ABSTRACT
The concept of revolution is a loose one and a “bogey” in the opinion of philosopher of science Ian Hacking. Prehistorian Clive Gamble is as unsympathetic to Paul Mellars’ notion of the human revolution as he is to Gordon Childe’s notion of a Neolithic revolution. Socialism, in the sense of concern with fairness, equality, and solidarity, has been one component of humanity from the beginning; it was exactly that, one moral component, in the “actually existing socialisms” of Eastern Europe prior to 1989, and this did not disappear with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The rural populations of virtually all parts of Europe experienced massive changes in the course of the twentieth century, and the similarities seem from vantage point more striking than the differences introduced by socialist planning. Many anthropological analysts of postsocialism have found elements of continuity with the socialist order to be of decisive importance in explaining outcomes.
