Papers > By author > Petkovska Sanja

Despite a problem of differences under capitalism that are regionally and culturally grounded has been addressed long time ago (especially within the word system theory and theory of uneven development), it seems that this problem has been widely neglected not only among international politicians, but also among most of economist and social scientists. This problem is not only neglected among actors coming from capitalist "center", it is as well neglected among the politicians and social scientists coming from the rest of the world commonly labeled as "undeveloped". A persistent dominance of positivistic paradigm has made it very difficult to articulate the developmental framework for all the rest of the countries of the world otherwise than to put it under the joint box of "varieties of capitalism" (Hancké, Rhodes, Thatcher 2007). Despite indisputable varieties they share common characteristics contrary to what was projected by Rostow's scheme: they are obviously not "catching up" the imagined ideal of economic development under the prevalent capitalist mode of production. Still, they are very heavily subjected to this model and there is no any indication that someone is working on alternative plan for those countries in the future.

Recently, many authors have spoken about postsocialist capitalism (Bandelj 2016; Bartha 2013; Sallai & Schnyder 2018; Swan 2011). Besides the effort to signify those countries once upon a time organized according to a socialist model as different and identify some of the traits that makes them so, it seems that in general there was no unified tendency for these differences to be observed in the context of the broader context of the structure of international economy and politics of its development. For this to be accomplished, a dominant political model of economic development has to be decolonized in order to be clear that for most postsocialist countries economic future will be something completely different than idealistic model of knowledge society that still dominantly shapes policies within postsocialist countries. What will this mean for the international economy as such? Whose role should be to break the silence that these countries are heading to being economically and socially rapidly devastated in the near future and to initiate imagination of some different models of economic development that could bring hope?

Therefore, a main purpose of this paper is to rearticulate and renovate a discussion of why a problem of economic depression of postsocialist countries has been widely neglected within international economy, both in social science and political practice. Are those countries actually "written off" as anything else but markets and eventually suppliers of knowledge workers for the countries considered as developed? What the consequences are for economy, politics, society and culture in those countries if that is the case? Why no politicians appears in those countries with any alternative agenda but silent subordination to dominant international agenda based on (cognitive) capitalism? By analyzing what has been written on this topic and actual trends, this paper seeks to summarize the debate and indicate some future considerations about how to think the difference of postsocialsit capitalism and (im)possible ways out.