Clarissa's Blog

During yesterday’s show, I spoke about the profound breach that formed in the early 1990s in the post-Soviet space between the people who had managed to inscribe themselves into capitalism and those who hadn’t. The capitalism that came to the post-Soviet space was fully neoliberal. It was nothing like the capitalism that at that time existed in developed countries.

Neoliberalism was tried at first at the peripheries of the global economy. It was done, introduced slowly, into the center. It accelerated after the global economic crisis of 2008 everywhere. We are now experiencing a similar split here in the United States between those who are inscribing themselves into the neoliberal economy and those who are not managing to do that.

I am a lot kinder and understanding towards the non-inscribed Americans than to the non-inscribed post-Soviets. The non-inscribed post-Soviets were clinging to socialism, a system that did not work and could not work. The non-inscribed Americans today are nostalgic for a system that did work. It was a kinder, gentler capitalism of nation-states. The non-inscribed Soviets want something worse than what they were getting. The non-inscribed Americans want something better, something that they used to have and that is being taken away from them.

I’m completely pro capitalism, but I’m pro the previous form of capitalism than the one that is currently coming into existence.