Economic images and social change in the Romanian socialist transformation

Abstract

To summarize the uses of economic images in the socialist transformation, change in local and state forms both modeled changes in national class relations and sought to shape that same process. Clearly, though, state images have triumphed for the moment. Though first less than compelling when opposed to the symbolically expressed solidarity of the local community, they have since come to dominate the ideological evaluations of local workers. Simultaneously the local community witnessed a massive social transformation where such unity as it existed, however artificial, was replaced by a more atomized social structure partially eroded by the promise of material plenty. Thus, at first, state images assisted the formation of the Romanian proletariate as a class “in itself.” Today, however, with political stability generally assured and increased production an absolute necessity, one can observe the reformulation of class boundaries via state-promulgated differentiation as well as the erosion of working class consciousness, class “for itself,” under consumerist pressures. Workers' solidarity, purposefully engendered in post-war state images, was rarely achieved in the Făgăras region. Since the mid-1960s the expansion of consumerist images especially prevents its formation. Over time the counterhegemonic qualities of local images are replaced by those which accept the socialist system and question only certain of its material results. Until the recent debt crisis local images have been hauntingly silent about production relations. This need not be permanent. The disaggregation of the local community, assisted by state image manipulaton, is a historical moment. The hegemony of state iconography also carries the possibility of its own dissolution. The spectra of Romania as socialist and luxurious may yet foment worker solidarity due to unfulfilled expectations. As the debt crisis deepens, dependency intensifies, and workers experience more of the rationing and shortages common of late, the legitimacy of Romania's hyper-industrialization may once again be questioned. It is in great measure through economic iconography that Romania's socialist governments have legitimized themselves. As hierarchy is elaborated and on-line production relations made stringent to address the current fiscal crisis, it is through industry, as expressed in local folk images, that such legitimacy may be undermined.