Mirror images and ideological straitjackets on the path from Solidarity to sellout

For much of the 20th century, there was a curious mirror effect between orthodox Soviet and Chicago School ideologies — both saw the other as the only other possible economic system. Although both time and the ongoing global crisis of capitalism has begun to chip away at such a ridiculous binary, to a maddening degree this ideological straitjacket continues to assert itself. A straitjacket that does not spontaneously materialize but is crafted for the maintenance of power.

The effects of this mirrored duality are still very much with us, and are a crucial factor in the path the countries of the former Soviet bloc have traveled. The usages of this ideological construct are obvious enough in the capitalist world, distilled into “there is no alternative” by the just departed Margaret Thatcher. Less obvious were the usages further East; perhaps the nearest equivalent of the prime minister’s “TINA” is Leonid Brezhnev’s declaration of the Soviet system as “irreversible.”

When the general secretary’s formulation began unraveling in the late 1980s, what was a Soviet bloc economist to do? For many, the answer was to pick up a copy of a book by Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman, and jump through the looking glass. And when their new mirror seductively told them to apply shock treatment to their own countries, they did — the mirror told them there was no alternative.

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