ABSTRACT
When the countries of the former Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia are included in comparisons, the range of differences increases. Communal ties are of a different character. An individual is born to them, or at least is considered by fellow members to have been born to them. Social relations are both associative, in providing welfare, and communal, in producing social cohesion through affiliation to certain core values, such as solidarity, liberty, and democracy. A society organized according to any of these three types of social bond will experience both integrative and disintegrative tendencies. At the factory level, workers practiced direct democracy in making decisions. The inadequacy of the Solidarity ethos for the construction of liberal parliamentary democracy has given way to the great diversification of political concepts. In the light of recurring strikes, the strength of this individualistic complex, at least among the masses, looks doubtful.
