In the mortality belt of the European former Soviet Union, an aggressive health policy intervention might have prevented tens of thousands of excess … - Kristen R. Ghodsee

Finally, to prevent the ascendance of a resurgent far right, we need to get past our red hangover and recognize the pros and cons of both liberal democracy and state socialism in an effort to promote a system that gives us the best of both. Like the sudden collapse of communism, the days of liberal democracy may be numbered, and the West could soon face its own equivalent of November 9, 1989. Twentieth-century communism failed because the ideals of communism had been betrayed by the leaders who ruled in its name. When the reforms came, they came too late: ordinary people had already given up on the system. Today, democratically elected leaders too often betray the ideals of democracy and those who are calling for reform may also be too late. Citizens across Europe and the United States have lost faith in the system, and global capitalism's final crisis could be just around the corner. Perhaps in this moment of dramatic rupture, we will have the opportunity to rethink the democratic project and finally do the work necessary to either rescue it from the death grip of neoliberalism, or replace it with a new political ideal that leads us forward to a new stage of human history.

Without an accompanying welfare state in which social programs funded by a progressive income tax redistribute from the rich to the poor, capitalism can be a deeply unfair system where a small, well-connected elite captures a majority of the wealth and power, and not necessarily through meritocratic processes.

Stubborn and perhaps a bit naive, I persisted and spent the late 1990s living and dong research in Eastern Europe, watching firsthand the slow and painful transformation of a state-owned economy into one of unfettered free markets. I observed that women were more likely than men to express a longing for the state socialist past because of the many tangible benefits women lost with the coming of democracy and capitalism. The privatization and liberalization of the economy had disproportionately affected women who lost access to once generous social safety nets that allowed them to more easily combine work and family responsibilities before 1989. Since those early days interviewing chambermaids and receptionists on the Black Sea, I have spent the rest of my career studying the lived experience of state socialism and the effects of postsocialism on ordinary lives in Eastern Europe.