"Sociology of Everyday life "Sociology of Everyday life. Lifestyles, образ жизни, Theoretical Approaches and Empirical Findings in Russia." 3. Meeting: Lifestyles, Everyday Life, Socialism and Postsocialism

Socialism’s principles egalitarianism or equality  Capitalism exploits the very people who create society’s wealth. Moralism  social justice and true liberty for all. 

Karl Marx’s key ideas - economic systems go through historic cycles over time, an economic system becomes rigid and cannot adjust to new technologies a new system emerges, with new class relations and oppression someday, a perfect classless society will emerge and there will be no further cycles

Communist Revolution Revolution will eliminate private property No longer will man have the means of exploiting another man. Bourgeoisie will fight, so revolution will be violent. A dictatorship of the proletariat will follow to weed out remaining capitalist elements.

The Worker’s Utopia In the end, a classless society with no more oppression or internal contradictions. People are able to live to their fullest potential  Consider the description in Marx’s Communist Manifesto in 1845: “In communist society, …nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes,… to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, … without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”

Real-existing socialism JÁNOS KORNAI (1980, 1988) investigated the shortage economy in Socialist societies KORNAI sees the reasons of the chronical shortage of ressources of socialist economies caused by the institutional basic structure of the economic system JÁNOS KORNAI defines an economy as a shortage economy if this shortage is manifested, obviously, intensively and chronical (not only spatial) emphazises the „primate of politics“: political institutions are responsible for the emergence of economic institutions but political and economic institutions together are stimulating the MOTIVATION STRUCTURES of a societal system and are influencing the capabilities of a national economy intermingle of previous pre-socialist structures with socialist principles have caused obstacles for economic rise of socialist systems (exception: USSR in the 1920s and 1930s)

Real-existing socialism the self-reproducing shortage in all spheres of economy causes the limited access to resources for actors the political system (socialist ones with only one-party-system) is the core point and origin for all further developments different attemps of perfektionism or reformism of the system can not be succesful as long as the position of the Communist Party is not critized centralized political system of socialist societies emphasisez state property and the absence of private ownership decentralized character of private ownership is not congruent with a totalitarian political system elimination of capitalistical forms of property was not the result of a sudden economical development process  it was the result of the conception of the Communist Party: state ownership

The view of Srubar (1991) According to Srubar, the ineffectiveness of the socialist economy combined with the Communist party power monopoly created a distinct mechanism of social integration of 'compensatory redistribution networks of goods and services‘ In a socialist shortage economy, the consumer's main worry generally was not how to get money to buy products Instead, the main problems were first, how to find information about the availability of goods, and second, how to gain access to them Both problems were solved with the help of one's social network real nature of these redistribution networks have created an atmosphere of 'functional friendship' of mutual favours

Lebensführung in Socialism and post-socialism Transformation does not only mean that market-economy "institutions" are introduced ("institution transfer") but that the economic actors at all economic levels – also at the level of private households – are acting with market behavior The everyday transformation of economic action is the basis of our concept of Lebensführung In the prior phase of transformation close institutions got lost, and the adaptation to new institutions of the market economy and the new market action required time to tune own roles and activities in the everyday practice or to define totally new Uncertainty, planning deficits, crises in the economic system of the national states are only some catchwords which can be stated for this period

Discussing Post-Communist Pathways ‘transformation’ or “transition” post-socialist development with ideal-typical text-book capitalism will be successfully? Transitions are seen as processes which carry out in stages from political liberalization, via democratisation to consolidation and/or regression of democracies Transitions are mostly restricted to the political sphere of transformations and refer to the period of transition from one type of political system to another

Discussing Post-Communist Pathways term ‚transformation’ is often used to describe developments in Middle and Eastern European States in relationship to intermingle and simultaneously processes of economic, political and social change transformational research often refers to Talcott Parsons theory of modernization  is based on the fact that after the collapse of state socialist systems, modernization theory has an advantage against Marxist approaches

Modernization Theory a theory of development and constitution of western industrial nations Stands as a synonym of modernity and progress modernization is merely the adaptation of the paragon of the highly developed capitalistic industrial nations central assumption: in the course of the process of modernization all societies develop a universal pattern of development, which maintains against regional and temporal countertendencies paradigm assumes an unilinear process of development, but: Have all Western nations taken the same way of development? Have all post-socialist countries the same preconditions?

Path dependency Path dependency theorists (e.g. North) argue for policy strategies tailored to national pathways tend to overestimate the actually attainable range of systemic diversity underestimate the constraints imposed by Western regime goals and powerful global actors concentrating on the past and origins However, they open up a potential to consider the future of Eastern European capitalism as being different from the Western European one, due to unique historical experience. main focus is on concrete, historical, and region-specific forms of emergent capitalism, distinct from the Western-European type of capitalism

Path dependency national and regional developments take divergent paths focus on how the development of an economic system is coined through different constrains and resources socio-economic transformation debate concentrates on the informal structures and relations that have come up as a reaction to the rigid and inadequate conditions of communism and planned economy Parallel structures emerged, referring to the first, legal and second, informal economy inside and outside the governmental sector networks of actors inside and between state institutions, networks among economic and political actors