'Today, communism appears to many as a historic stupidity and, without a shadow of a doubt, capitalism has victoriously emerged as the dominant paradigm.' However, this view is 'too short-sighted and conditioned by the recent demise of communism', as such a simplistic view neglects 'at least two points.

'First, the realisation of any theory always differs from the theoretic model which, at any rate, captures only part of societal organsation. History and the distribution of social and political values interfere with the economic model. For example, only under very restrictive assumptions could it be claimed that, say, colonial capitalism was superior to Soviet communism.

'Second, because the working class suffered from unbearable misery during the take-off phase of the now successfully developed capitalist countries - a misery during still prevalent throughout the developing world - the Marxist vision gave hope to large fractions of society of both developed and developing countries, a hope that capitalism was unable to provide.' (emphasise added)

- D. Gros and A. Steinherr