ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the political and ideological agency of social forces for neoliberalization in the Eastern Central Europe transition. The increasingly neoliberal orientation of social forces throughout ECE illustrates the construction of a post-communist transition order that is adjusted to the interests of transnational social forces and their neoliberal project. Anti-politics is a multifaceted phenomenon but centres on the collapse of distinctions between the autonomous spheres of politics and economics in ECE and opposition to communist rule. The conversion of former ECE state managers to neoliberalism proved relatively straightforward, replacing one hegemonic content for another with both wrapped up an unquestioning doctrinaire orthodoxy. Traditionally, opposition in Poland and elsewhere in ECE had focused on an idealized set of values in contradistinction to communism. The Jeffrey Sachs-Leszek Balcerowicz Plan aimed to foster private economic activity to enhance the productive capacity of emergent economic order in Poland.
