#  The specter of “Zombie socialism” 

 





April 07, 2018

 

 

 Yesterday, I read a fascinating article by Liviu Chelcea and Oana Druta in the *Eurasian Geography and Economics* from 2016. In this article, the authors argue that East European elites deploy a type of “zombie socialism” to prevent popular resistance to the violence and misery of contemporary klepto-capitalism, something that I have also found in my own work, and especially in reactions to my own work. They write:

 The obsessive references to the socialist past have had constitutive powers, creating a particularly strong version of neoliberalism. Zombie socialism arguments have become a convenient and strategic ideological device for furthering social dumping, increasing inequalities, and reducing support for redistributive policies. In this sense, in its post-1989 negation, socialism continues to be extremely relevant: the usage of spectral and mythological representations of socialism, has, for the winners of transition, the capacity to preempt social justice claims and to structure political relations in the allocation of wealth.

 This makes some sense of all of the “Victims of Communism” memorials and days of commemoration, but also the insistence of some of my East European colleagues – who personally benefitted from restitution after 1989, won scholarships to study abroad for their anti-communist work, and now have jobs in the West where they stridently defend the totalitarian thesis – that communism was an unmitigated evil. Perhaps Zombie socialism is a way of ensuring that the legal procedures that allowed you to inherit your nice restituted apartment in the center of Sofia or Berlin doesn’t get questioned or reversed…

 Liviu Chelcea and Oana Druta, “Zombie socialism and the rise of neoliberalism in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe.” *Eurasian Geography and Economics*, 57: 4-5, 2016: 521-544



 

 

 



 

 

 Share on:- [     Facebook ](#)
- [     Twitter ](#)
- [     Linkedin ](#)