It was not just the gravity of symbols like the Reichstag or Potsdamerplatz that the would be masters of the Cold War era wanted to preserve, however, but linguistic coherence and purity. The totalitarian system developed by the Communists sought to maintain control over people’s imagination fixing and preserving the meanings of such symbols. In so doing, they unwittingly locked up the language of the Communist State itself and it became the West’s fixed referent. This iron-fisted rigidity not only allowed – it facilitated – the West in developing techniques and technologies to outmanoeuvre the East.
Free market capitalism, on the other hand, needs no encouragement to develop flexible signifying systems. The West relied not so much on everyday realism to achieve credibility, but rather, the production of fetish commodities that feed both fantasy and desire while insisting that people had the right to realise their dreams. With an innate sense of situated playfulness – that should never be taken seriously – capitalism toyed with the heavy restraining symbols of power and fear the East produced while it itself released its light-hearted symbols of individual freedom and self actualisation.