The book discusses the economic and some of the political and social causes of the collapse of the socialist system in Poland, the former Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The causes of the former Soviet Union's own collapse are briefly examined, in order to explain its role in the demise of socialism. Political factors played at least as important a role as economic factors in the breakdown.

Of the economic factors the most important were the increasing gap between the East and the West in the level of technology, unfavourable developments in the standard of living, the excessive socialisation of the means of production, and growing indebtedness. Systemic and economic policy factors should be blamed for this development. Economic reforms did not succeed because, in the 1960's, they did not go far enough and, in the 1980's, it was too late.

Of the political factors the most important were lack of legitimacy, erosion of the socialist ideology, disintegration of the communist parties, and the abandonment of Brezhnev's doctrine.