The Debt Crisis and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The truly remarkable changes that have taken place in Poland and Hungary in the past year have prompted many western observers to trumpet the return of capitalism to eastern Europe. Many on the left have watched these changes with comparable interest but with considerable concern that "the God had failed," that the socialist alternative to the inequality, injustice, and inhumanity of capitalism had proven unable to maintain itself in competition with capitalism. The declining standards of living and the shortages of food and consumer goods seemed to point to the failure of the communist countries to solve efficiently the basic economic questions of production and distribution.

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