In the early stages of the upheaval in Eastern Europe, a popular parlor game was to guess who this would make more uncomfortable: the right, which had always insisted change was impossible under communism, or the left, which seemed loathe to suggest change was ever necessary. As the Year of Revolution gives way to the years of reconstruction, it's no contest: the left is squirming.

It was easy to cheer on the Poles and Czechs and Hungarians when all they seemed to want was democracy. This was non-threatening, and won you valuable points toward your ''Clear-eyed About Communism'' merit badge. But as the agenda shifts from politics to economics, and it emerges that the new democracies are scrapping not just communism, but socialism altogether - indeed, are embracing the free market with radical zeal - the alarm has been raised.

It's still possible to claim the East Europeans don't really mean it. Globe & Mail theatre critic Ray Conlogue carefully instructed readers not to make the mistake of thinking Vaclav Havel's plays were ''anti-Communist.'' That may ''understandably'' be the impression but really the new Czechoslovakian president was criticizing ''modern mass society'' in general.

A step up the reality scale, Toronto Star columnist Gerry Caplan is convinced they mean it - they're just mistaken. He, too, is indulgent enough to say it is ''understandable'' they should reject socialism ''under the circumstances.'' Nonetheless, he is forced to rebuke Lech Walesa for his ''incessant tributes to the free market.'' What, after all, can be the expertise of Walesa, who has known both the realities of socialism and the responsibilities of power, compared to that of Caplan, who has known neither?

DARK VICTORY

The most common reaction, however, is to concede that markets have won but to taint this as, in the words of a Toronto Star feature writer, a ''dark victory.'' In this interpretation, the triumph of the West is but the triumph of greed: hardly occasion for celebration. It would greatly enhance the persuasiveness of these critics of the market economy if they gave some evidence of having really studied or understood the arguments of their opponents. But they still seem to think the case for free markets begins and ends with a rather grotesque bundle of self- serving prejudices. It would appear the whole of classical economic theory, from Adam Smith on down, amounts to the following: remove all constraints on the pursuit of self-interest. Out of the ensuing competitive chaos, the strongest individuals will prosper. Either this in itself is desirable, or (more charitably) some wealth will eventually ''trickle down'' to the poor.

A clue to just how much of a perversion of the true case for the market this is can be found in the name most commonly applied to it: ''capitalism.'' This Marxist term wholly misplaces the market's true dynamic. The free market is a consumer's creed, not an apologia for capitalists. Its intent is not to ''free'' enterprise but to enslave it - to the consumer. Its motive force is not greed but individual will. The market makes no comment on how that will should express itself: whether as greed, or altruism, or any number of other motives. It merely acknowledges that greed may be one of them. As we are reminded with each day's news, from the Olympian rapacity of a Honecker or Ceausescu to the everyday grasping of countless subordinates, the human capacity for greed is not a function of a particular system.

The purpose of the market is to integrate those separate individual wills into a socially beneficial order. Its organizing principle is not so much competition, as co-operation, through mutually beneficial exchange. Competition is merely the means to assure the principle of co-operation is observed.

As such, the market produces not chaos, but order. Because it is rooted in choice, rather than coercion, the price system is a far more binding and inescapable system of regulation than centrally determined rules. It is when politics are substituted for markets that chaos truly reigns, for then all is lost in the mad rush to control or curry favor with the state.

Last, to subscribe to the limited doctrine of a free market in the allocation of resources says nothing of one's views on the distribution of income. It only suggests redistribution take place through channels that do not distort markets. Indeed, as English essayist Rodney Atkinson said, free markets ''do not reduce the power of the state: they strengthen it, in its true role as . . . the controller of the strong, the protector of the weak.''