In my research, I analyse the context and the issues raised by a conference held at the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts in 1989, the Theoretical Conference, from the perspective of world system theory and the history of design. I will also apply aspects of world system theory analysis to the examination of the economic-industrial and ideological context of the event. I will weigh up the findings of the conference against the results of the analysis. I put the conference papers together along the lines of sanguinity, postmodern discourse and design. In examining them, I pay particular attention to the relationship between neoliberalism as the dominant economic ideology and the discourse of the conference, which is thematically independent of it. In my analysis I model, on the one hand, through the conference, the forms in which an ideology can determine independent professional discourses; on the other hand, I examine, in the economic and ideological context of the period of regime change, why the absence of a critical design approach was a necessary and common element in the presentations on design.