After the Rain : how the West lost the EastVaknin, Samuel
History
After the Rain : how the West lost the East
Vaknin, Samuel
Europe, Eastern -- Economic conditions -- 1989-; Europe, Eastern -- Politics and government -- 1989-
This is why professors of economics who studied under Socialism can
never teach Capitalism in the truest sense of the word. No matter how
intelligent and knowledgeable (and a minority of them are) - they can
never convey the experience, the practice, the instincts and reflexes,
the emotional hues and intellectual pugilistics that real, full scale,
full-blooded Capitalism entails. They are intellectually and
emotionally castrated by their socialist past of close complicity with
inefficiency, corruption and pathological economic thinking.
This is why workers and managers inherited from the socialist-communist
period can never function properly in a Capitalist ambience. Both were
trained at civil disobedience through looting their own state and
factories. Both grew accustomed to state handouts and bribes disguised
as entitlements were suspicious and envious at their own elites
(especially their politicians and crony professors), victims to
suppressed rage and open, helpless and degrading dependence. Such
workers and managers - no matter how well intentioned and well
qualified or skilled - are likely to sabotage the very efforts whose
livelihood depends on.
When the transition period of post-communist economies started,
academics, journalists and politicians in the West talked about the
"pent up energies" of the masses, now to be released through the twin
processes of privatisation and democratisation. This metaphor of humans
as capitalistically charged batteries waiting to unleash their stored
energy upon their lands - was realistic enough. People were, indeed,
charged: with pathological envy, with rage, with sadism, with
pusillanimity, with urges to sabotage, to steal, and to pilfer. A
tsunami of destruction, a tidal wave of misappropriation, an orgy of
crime and corruption and nepotism and cronyism swept across the
unfortunate territories of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Transition
was perceived by the many either as a new venue for avenging the past
and for visiting the wrath of the masses upon the heads of the elites -
or as another, accelerated, mode of stripping the state naked of all
its assets. Finally, the latter propensity prevailed. The old elites
used the cover of transition to enrich themselves and their cronies,
this time "transparently" and "legally". The result was a repulsive
malignant metastasis of capitalism, devoid of the liberal ideals or
practices, denuded of ethics, floating in a space free of functioning,
trusted institutions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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