Writing in Knowledge and Decisions (1980, p. 132), Thomas Sowell argued that "The incumbant leader of the Soviet Union at any given time could make himself more popular by liberalizing government restrictions or be reducing military spending and allowing the people's standard of living to rise accordingly. The immediate dangers to his own regime during his own term of office could be minimal, yet the larger danger to the internal and external goals of the Communist party could well be sufficiently serious to cause that party to depose the leader for even trying to initiate such reforms."
Twenty-five years later in, of all places, the Monthly Review a Chinese anthropology graduate student at U of Chicago, Yiching Wu, writes: "The path of marketization begins as the passive strategy of the ruling class for self-preservation and political appeasement, yet eventually it turns into their end-game or exit strategy—their massive self-transformation from power-holders to capital owners."
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