Abstract
The paper compares the discussions about the economic reform in the 1960's and 1990's. Besides pointing out the obvious differences in the political conditions of the two eras, it focuses on the specific issue of the workers' councils and the way their existence was either accepted or refused by the political agents.
The supporters of the councils based their arguments on the ideas of the economic democracy, which saw the organization of the economic relations according to the democratic principles as one of the main objectives of the reforms. This approach gained substantial popularity in 1968; in 1989 it was initially supported by some workers collectives (which had been actively engaged in the revolution), but (unlike in 1968) heavily opposed by the governmental officials and economic experts.
Analysing this difference, the paper argues that the difference between 1968 and post-1989 economic reform was not only a difference between economic programmes, but also a difference between the political concepts of what the democracy looks like. Also, the early 1990's saw a change in the way the economic interests are represented in the political discourse; this shift from the collectivist to the more individual and citizen-orientated identities has been already analyzed for the era 1970-2000 in Western world and it seems that the post-communist transformation saw similar processess happening in the East during the early 1990's.