Join our Email List Berghahn Books Logo

berghahn New York · Oxford

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Youtube
  • Instagram
Browse
Alienating Labour: Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany and Hungary

View Table of Contents


Series
Volume 22

International Studies in Social History



See Related
History Journals

Email Newsletters

Sign up for our email newsletters to get customized updates on new Berghahn publications.

Click here to select your preferences

Alienating Labour

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

Eszter Bartha

372 pages, 5 illus., 10 tables, bibliog., index

ISBN  978-1-78238-025-2 $145.00/£107.00 / Hb / Published (November 2013)

eISBN 978-1-78238-026-9 eBook

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781782380252


View CartYour country: - editClick here to view our Brexit Info

Due to uncertainty surrounding post-Brexit trade agreements deliveries to the EU may take longer to arrive and be subject to local import charges, for which the customer is liable. We encourage you to consider an eBook alternative or to go to your local bookshop for the print copy. Read the current information here

 Buy the eBook from these vendorsRequest a Review or Examination Copy (in Digital Format)Recommend to your LibraryAvailable in GOBI®

Reviews

Recipient of an "outstanding" qualification from the Bolyai Fellowship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and a Bolyai Certificate

“Bartha’s book is a splendid achievement. Despite the disparate nature of the East German and Hungarian sources, which makes comparison difficult, her analysis is fully comparative. She manages to weave events at the local, regional, and national level into a seamless narrative.Her insights are so perceptive that, even if they do not always persuade, they will certainly enrich the ongoing discussion about the demise of Communism in East-Central Europe.” · English Historical Review

This is an important and path-breaking book… it is thoroughly comparative, and is very well balanced… The research and indeed the text as such are well designed and rest on a methodology, which is sophisticated, theoretically-informed and well-sustained. The balance between the rich detail of the enterprise-based case studies and the overall contexts in which they were situated is very well done indeed.” · Mark Pittaway, The Open University, UK

“[A] well researched comparative study of the relationship between the Hungarian and East German Communist parties, on the one hand, and workers in Hungary and the GDR, on the other. The decision to focus on party/state relations with workers in a major factory in each country is convincingly motivated. [The] archival research is extremely thorough.” · Donna Harsch, Carnegie Mellon University

Description

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.

Subject: History (General)History: 20th Century to PresentSociology
Area: Central/Eastern Europe


Contents

Back to Top



Library Recommendation Form

Dear Librarian,

I would like to recommend Alienating Labour Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany and Hungary for the library. Please include it in your next purchasing review with my strong recommendation. The RRP is: $145.00

I recommend this title for the following reasons:

BENEFIT FOR THE LIBRARY: This book will be a valuable addition to the library's collection.

REFERENCE: I will refer to this book for my research/teaching work.

STUDENT REFERRAL: I will regularly refer my students to the book to assist their studies.

OWN AFFILIATION: I am an editor/contributor to this book or another book in the Series (where applicable) and/or on the Editorial Board of the Series, of which this volume is part.