1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910831874703321

Autore

Bartha Eszter

Titolo

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

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Berghahn Books, , 2013

ISBN

1-80073-759-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (373 p.)

Collana

International Studies in Social History

Disciplina

331.0943/109049

Soggetti

History / Modern / 20th Century

Political Science / Political Ideologies / Communism, Post-communism & Socialism

Business & Economics / Economic History

Economics

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Sommario/riassunto

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.