Communism, once heralded as the "radiant future" of all humanity, has now become part of Eastern Europe’s past. What does the record say about the legacy of communism as an organizational system?

Michael Burawoy and Janos Lukacs consider this question from the standpoint of the Hungarian working class. Between 1983 and 1990 the authors carried out intensive studies in two core Hungarian industries, machine building and steel production, to produce the first extended participant-observation study of work and politics in state socialism.

CONTENTS:

Preface
Acknowledgments
1. A Sociological Diary
Part One: Ideology Versus Reality: Bánki
2. Piece Rates, Hungarian Style
3. Mythologies of Industrial Work
Part Two: Ideology as Reality: The Lenin Steel Works
4. Production in a Shortage Economy
5. Painting Socialism
Conclusion
6. The Radiant Future
Notes
Bibliography
Index

AUTHOR:

Michael Burawoy is associate professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the co-editor (with Theda Skocpol) of Marxist Inquiries: Studies of Labor, Class, and States, also published by the University of Chicago Press.