After Long Years | Page 7

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.
While the masses and their elites in CEE were busy scavenging, the
West engaged in impotent debate between a school of "shock
therapists" and a school of "institution builders". The former believed
that appearances will create reality and that reality will alter
consciousness (sounds like Marxism to me). Rapid privatisation will
generate a class of instant capitalists who, in turn, will usher in an era
of real, multi-dimensional liberalism. The latter believed that the good
wine of Capitalism could be poured only to the functioning receptacles
of liberalism. They advocated much longer transition periods in which
privatisation will come only after the proper institutions were erected.
Both indulged in a form of central planning. IMF-ism replaced
Communism. The international financial institutions and their hordes of
well-paid, well-accommodated experts - replaced the Central
Committee of the party. Washington replaced Moscow. It was all very
familiar and cosy.
Ever the adapters, the former communist elites converted to ardent
capitalism. With the fervour with which they recited Marxist slogans in
their past - they chanted capitalist sobriquets in the present. It was

catechism, uttered soullessly, in an alien language, in the marble
cathedrals of capitalism in London and Washington. There was
commitment or conviction behind it and it was tainted by organized
crime and all-pervasive corruption. The West was the new regime to be
suckered and looted and pillaged and drained. The deal was simple:
mumble the mantras of the West, establish Potemkin institutions, keep
peace and order in your corner of the world, give the West strategic
access to your territory. In return the West will turn a blind eye to the
worst excesses and to worse than excesses. This was the deal struck in
Russia with the "reformists", in Yugoslavia with Milosevic, the
"peacemaker", in the Czech Republic with Klaus the "economic
magician" of Central Europe. It was communism all over: a superpower
buying influence and colluding with corrupt elites to rob their own
nations blind.
It could have been different.
Post-war Japan and Germany are two examples of the right kind of
reconstruction and reforms. Democracy took real root in these two
former military regimes. Economic prosperity was long lived because
democracy took hold. And the ever tenuous, ever important trust
between the citizens and their rulers and among themselves was thus
enhanced.
Trust is really the crux of the matter. Economy is called the dismal
science because it pretends to be one, disguising its uncertainties and
shifting fashions with mathematical formulae. Economy describes the
aggregate behaviour of humans and, in this restricted sense, it is a
branch of psychology. People operate within a marketplace and attach
values to their goods and services and to their inputs (work, capital,
natural endowments) through the price mechanism. This elaborate
construct, however, depends greatly on