The End of the System

Abstract

Why did the system collapse? Why did it collapse so quickly following the first jolt? In the 1980s it had become commonplace to predict that the system could not go on like this and was doomed. However, everybody was taken by surprise, even those who anticipated the ultimate outcome. I remember listening in 1990 to a lecture by Janos Kis, the Hungarian former dissident philosopher involved in political action after the beginning of the transition: ‘Anyone who’d tell me to-day that a year ago he predicted what would happen is a liar. Anyone who’d tell me to-day that he knows where we are going to stand one year from now is a charlatan.’