Chapter 79 Chapter Fourteen Twenty Years of Crisis 3

3 Since 1970, similar crises have actually begun to erode the "second world" that belongs to the "central planning economy", but this trend has not been noticed for a while.Symptoms were initially concealed by an extremely inflexible political system, and their illnesses subsequently worsened due to the same reasons. Therefore, when the situation changed, it was even more abrupt, such as in China after the death of Mao in the late 1970s, and in 1983- The Soviet Union after the death of Brezhnev in 1985 (see Chapter 16).Economically, since the mid-1960s, socialism under the leadership of the central state plan has clearly needed reform; in the 1970s, signs of degradation appeared everywhere.At this very moment, too, is the economy of this system—like the rest of the world, if not to a lesser extent—beginning to be exposed to the scorching sun of the transnational world economy, its uncontrollable flows and unpredictable fluctuations. At the same time, the Soviet Union's massive entry into the international grain market and the huge impact caused by the oil crisis in the 1970s added drama to the dying scene of the "socialist camp".The socialist country is no longer isolated from the outside world, and it is no longer a self-sufficient regional economy that is not affected by the wind and grass of the world market.

The two camps of the East and the West are not only miraculously combined under the transnational economy that neither side can control, but also the interdependence of power systems under the Cold War situation makes them inseparable.As we saw in Chapter 8, the two superpowers, and the world sandwiched between them, achieved a stable situation, so that when the balance was lost, both parties fell into chaos in succession.And the chaos is not only in politics, but also in economics.When the political system led by the Soviet Union collapsed suddenly, the regional economic division and network that had developed within it also collapsed.The original team has been disbanded, and the countries and regions in it now have to face the world market that they have no conditions to deal with one by one.Likewise, the Western world was caught off guard and did not know how to integrate this new wave of nomads—remnants of the old communist “parallel world system”—into its own world market.And even if the latter intends to join, the European Community organization refuses to accept it, which is an example.The Finnish economy was one of the most successful examples in Europe after the war. When the Soviet system collapsed, it also fell into a severe depression.Germany has the strongest economic strength in Europe, and because its government completely underestimated the economic strength and difficulty needed to absorb East Germany with a population of more than 16 million (in fact, East Germany is only a relatively small proportion of the socialist economy. branch), which brought a huge burden to itself and Europe as a whole (it should be emphasized that the German Bank had warned, but the German government insisted on going its own way).However, all these were unforeseen consequences. In fact, until the real disintegration of the Soviet bloc, no one expected this to happen.

All in all, ideas that were never thought of in the past are now happening in the West, and they are also appearing in the East; and problems that were hidden in the past are now beginning to emerge one by one.So no matter what, the environmental protection movement became a major issue in the 1970s, from whales to Siberia's Lake Baikal (Lake Baikal), the objects of protection were diverse.Due to the limited public discussion in Soviet bloc societies, we cannot trace precisely the development of its major ideas, but by 1980, leading former reformist economists in these regimes, such as Hungary's Kornai (Janos Kornai, has provided a noteworthy negative analysis of the socialist economic system and explored the shortcomings of the Soviet-style social system.Critical works in this area began to be published in the 1980s, but their gestation was obviously carried on for a long time in Novosibirsk and other academic circles. As for when the leaders of the Communist Party themselves really gave up on Socialist beliefs are more difficult to timetable.Because since 1989-1991, these people like to advance the date of their conversion.This is the case in the economy, and it is even more difficult for political development to escape this path. For example, Gorbachev's reform policy is an example, at least in Western socialist countries.No matter how deep their historical reverence and affection for Lenin are, if they can start all over again, I believe that many reformist communists hope to abandon the political legacy left by Leninism, although on the surface, few people are willing to admit it so openly. (The Communist Party of Italy, admired by reformers, was an exception).

The reformers of the socialist world hoped to transform communism into something similar to the democratic nature of Western societies.It is Stockholm, not Los Angeles, that they want to emulate—there are not many private admirers of the liberal doctrines of Hayek and Friedman in Moscow or Budapest.But the luck of these reformers is really bad. The crisis of the communist system coincides with the crisis period of the golden age of capitalism, and it is also the crisis moment of the social democratic system.To make matters worse, the sudden catastrophe of communism made incremental reform programs not only unpopular, but in fact difficult to implement.What's more, at this time, the West has encountered a strong consciousness (for the time being) of advocating a purely free market, and has just got rid of the various regimes of communism. Unfortunately, it accidentally stumbled into this theoretical wind and found inspiration from it.Little do they know that in reality the road is blocked, it is the same everywhere.

However, although the crises in the East and the West are parallel, and they are both involved in the same international crisis due to politics and economics, there are two very different ones.For the communist world, at least in the hemisphere under the Soviet wing, whose institutions were so rigid, the crisis was a matter of life and death, and it turned out to be inevitable.However, the survival of the economy has never been a question in the capitalist developed countries. Although the political system is in disintegration, the survival of the system is not a problem (at least not yet).This fact may explain—although it cannot prove its correctness—why, at the time of the disintegration of the communist camp, an American writer unbelievably and openly declared that the future history of mankind will be forever free and democratic. the road.In short, there is only one thing in which capitalist systems are destabilized: their assurance as a single territorial state is beginning to be shaken.However, in the early 1990s, among the Western nation-states threatened by secessionist ideas, none of them really embarked on the road to secession.

Back in the era of the catastrophe, capitalism seemed to be approaching its end. The Great Depression was once described by the title of a book at that time as "This Final Crisis" (This Final Crisis, Hutt, 1935).Few, however, have made any immediate apocalyptic predictions about the future of advanced capitalism.However, a French historian and art dealer once firmly predicted that Western civilization would come to an end in 1976, because the economic momentum of the United States, which had been shouldering the burden of advancing capitalism in the past, had now exhausted itself (Gimpel, 1992)—this This statement is not without some truth. At the same time, he said that the current recession will "continue into the next millennium." So far, it is rare for anyone to think that the Soviet Union is near the end.

However, precisely because the capitalist economy is more dynamic and less controllable, the damage to the fabric of Western society is far more serious than that of socialist countries; so in this respect, the crisis in the West is more serious .The organizational lines of the Soviet Union and Eastern European societies were fragmented because of the collapse of the system itself, but it was not the cause of the collapse of the system.Taking the two comparable societies of East and West Germany as an example, the traditional German customary values ​​seem to have been preserved more completely under the cover of communism than in the economic miracle of West Germany.The Jews who immigrated to Israel from the Soviet Union rebuilt the classical music scene in their new homes, because the habit of listening to live concerts is still a normal cultural behavior in the country they came from, at least for the Jews.In fact, the music population there has not been reduced to a small group of mainly old and middle-aged people.Residents of Moscow and Warsaw also have fewer of the worries of New York or London: significantly higher crime rates, public insecurity, and unpredictable problems such as youth violence.In a communist society, there are naturally few people who openly demonstrate those strange behaviors that even the West would be astonished, and conservatives would angrily denounce as examples of civilizational corruption, and lament sadly as "Weimarer".

How much of the difference between Eastern and Western societies can be attributed to the great wealth of Western societies and the strict regulations of Eastern societies is difficult to determine.In fact, in some respects, the direction of progress between the East and the West is quite consistent.Families on both sides have shrunk, marriages have broken down more freely, and population growth has dwindled to zero (at least in urban and industrialized areas).The influence of traditional Western religions has also waned sharply on both sides—although church attendance has not declined for a while—though surveys show that in former Soviet Russia, there seems to be a revival of religious beliefs. After 1989, Polish women also apparently followed in the footsteps of Italian women, no longer willing to allow the Catholic Church to designate their marriage partners - although during the communist period, Poles once had a strong attachment to the Church based on nationalism and anti-Soviet psychology Feelings.Simply put, in a communist regime, there is limited space for all kinds of subcultures, countercultures, and underground cultures to survive, and different voices are often suppressed.What's more, these countries, with their endless years of cruelty and their multitude of horrible people, tend to maintain a posture of submission even when the hand of the ruler becomes looser.However, the relative calm of the socialist people is not due to fear; its people are completely surrounded by the system and isolated from the outside world.The changes they experience are all through the behavior of the state or their own reactions to the behavior of the state.As long as the country does not intend to change the level, it usually maintains the old view that does not change.The paradox of communism in power is that it is actually conservative.