ABSTRACT
A specter is haunting the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It is the specter of Solidarity, a working-class revolt staged in the name of the unfulfilled promises of state socialism. The compulsion to participate in the socialist game is potentially explosive—the pretense becomes an alternative turned against reality. In state socialism employment guarantees preclude the threat of losing one's job as a means of extracting cooperation. Socialism has a long history of organizing production in this way, but it is extended to the sphere of consumption. The growth of a capitalist enterprise depends on its profitability; growth of a state socialist enterprise depends on state-dispensed investment funds. There are several steel mills in Hungary. Poland and Hungary represent extremes: the tendency is toward the mobilization of collective resources; the tendency is toward the mobilization of individual resources. Painting over the sordid realities of socialism is simultaneously the painting of an appearance of brightness, efficiency, and justice.
