Alienating Labour

Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany and Hungary
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-78238-025-2
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, Band 22, 372 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 692 g

Reihe: International Studies in Social History

The Communist Party dictatorships in Hungary and East Germany sought to win over the “masses” with promises of providing for ever-increasing levels of consumption. This policy—successful at the outset—in the long-term proved to be detrimental for the regimes because it shifted working class political consciousness to the right while it effectively excluded leftist alternatives from the public sphere. This book argues that this policy can provide the key to understanding of the collapse of the regimes. It examines the case studies of two large factories, Carl Zeiss Jena (East Germany) and Rába in Gyor (Hungary), and demonstrates how the study of the formation of the relationship between the workers’ state and the industrial working class can offer illuminating insights into the important issue of the legitimacy (and its eventual loss) of Communist regimes.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bartha, Eszter

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Marxismus, Kommunismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of abbreviations

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Welfare dictatorships, the working class and socialist ideology: A theoretical and methodological outline

Chapter 1. 1968 and the Working Class

Chapter 2. Workers in the Welfare Dictatorships

Chapter 3. Workers and the Party

Chapter 4. Contrasting the Memory of the Kádár and Honecker Regimes

Conclusion: Squaring the Circle? The End of the Welfare Dictatorships in the GDR and Hungary

Appendix: Tables 

References

Über Autor(innen)

Bartha, Eszter
Eszter Bartha is a habilitated Assistant Professor in the Department of Eastern European History at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. She received a PhD in History from the Central European University in Budapest in 2007 and another in Sociology from Eötvös Loránd University in 2012. Her current work examines the relationship between the party and the working class in the declining phase of Communism.