ABSTRACT
Arguing that things and circumstances had become the masters of human destinies, Marx tried to restore the people’s sovereignty over la force des choses. If economic reform is to continue, and if the circumstances surrounding the demise of the Union indicate anything about the parties’ medium-term positions, each of the post-Union states will want to choose its own pace of reform. Therefore, property laws will be much less streamlined than the 1989–91 legislation assumed. In service sectors such as the retail trade, where privatization is widely accepted, the laws and regulations will probably be fairly similar. Financial services are a harder nut to crack. Still, the odds are that at least banks will operate on the basis of compatible legislation. A modern economy is an intricate network of firms of various sizes: small, medium, large, very large, and forbiddingly large.
