentric, whereas ecofeminism is oriented towards oikos and the interconnection of all life on Earth.
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Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing's book entitled "The Mushroom at the End of the World" could be read from the semi-periphery of the global capital. The supply chains of an Eastern Hungarian mushroom-business leads us to Tsing's book, to the author’s concept of salvage accumulation. By introducing salvage accumulation, Tsing means the process of value creation when it occurs without established control system of capitalism, like as it is managed in factories. Raw materials (coal and oil) are annexed by capital, within the outside sphere of capitalism, which independently occur in nature. This value-saving process, in this way, refers to the capital accumulation which does not depend on controlled conditions of capitalism. Commodification, thus, does not take place on factories’ conveyor belt, rather outside of the social structure, deep in the middle of forests (2015: 62-63). Natural resources were already present before human existence, and reproduce even after the extinction of human species. Although Tsing's book might be a valid critique of David Harvey's accumulation by dispossession, the concept of the reverse primitive accumulation coined by Kalyan Sanyal seems essential for mapping the complexity of capitalism. The reversal of capital accumulation is a political tool which legitimises exploitative processes of capitalism.
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In this paper we try to briefly analyse the main working principles and the social consequences of the financial system. In the second part of our article we describe several alternative solutions to the current system: in our opinion, some of these could help and enable the work of establishing a democratic and solidarity economy.
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Cultural commons are not as easy to define as natural commons, such as air, water and other natural resources, which should be equally and universally shared. Dipesh Chakrabarty helped us provincialize Europe, but in his article “The climate of histo
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Although total condemnation of private property as a major source of social and thus the political conflicts in society, the private initiative in the economy as a tool for exploitation of man by man, communist ideology was unable to eliminate completely them, neither in the people’s thinking, nor in the legal system of socialism and the real business. The present paper makes periodization of this legislation and focusing in particular on one of the least-known stages in its development. The free professions as lawyers, musicians, artists and others, private medical services, as well as agricultural activities and cooperative associations, are excluded from the study. A priority place is given to crafts, trade and services provided by private individuals. In the legal framework of private economic activity during the time of socialism, two main periods are outlined: the first from the late 1940s to the 1970s, which is the subject of the present study, and the second – in the 1980s. The Constitution of 1947 does not, in principle, reject the possibility of exercising private economic activity. It contains provisions that can be classified into three groups: 1) directly concerning the stimulation of private business initiative; 2) provisions indirectly related to this activity, and 3) restrictive provisions. In the 1950s, some of the old forms of private economic activity in the field of small trade and services, which the totalitarian regime in the country allowed due to objective circumstances, still continued to exist. The 1960s saw a trend towards stagnation and restriction of private economic activity, which trend intensified and reached its peak after the adoption of the new constitution in 1971 until the end of the 1970s. Only later, in the 1980s, the authorities resorted to a change of strategy and the search for new forms of economic activity by private individuals.
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Based on documents from former Soviet archives and specialized literature published by Russian researchers, this article traces the efforts made by Mikhail Gorbachev to restore the Soviet economy by imposing a series of reforms. In the first years after acceding to power, the reforms were not significantly different from those attempted by his predecessors. The major differences would appear later, when, towards the end of the 1980s, under the pressure of financial crisis, Gorbachev sought to reach an agreement with the US regarding the nuclear arsenal. In parallel, the economic reforms moved away from centralized planning and explored the principles of the free market.In this context, M.S. Gorbachev and his team turned their attention to the massive imbalances concerning military spending, which alleviation conditioned the success of perestroika. Therefore, the leaders in Kremlin resorted to radical measures, such as the asymmetric reduction of military contingents. What they did not understand was that the Soviet economic system could not be reformed. It had to be completely changed.
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In this paper, Gloria Politi embarks upon an analysis of Goodnight, Mister Lenin seen as an interpretation of the genre of reportage in the peculiar way by its author Tiziano Terzani. In terms of methodology, this approach draws on theories of literary criticism, textual hermeneutics and narratology. The analysis shows how the depiction of the flow of events before the reader’s eyes reveals an inner gaze that, according to Pavel Florensky, almost creates a figurative mark, just like the impressions conveyed by poetry. Terzani’s word thus expresses all its evocative potential as a narrative transfer of the rendering of space in the visual arts.
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The subject of this analysis is what the life conditions of farm animals in the Polish People’s Republic looked like and how they were reflected in professional discourse. My main aim is to show how good practices in husbandry were understood before the rise of the notion of animal welfare. As I demonstrate, their evolution was strictly linked with rhetorical changes in the discourse. I delineate the main material-discursive historical shifts that shaped further breeding practices.
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The article seeks the importance of foreign trade for the revival of the Bulgarian economy in the decisive stage of the Second World War at the end of1944 and in 1945, when Bulgaria was in international economic isolation. The effect on Bulgaria's commercial and economic contacts of the restrictions of the American and English law on "trading with the enemy" imposed on the satellites of the Third Reich is traced. Western companies' fear of breaking the law made Bulgaria's foreign trade with Western European countries almost impossible at the end of 1944 and in1945. Against this background, the attempts of the first OF government to stimulate industrial processes in the country by resuming Bulgaria's foreign trade relations with Western European countries are considered, despite the orientation towards the USSR and the sanction measures of the Western allies. Archival documents from the funds of the Ministry of Trade and Food, the Ministry of Foreign Trade and the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, as well as scientific publications dealing with Bulgaria's foreign trade relations at the end of 1944 and in 1945, were brought to the aid of the study.
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The apparent lagging behind of the socialist economy in the late 1970s forced the government to take steps towards expanding the possibilities of exercising private initiative in the various areas of the economy in the 1980s. All reformist attempts are confronted with the limited possibilities of the system. Experiments with mixed state-private forms of economic activity also do not achieve the expected result. The range of activities and persons admitted to private business is gradually expanding. This is mainly done through the issuance of new regulations. Key in this respect remains the issue of wage labor, which for ideological reasons is not allowed outside the family community. The study examines the legal regulation of private practice in trade, services, and retail production, excluding agriculture and the liberal professions. In the early 1980s, there was an intensification of the state's policy of stimulating private economic activity in the three spheres, given the lack of sufficient satisfaction of citizens with consumer goods and services. The Communist Party, which defines the general directions of development of the Bulgarian economy, falls into a vicious circle between the needs of society, the desire to satisfy them and the limited capabilities of the political regime. In the 1980s, two periods emerged in the policy of the State in this respect: from 1980 to 1986 and from 1987 to 1989. In the first period, the following main trends emerge: expanding the circle of persons allowed to carry out private commercial activity; the range of activities carried out is expanded too; as the main participants in private business and small production, in addition to parents and children, it is allowed to hire close relatives up to the second degree. At the end of this period in 1986, about 20 % of the country's population received additional income from private activities, but almost half of this income is from renting out premises, while persons engaged in trade, services, and retail manufacturing made up only 1% of the population. In the second period, a new step is made by regulating the performance of private work by citizens in five main areas: transport, pedagogical, administrative-legal and design services, and development of software products and software services. Again, however, the opportunities for hiring individuals are limited within the family circle. It was only with the issuance of Decree 56 on business activity at the beginning of 1989 that conditions for transition to a capitalist market economy were created.
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The paper provides an analysis of the economic growth in Bulgaria over a forty-year period, which includes the last two decades of the command system and the time from the beginning of the transition to market economy to the 2009 crisis. It discusses the specificities in the chain growth rates of real GDP and real GDP per capita in the various stages of the period, measured by using data from different sources. The dynamics of the production and the income structure of GDP are characterized and the most important structural changes are highlighted. The main focus of the study is on the supply-side determinants of economic growth. To this end, the growth rate of real GDP per capita is decomposed into growth rates in employment and the impact on GDP growth of changes in employment, capital accumulation and total factor productivity is assessed. In the course of the study, the existence of three periods in the dynamics of GDP, distinguished by internal heterogeneity, is proved. Changes in the sectoral structure are generally in the direction of increasing the share of services and reducing the share of agriculture, with relatively smooth changes in the share of industry. The income structure of GDP during command system was relatively stable and dominated by labour income, while afterwards the share of the capital income prevailed. Changes in GDP per capita depend mainly on average labour productivity, while the contribution of labour was insignificant in the first period, it was relatively high positive or negative in the first decade of transition, and persistently positive after2000. The relative importance of growth factors has varied over time, with capital leading in years of relatively high growth rates. The impact of total factor productivity is positive in most years and negative at the beginning of the transition and at the end of the period, combined with alternating negative and positive contributions from labour. Economic growth was intense in certain years during socialism and at the beginning of the third period, while during the rest of the time it was of extensive nature.
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Here we consider currency reforms, or the compulsory currency exchanges by governments, which were quite common in the first half of the twentieth century. We analyse the effects on inflation of the three currency reforms implemented by the communist regime in Bulgaria after WWII, and of the one that took place during the transition. We provide new evidence on the implemented currency exchanges and compile a time series on the quantity of money in circulation in communist Bulgaria. The collected data and facts show that, contrary to the announced aim to tame inflation through the reduction of liquidity, the three reforms conducted in communist Bulgaria had almost no effect on both money in circulation and inflation. Instead, price stability was achieved through price controls. We emphasize the fact that the growth of money in circulation followed a strong positive trend and exceeded disproportionately the official inflation and output growth. All this generated enormous price pressure and led to the unprecedented inflation rates experienced after the regime collapsed and prices were liberalized. In the following years, high inflation was additionally nurtured by the excessive growth rates of the money supply in the early stages of the transition. Our observations corroborate the fact that the introduction of the currency board arrangement in the summer of 1997 put an end to the high inflationary periods as restrictive monetary and fiscal policies were adopted. We put forward the idea that in 1999, the fourth currency reform played a role in curbing inflation expectations by reducing the scale of price variation. The combined findings of all four reforms confirm the claim that a new currency cannot serve as a tool for combatting inflation per se. It can only be ancillary to reforms establishing fiscal discipline and prudent monetary policies. A side but important finding from the study is that no revaluation of fixed assets was conducted in the 1952 reform, while all other values were considerably reduced. This means that the calculated depreciation was disproportionately higher than the other cost items, which led to significant overestimation of the reported output volumes in the subsequent years and the economic growth rates for 1952–53. Finally, based on the official price-conversion rules, we propose an algorithm for converting values across the different periods.
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The aim of this issue is to add a perspective to the debate on China's increased global role - and thus its emerging influence in Hungary and the region - that can interpret the history of Chinese socialism and its post-reform economic growth within the dynamics of global capitalism.The first study, entitled "Sorghum and Steel", begins with a discussion of the political and economic circumstances of the Communist takeover in 1949, and then analyses the process of socialist industrial development, illuminating the political struggles through the contradictions of the economic process. In discussing the socialist period, Chuang concludes that by the 1970s, the socialist industrial development effort seemed to have collapsed under its own contradictions.The second, "Red Dust", starts the story of reform and opening from here, but also adds the context of global capitalism and Cold War geopolitics to the internal dynamics of socialist industrial development. Within this relational framework, Chuang analyses the increasingly intense influx of Western investment into the region from the 1970s onwards, the Japanese miracle and subsequent crisis, and the region's staggered waves of industrial expansion ('flying wild geese' model), all as part of a compensatory effort motivated by the crisis of the post-World War II cycle, culminating in China's post-opening transformation. The analysis concludes with a description of the rapid post-opening industrialization, the disintegration of the socialist work and residence-based benefit system, and the urban migrant labour force as a new class.
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Discussions of cultural disappearance are often couched in terms of nostalgia and tragedy. Bruno Jasieński in Bal manekinów and Pier Paolo Pasolini in Ragazzi di vita offer an alternative form of remembering disappearance through memories of joy, understood as a distinctly political practice. Acutely aware of the untenability of what they were celebrating (pockets of liberty from cultural uniformity, in local cultures and aesthetic experimentation, respectively), both writers maintained a sense of political commitment, offering a good broader model for thinking about a world without a future.
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The article explores the economic transition in Bulgaria carried out in the 1990s through the evaluations given by the participants of its course and results. The study is based on a sociohistorical and socioanthropological approach, using data from recently conducted standardized interviews, focus groups, and surveys. A comparative analysis of the visions and explanations of members of (different segments of) the new economic and the new political elites is presented for the factors that hindered the Bulgarian economic transformation. The divergence of their assessments of the institutional, personal and socio-cultural barriers to economic growth and their unanimous opinion on the ‘failed’ transition is commented on.
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