Although reports like this are almost a commonplace of journalism from the
former eastern Europe, they are more than journalism.
1. there is a recognition that although there were crimes committed in the
name of socialism, not everything in the old socialist regimes were crimes,
and not all communists were dishonourable.
2. There are limitations to the concept of atomised bourgeois democratic
rights, and what matters even more are social democratic rights.
3. that a market economy has to be accepted, and a lively one.
4. that a way forward has to be found for market socialism, which is
different from the mixed economy in which the commanding heights were
nationalised as state owned monopoly capitalist concerns.
5. Instead IMO there needs to be a highly differentiated socialist market
economy in which there is a market in the usage of land under state
control, but the land is not privately owned; and that access to finance is
controlled by state policy, with competitive bidding from different
enterprises.
If such developments in progressive thinking in the former Eastern Europe
can meet up with more radical social democratic ideas in western Europe
there is a possibility of a new alliance in Europe as a whole.
Chris Burford
London
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