East Europe's transition stalled partly due
to political anarchy. China's transition, by comparison, is spectacular
- inflated figures notwithstanding - because it chose a gradual
approach to liberalization: first economic, then political.
Last but not least, pure, "American", capitalism and pure Marxism have
more in common than either would care to admit. Both are utopian. Both
are materialistic. Both are doctrinaire. Both believe that "it's a
jungle out there". Both seek social mobility through control of the
means of production. Both claim to be egalitarian forms of social
engineering and are civilizing, millennial, universal, missionary
pseudo-religions.
The denizens of the nether regions of central and eastern Europe have
been the victims of successive economic utopias. They fear and suspect
ideological purity. They have been conditioned by the authoritarian
breed of socialism they endured, really little more than an overblown
conspiracy theory, a persecutory delusion which invariably led to
Stalinesque paranoid backlashes. Indeed, Stalin was more representative
of communism than any other leader before or after him.
The Economist summed this semipternal mass hysteria neatly thus:
"The core idea that economic structure determines everything has been
especially pernicious .
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