Alter-globalization slogans. Commons Wikimedia/free to use and share.The 1990 transitions from the Soviet and Yugoslav forms of existing communism were predicated on the assumption that there are no more than two distinct competing social systems available for nations to choose from: the dictatorial planned economy on the one hand and democracy with a market economy on the other. In economic shorthand they were labeled “communism” and “capitalism”.
The populations of Eastern Europe had no first hand experience of capitalism. Their theoretical expectations had been shaped by the inverse of communist propaganda, an idealised media image (the “Dallas” effect), as well as outdated theorising from the classical period of capitalism (e.g. Adam Smith) - not too useful in the age of emerging global financialised capitalism dominated by translation corporations. They were also heavily influenced by the all-out promotion of neoliberal ideas by the leading Western governments of the time, which were led by neoliberal heroes (Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterand, as well as Blair and Schröder somewhat later) at the peak of their era. The Western and global Left was in retreat.
Not surprisingly, the goal of transition was formulated not as a choice between different models of the capitalist system, but as the (re)establishment of a generic, unqualified “market economy”. The symbolic stepping-stones of this undertaking were privatisation, the introduction of a tax system, a stock exchange, and similar elements that are common to all capitalist economies regardless of their supplementary features. It is hardly surprising that no choices within the capitalist system were discussed.
