Ebook: Dictatorship Over Needs

The emotional and intellectual motivation for writing this book was the exact obverse of the French maxim: tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner. By contrast, and without intending to write a political pamphlet, we sought to understand the whole of ‘real socialism’ in order critically to expose this new and formidable system of internal and external oppression, to dissipate such illusions as exist about its genuine physiognomy. This process of ‘total understanding’ has necessitated, of course, an unreserved criticism of our own earlier self-deceptions. In actual fact, this book derives from the process of our own self-enlightenment on the subject of ‘real socialism’. [...]

Gyorgy Markus wrote the first part dealing with theories analysing Soviet societies, their economy and ‘class’ structure. The second part,‘PoliticalDominationanditsConsequences’, is the work of Agnes Heller. Ferenc Feher wrote the third part: ‘The Functioning of the System: Conflicts and Perspectives’. We have discussed each part repeatedly and made corrections as a result of these vehement but always friendly discussions. In this sense each author bears moral, political and scholarly responsibility for the parts of the two others. [from the Forward]