Reasons for the Crash of "Real Socialism" Cover Image
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Причини за краха на "реалния социализъм"
Reasons for the Crash of "Real Socialism"

Author(s): Georgi Kostov
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Институт по философия и социология при БАН

Summary/Abstract: The break-up of the society of „real socialism” was due to several postulates on which actual history was grounded. The first one is the thesis that people which differ in their abilities still share equally in the common possession and management of the means of production. The second one is the common possession and management over live labour and its results. The latter makes employment compulsory. The third one is the thesis of the centralized and direct involvement, management and evaluation of individual and collective labour, of its distribution into necessary and surplus, and, in turn, of necessary labour between individuals along the lines of predetermined criteria. The latter in practice is the denial of competition and the market, where the social, or market value or price is the one that determines the position and resources of everybody in the spheres of production, exchange and consumption. The fourth one is the division of society into three major social groups; those managing state (common) property, who represent semi-feudal and semi-capitalist relations of production, those who serve the first group (production managers, repressive bodies, ideologists), and the immediate producers of goods and services, who are in the position of semi-serfs and semi-proletarians. The fifth one is that the real subject of power (and of social relations) is the first group, that the second group is in the position of being a semi-subject and semi-object, and the third group is only an object, i. e. it is deprived of rights. Such an organization of society can only be short-lived. After the achievements in the period of illusions there comes a period of realization of the true character of the imposed social relations, followed by the actual degradation, decay and collapse of society organised along these lines. If these false beliefs and the corresponding social practice remain unovercome the very socialist idea is doomed and will fail to play a role in the progress of society.

  • Issue Year: 24/1992
  • Issue No: 3
  • Page Range: 3-13
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Bulgarian