ABSTRACT
Marxian analyses of the momentous changes underway in Eastern Europe must include treatments focusing on their class dimensions. We propose one here. This analysis finds first that what were widely considered to be socialist or communist class structures were actually state capitalist class structures instead.1 Second, it finds that most Eastern European governments are now attempting to resolve what they perceive as social crises in part by reverting from state to private capitalisms. We locate this reversion within a longstanding, global pattern of crisis-induced oscillations between these two forms of capitalism. The analysis then offers an explanation of how and why most Marxists and other socialists understood the class structure of state capitalisms-especially in the USSR-to be socialisms or communisms. Finally, we speculate on the practical problems confronting both the private capitalisms emerging in Eastern Europe and those Marxists and socialists whose objectives still include transforming state or private capitalisms into communist class structures.
