![]() It is very important in this climate of euphoric opinion to think again about the words and their meanings and to redefine recent history. Fukuyama, the new favourite author of the neo-liberal Right, talks about the ‘end of history’ and the final victory of the ‘universal homogeneous state’, defined as ‘liberal democracy in the political sphere combined with easy access to vcr’s and stereos in the economic.’ footnote 1 ![]() What is happening, according to mainstream commentators, is the decisive defeat of socialism and the triumph of liberal (actually neo-liberal) values and policies. The Right is claiming the revolutions of 1989 as its victory. Now the political systems in Central Europe have collapsed and the Soviet system is under severe challenge. It described the West as ‘capitalist’ and the East as ‘socialist’, and explained the conflict in terms of the expansionary nature of capital and the unwillingness of capitalism to tolerate any alternative. Even though the Western Left was, for the most part, sharply critical of Stalinism, it still characterized the Cold War as a conflict between capitalism and socialism. They disagreed about which word was good and which was bad. ![]() The Cold War has always been a discourse, a conflict of words, ‘capitalism’ versus ‘socialism’. Words and history-a collection of words used to describe the past-have demonstrated their power in East-Central Europe over the last few months. The way we describe the world, the words we use, shape how we see the world and how we decide to act. This has been the essence of much of Havel’s political writings. E ast Europeans always emphasize the power of words.
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