The Intellectuals On the Road To Class Power

New York. 1979. Harcourt Brace & Jovanovich. 1st Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. Remainder Mark on Bottom edge. 0151778604. Translated by Andrew Arato and Richard E. Allen. 256 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Richard Mantel. keywords: Politics Hungary. DESCRIPTION - 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 roletheir own, as it werewithin 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. Szelényi 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. inventory #5082 Very Good in Dustjacket. Remainder Mark on Bottom edge.…