ABSTRACT
The concrete proposals of the radical economic reformers in Hungary reflect a new sensitivity for the complementary political conditions of economic reform. They have not yet solved a dilemma formulated by Kornai, one leading only to the alternative of resignation or revolution; namely, that political reforms that will be possible will be insufficient, while those that would be sufficient are impossible. The projects of radical reform and the reconstitution of civil society came into being together in the Poland of the mid-1970s. For this a principled compromise between some official reformers and mobilized intellectuals would represent a better context than some kind of falling into a parliamentary democracy, paper thin because not rooted in a reconstructed civil society. The attempt to constitute civil society from above, and, thus, the possibility of the mobilization of independent actors on behalf of reform, has openly been declared and attempted.
