ABSTRACT
The unique feature of making capitalism from the ruins of state socialism in Central Europe is that it is happening without a propertied bourgeoisie. In all other historical sites where modern capitalism has developed, some form of private property and some class of private proprietors—no matter how embryonic, and no matter how different from modern capitalist entrepreneurs—already existed. In the classical case of transition, feudal landlords gradually converted their property into private ownership and began to be recruited into the new grande bourgeoisie. Urban artisans and merchants were busily accumulating capital, and were well positioned to transform themselves from the third estate of a feudal order into one of the fractions of the new dominant class in a capitalist mode of production. Post-communism is the first situation where the transition to private property from a collective form of ownership is being attempted. Moreover, this project is being led by the second Bildungsbürgertum—by an uneasy alliance between former communist apparatchiks, technocrats, managers and their former left-wing critics, the dissident intellectuals. In short, capitalism is being made by a coalition of property-less agents, who only yesterday outbid each other in their anticapitalism.
