Toward post-totalitarianism

Agnes Heller

pp. 50-55

in: Vladimir Tismaneanu, Judith Shapiro (eds), Debates on the future of communism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1991

Abstract

If reforms are defined as changes which are consciously and purposefully devised by political and social authorities and subsequently implemented by men and women subject to such authorities, then there is little doubt that communist regimes have always been reformed, are now being reformed and will certainly be reformed in the future. The more important question is whether or not communist regimes can cease to be communist as a result of purposefully devised changes in the social and political order which are implemented from above.