THE INTELLECTUALS ON THE ROAD TO CLASS POWER: A Sociological Study Of The Role Of The Intelligentsia In Socialism. Translated By Andrew Arato And Richard E. Allen

black full cloth hardcover 8vo. (octavo). dustwrapper in protective plastic book jacket cover. remainder copy in fine cond. binding square & tight. covers clean. top edge has black ink mark near spine, other edges clean. contents free of markings. dustwrapper in fine cond. not worn or torn or price clipped. nice clean copy. no library markings, store stamps, stickers, bookplates, no names, inking, underlining, remainder markings etc~. 2nd printing. xix+252p. political philosophy. sociology. world history. ~In this important and original study, two Hungarian sociologists joined forces to write a theoretical summary of their empirical investigations, conducted in Hungary since 1955. The state police confiscated their manuscript, and both were imprisoned. Nevertheless, a copy of the work reached the West and is being published throughout the world. The authors, at the time of writing, were men in their thirties (one Jewish, the other Catholic), both grown up under Communist rule. One of them, Konrad, is also a brilliant novelist, author of The Case Worker and The City Builder. Gradually, through firsthand experience, they became convinced that Eastern European socialist societies had produced a new system of oppression and exploitation of the working class, making the workers the most unfree, unprivileged class within those societies. As professional sociologists, they felt impelled to rethink the functioning of the Eastern European social structure, and of the intellectual's role~their own, as it were~within that structure, after first placing the function of the intellectual within its historical context. The emergence of new types of class conflicts has been described by a number of theoreticians, the most famous among them Trotsky and Djilas. Szelenyi and Konrad's thesis builds on the theories of these men but carries them further, into the immediate present. The authors come to the conclusion that the earlier difference between intellectuals and bureaucrats is disappearing, and see a development toward a more rational society, toward a socialism with more promise for the working class. Their book is a critique of existing socialist societies, and a contribution toward a new socialist theory that transcends both capitalism and state socialism.…