20 years after wall fell, study finds less support for democracy

[Adsos Letter]

Source: Richard Allen Greene, CNN

London, England (CNN) -- A specter is haunting Eastern Europe: the ghost of Communism past.

Twenty years after the collapse of Soviet-backed communist governments across the bloc, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall, support for multiparty democracy has fallen in almost every country in the region, according to a wide-ranging new study.

Majorities still support democracy over communism in all but one of the nine countries in the survey, but only two nations have seen a rise in approval for democracy.

And support for capitalism as an economic system has fallen in every single country surveyed.

Eastern Europeans do embrace democracy and capitalism in principle, one of the survey directors said, but they are frustrated in practice.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/11/02/20.years.after.wall/index.html?eref=rss_world

[villager]

1. capitalism is simply failing somewhat more slowly than communism

n/t

[DFW]

2. American progressives should take a good look, and try to learn something

Rightly or wrongly, people want some gratification for their involvement. In America, they want it just a little faster
than in Europe, again, rightly or wrongly. In Germany, in the East, they had been subjected to a barrage fo western propaganda
telling them how much better life was in the west. So then they joined the West. Twenty years later, those in the east that have
yet to "make it" to their satisfaction are saying that belonging to the west isn't so great after all. They're right. It's not.
But I spent time "over there" before the wall fell. If you weren't a party bigshot, or connected to one, or a star athlete,
you were crap, factory fodder. It wasn't so great under Honecker. It isn't the sink-or-swim western way of doing things, but
if it was not on your nature to shut up and do as Big Brother said, you got into trouble--serious trouble.

In America, we don't get into serious trouble for opening our mouths--so far. Four or eight more years of Republican rule,
and I'm not so sure it would have remained that way. Considering the damage done by 20 years out of the last 28 under either
Reagan or one of the Bushes, I'm amazed Obama dared to utter the word "change" at all. Sure he wants it. We ALL want it. But
there's an 800 pound right wing gorilla in our living room, and even though we voted him out, he hasn't gotten around to
respecting that vote. I only hope that Obama and the Democrats in Congress come to realize that all the bananas in the world
placed outside the front door aren't going to entice the 800 pound gorilla to leave if he doesn't want to, and we are going
to have to unify our efforts in one direction to shove him out the door. If we don't, he ain't goin' nowhere.
If he isn't, then neither are we.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. They are frustrated in practice -

that's because it IS frustrating in practice. Just as communism was. In theory, both work just fine. In practice, you have to deal with human venality, pride, arrogance, indifference to others - those, and others, are the failings common to BOTH.

If they thought that adopting capitalism was going to cure all their ills they are just as wrong as their antecedents who thought that communism was going to cure all their ills.

[Seeking Serenity]

4. I do wish they'd get the nomenclature right

The opposite of "communism" is not "democracy" or vice versa. "Democracy" is a theory of governance; its opposite is some form of "authoritarianism."

"Communism" is an economic theory. Its opposite is "capitalism." One can have capitalism within a democratic governmental framework or an authoritarian one. One can have "communism" in an authoritarian framework or, theoretically, in a democratic one, although we don't have any true examples of that.

Soviet communism was nothing more than top-down, heavy-handed authoritarian socialism. If some eastern Europeans are wistful about that, then I truly feel sorry for them.