Why socialism can be nothing else than ‘real’: Lessons from ‘really existing socialism’ – Part II.

In Part I of this essay, we have seen some of the oppositions used in thinking about socialist economies (static vs. dynamic, closed vs. open economies, plan vs. market coordination). In this second part, I will deal with some of the premises on which thinking about the social consequences of socialist economies is based. I will look more particularly at the role of consumerist desires and informal networks of relations as a way to challenge how we think about both socialism and capitalism today.

Why socialism can be nothing else than ‘real’: Lessons from ‘really existing socialism’ – Part I.

There is widespread consensus today, right and left of the political spectrum, that ‘really existing socialism’ in the Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe was a proven historical failure to construct society on the basis of collective property and common access to resources produced in a society. In this guest post, Sabina Stan from the Transnational Labour Project in Oslo critically questions this understanding and asks what the real lessons from ‘really existing socialism’ are for the understanding of today’s capitalism.