Grey Zones of Entrepreneurship and Hybrid Patterns of Property in CEE and their Potential Longer Term Consequences: The Case of the Czech Republic
Abstract
In the consequence of the legal weakening of the category of state/collective ownership in favor of private ownership, (in the sense that state/collectively ownership has been too frequently privately exploited depending on individuals’ social access and disrespect for the rule of law and ethical norms) economic exchanges in the post-socialist era stopped being clearly distinguishable along the lines of state/collective—private or group interest. The newly emerging post-socialist world has been characterized by a variety of crucial areas and mechanisms of murky exchanges which would be regarded as clearly illegal in the Western context, but which in CEE substantially contributed to the “founding” of private capital and the speedy injection of it into the veins of the new free-market system under construction.
The illegal and unethical practices implemented in acquiring ownership may have long discredited the very concept of private ownership. These hybrid practices implemented in acquiring ownership may have long affected the very concept of private ownership and shape post-socialist entrepreneurship on the borderline of public and private spheres.
Thus, developments in CEE suggest a certain reevaluation of the clear-cut public-private distinction principle. Illegality in economic life in an advanced free market system tends to occur rather on an individual basis, in contrast to the situation, in transition and post-transition economies, wherein illegal and shadowy economic activities rest very near to the fundamentals of the new socio-economic order and are constituted as an everyday practice.).