Alienating Labour : Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany and Hungary / Eszter Bartha.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bartha, Eszter, author.

Contributor:

Knowledge Unlatched, Funder.

Series:

International Studies in Social History

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Economics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (373 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Berghahn Books, 2013.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Abbreviations

Acknowledgement

Introduction. Welfare Dictatorships, the Working Class and Socialist Ideology: A Theoretical and Methodological Outline

1. 1968 and the Working Class: 'What do we get out of Socialism?' The Reform of Enterprise Management in East Germany and Hungary

2. Workers in the Welfare Dictatorships

3. Workers and the Party

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

References

Index

Notes:

CC BY-NC-ND

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781800737594

1800737599

OCLC:

1162390637

Publisher Number:

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781782380252