During Perestroika, when there was a massive attack on the minds of Soviet people, the idea of having the right to choose was one of the dominant ones. The arguments of liberals and democrats, who were advocating free market economy, were based exactly on that – on people having the right to choose, something that a person living in a socialist society amidst government planning doesn’t have, they said, because someone from above decides everything and that means your will is being ignored and you don’t have any freedom of choice. At first glance all this demagogy sounds nice and pretty, that’s why many people in the USSR actually bought it. But, in reality, it turned out that behind all those seemingly righteous words there was very rotten content. Now, having lived under capitalism for 30 years, we understand that very well.

So where is the flaw in those arguments and how exactly were the Soviet people fooled back in Perestroika? Continue reading →