[lbo-talk] Neo-liberalism in Eastern Europe

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Tue Feb 15 10:30:28 PST 2005


Chriss:
> Please, don't let these shamans near the patients in
> your village...

I fully agree with your characterizations of these individuals. But that does not mean they have the monopoly for "market reforms." In fact a reform movement toward the market model was being implemented, albeit slowly and not without turns, by central planners since 1956, due largely to missing the planned goals and steady fall in productivity rates - at least in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary.

So it was not that the IMF boys did Eastern Europe and Russia, but that inside power brokers, the so-called techno-managerial class (or the "nomenclature"), did Eastern Europe and Russia, using the IMF boys as convenient icons and toilet brushes to clean up the pipes connecting them to Western markets.

Wojtek



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