A useful and interesting corrective; an excerpt:

Mass democratic mobilisations have, in fact, existed at the heart of these regimes: workers’ riots in June 1953 in Berlin, workers’ councils in Poland and Hungary in 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968 (prolonged by the birth of the Czech workers’ councils), the revolutionary trade unionism of Solidarność (Solidarity) in Gdansk, Poland, in 1980. It is this history that the liberal interpretation of 1989 obliterates or falsifies — and tries to appropriate by presenting it as anti-communist. These popular movements fought, not to re-establish capitalism, but on the contrary in the name of socialist ideals….Capitalism’s triumph did not arise from a mass desire, but a choice made by the communist nomenklatura: to transform its privileges of function into privileges of ownership…..