Social democracy was conceived in the 19th century as a benign
alternative to the revolutionary belligerence of Marx and Engels. It
sparred with communism - the virulent and authoritarian species of
socialism that Marxism has mutated into. European history between
1946-1989 was not a clash of diametrically opposed ideologies - but an
internecine war between two competing interpretations of the same
doctrine.
Both contestants boasted a single market - the European Union and
COMECON, respectively. In both the state was heavily involved in the
economy and owned a sizable chunk of the means of production, though in
the Soviet Union and its satellites, the state was the economy.
Both sported well-developed, entrenched and all-pervasive welfarism.
Both east and west were stiflingly bureaucratic, statist, profoundly
illiberal and comprehensively regulated. Crucially, the west was
economically successful and democratic while Russia evolved into a
paranoid nightmare of inefficiency and gloom. Hence its demise.
When communism crumbled, all of Europe - east and west - experienced a
protracted and agonizing transition. Privatization, deregulation,
competition and liberalization swept across both parts of the
continent. The irony is that central and east Europe's adaptation was
more farfetched and alacritous than the west's.
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