Markets

This chapter deals with market regulations and consumption policies in the three Euroepan 20th century post-wars. Post 89 occurred in a phase of neoliberal market globalisation, which determined the framework within which the restructuring of the Eastern European economies happened. The rapid establishment of a liberal market economy was considered a priority in order both to attract private investments and to create the conditions for entering the European Union. This process was significantly different from that occurred after the Second World War as the European reconstruction was led by the World emerging Empires according to different economic and social patterns: a regulated market economy within a Keynesian conception of capitalism; a stately led production and consumption system within a socialist society. In the Eastern bloc there was an extension of the Soviet system implemented in Russia as an answer to the first world war crisis. In Western Europe, by means of the Marshall plan, there was an attempt to create a new confidence in the market as a fundamental tool to pursue prosperity. This approach was considered to be necessary in order to avoid the repetition of the the disastrous experience of the first post-war economic settlements.