Alienating Labour

Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany and Hungary

Eszter Bartha (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

372 Seiten

2023
Berghahn Books (Verlag)
978-1-80539-124-1 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

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 Győr (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.

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.

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

Erscheinungsdatum	21.09.2023
Reihe/Serie	International Studies in Social History
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Systeme
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Politische Theorie
ISBN-10	1-80539-124-0 / 1805391240
ISBN-13	978-1-80539-124-1 / 9781805391241
Zustand	Neuware