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István Mészáros
(1930-2017) Hungarian philosopher · Hungary · On the map · Academics · Died at 86
István Mészáros was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher. Described as "one of the foremost political philosophers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries" by Monthly Review, Mészáros wrote mainly about the possibility of a transition from capitalism to socialism.
István Mészáros is read about 40 times a day, in 18 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 10 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 120 days, one point a day.
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His magnum opus, Beyond Capital: Toward a Theory of Transition (1995), was concerned not only with this theme but provided a conceptual distinction between capitalism and capital, and an analysis of the current capitalist society and its "structural crisis". He was interested in the critique of the "bourgeois ideology", including the idea of "there is no alternative", and he also elaborated analysis on the failures of "real socialism".