Abstract
What is the impact of the transition on us? Isn’t it indecent to ask the question when the transition directly and direly affects millions of people in their everyday lives? But isn’t it also an implicit question that goes beyond the assistance programmes to the countries involved, the moral support, and the interest of the general public? We have to reconsider our own system, our values, our future. It also leads to a reconsideration of the relations between the developed and the developing world. North-South (i.e. West— South) relations were simpler when communism ruled a part of the world. Inadequate as they were, it could always be pointed out that East-South relations did not bring about a better solution for enhancing development. The transition is the end of a war, which was described as ‘cold’. A symposium in 1992 was aptly devoted to the Economic Consequences of the East, an allusion to the famous book by Keynes published in 1919, The Economic Consequences of Peace (CEPR, 1992a). How will the world look once transition is over, if it ever is? This a new story, no longer about transition, but about the future of capitalism. As Lester Thurow writes: ‘With the end of communism … those already living under capitalism will find that digesting this mass of humanity and geography profoundly alters the shape of their economic world’ (Thurow, 1996, p. 8).
Salt is good; but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned?
(Holy Bible, King James Version, St Luke, 14:34)
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© 1999 Marie Lavigne
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Lavigne, M. (1999). Conclusion. In: The Economics of Transition. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27313-3_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27313-3_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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