O analiză critică a tranziţiei II. România în ianuarie 2012 – Către ce ne îndreptăm?

• Main Author: Cătălin Zamfir
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Expert Projects 2013-07-01
• Series: Sociologie Românească
• Subjects: transition; neofeudal state; prosperous capitalism; precarious capitalism
• Online Access: https://arsociologie.ro/revistasociologieromaneasca/sr/article/view/507
• ISSN: 1220-5389; 2668-1455

In 2004 I thought that what was called „transition” had been completed and a new perspective for Romania had been opened. As a sociologist I published a book on critical analysis of those 15 years of profound social change. I was wrong. Another 7 years of confusion and sorrow has followed. In January 2012 I considered a new critical analysis of transition was necessary and I wrote this paper. The paper has two parts. The first part is dedicated to the analysis of the state in the process of transition. Arguments are brought out that state had been a key variable of the entire process of changes. There was a competition between two structural tendencies: on the one hand what is usually called promotion of the legal state; on the other hand we can identify a strong structural tendency what I call neofeudal state: the state as an important source of exploration of its resources by the new groups in power; a transfer of the public resources not from up to down, but contrary from down to up. The neofeudal state is responsible for the economic destructive process of privatisation and for producing the mechanisms of neofeudal exploration of the state and population what are usually called corruption. The second part of the paper try to identify the historical alternatives Romania has in the present situation: a prosperous capitalism and socially cohesive or a precarious capitalism socially polarised.