UN reports grim facts
Socialist breakup in Eastern Europe devastates workers
By Brian
Becker
The United Nations Development Program's 1999 Annual Report
on Human Development reveals a shocking growth of poverty and
gross inequality in the former republics of the Soviet Union
and the other former socialist-bloc countries in Eastern
Europe.
This report provides hard evidence that living conditions
are plummeting for working people in these newly capitalist
countries. Except during wartime, it is hard to find a
comparable social catastrophe in this century.
The report's findings should give pause to all those who are
being swept up in the glib U.S.-inspired campaign to carry out
a counter-revolutionary overthrow of the elected government of
Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia.
Much more is at stake than the fate of one leader, or even
of the Serbian Socialist Party and the Party of the United
Left.
The consequences of capitalist counter-revolution are
unambiguous. In Russia between 1989 and 1996, the report says,
wages fell 48 percent. Income derived from rent, meaning
landlords' profits, jumped to 23 percent.
During the days of the Soviet Union, rent was restricted to
no more than 5 percent of a worker's wage. The money went into
social funds administered by the state. There was no such thing
as landlords.
The report goes on: "There are [other] serious human
deprivations. Between 1989 and 1996 male life expectancy [in
Russia] declined by more than four years, to 60."
Throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union "the
transition from centrally planned to market economies was
accompanied by large changes in the distribution of national
wealth and income. Data on income inequality indicate that
these changes were the fastest ever recorded."
What counter-revolution means for women
The streets in the Soviet Union were considered very safe.
The crime rate was very low.
The report documents how homicides, illegal drug
trafficking, prostitution and organized crime have come to
dominate the new capitalist Russia and the other Eastern
European countries.
Women are being killed in Russia in record numbers. A report
published in 1997 revealed that the murder rate of women had
risen sevenfold between 1990 and 1997.
Sexual slavery has returned with a vengeance. "An estimated
500,000 women are trafficked each year from Eastern Europe and
the CIS [former republics of the Soviet Union] to Western
Europe. An estimated 15,000 Russians and East Europeans work in
Germany's red light districts. In the Netherlands 57 percent of
the trafficked women are under 21," according to the
report.
The UN report documents that growing inequality, class
polarization and poverty are rampant around the globe. Before
the counter-revolutionary overthrow of the socialist
governments from 1989 to 1991, the countries associated with
the USSR and the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe were largely
protected from the ravages of world capitalism. State-owned or
publicly-owned property, central planning and a state monopoly
on foreign trade prevented Western corporations from plundering
their land, resources and labor.
So-called globalization, or the unhindered movement of
private capital, took on momentum after the collapse of the
socialist governments. This was also devastating for the
so-called Third World countries. No longer enjoying a trade
alternative to the world capitalist economy, many developing
countries have been forced to accept the dictates of the
International Monetary Fund's Structural Adjustment
Programs.
This meant privatizing industry, usually to be bought up by
foreign corporations. It also meant slashing social programs
for the people and reducing wages.
"The world's 200 richest people more than doubled their net
worth in the four years [up] to 1998, to more than $1
trillion," the report states.
"The assets of the top three billionaires are more than the
combined Gross National Product (GNP) of all the least
developed countries and their 600 million people."
This is not a momentary trend of world capitalism. The flow
of wealth from the people of the world to a handful of
imperialist countries is rapidly increasing as a result of
globalization.
"The income gap between the fifth of the world's people
living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest
was 74 to one in 1997," the report states.
It was 30 to one in 1960.
Of course, the statistics about the "richest countries"
don't really tell the whole story. In these countries a small
handful of the population controls and benefits from the lion's
share of the wealth. In the United States, for instance, just 1
percent of the population owns 40 percent of the wealth; the
top 10 percent controls 80 percent of the wealth.
Capitalism has rapidly developed industrial and
technological capability. It creates new wealth. One might
think such a capability would alleviate or end poverty and
hunger.
But because this staggering wealth belongs to the
capitalists rather than society, the opposite is true.
"About 840 million people are malnourished ... nearly 1.3
billion live on less than a dollar a day, and close to 1
billion cannot meet their basic consumption requirements," the
report states. "Nearly 160 million children are malnourished
and more than 250 million children are working as child
laborers."
A social catastrophe
During its existence the Soviet Union's economy grew
consistently. In spite of Western trade embargoes and sanctions
the USSR grew to be the second- or third-biggest economy in the
world.
With the exception of 1941 to 1944--the years of the Nazi
invasion--the Soviet Union never experienced a period of
economic recession, or negative growth, between 1921 and 1985.
Recessions and depressions, which are fundamental to capitalist
society, were avoided altogether.
Since the counter-revolution in 1991, production in Russia
has fallen 50 percent. According to World Bank estimates, if
the current trend continues, Russia will slip to 13th in total
production by 2010--behind Brazil, Taiwan, Indonesia and
Italy.
Unemployment, unheard of until 1990, now includes at least
one out of every 10 workers. The real average income of
working-class families has dropped to about one-quarter of what
it was in 1990.
The International Labor Organization, a United Nations
agency, describes what it calls the "appalling growth" of the
number of people living in poverty in the USSR and the former
socialist camp. The ILO reports that 100 million people in
Russia live below the official poverty line.
These shocking statistics are replicated in other former
socialist countries in Eastern Europe. In Bulgaria, 73 percent
of the people now live in poverty. The rate is 50 percent in
Poland.
Meaning for Yugoslavia
In Yugoslavia eight years of war and economic sanctions
imposed by the United States and the major European countries
have already brought significant damage to the workers' living
standards.
Considerable damage was also inflicted in 1990 when Yugoslav
Prime Minister Ante Markovic launched a program of privatizing
or shutting down state-owned industry, cutting back on social
programs and freezing wages. The United States backed Markovic
in his effort to fully restore capitalism.
Between January and October 1990, Markovic's "market reform"
led to a sharp decline in workers' living standards. Within
nine months it dropped by 18 percent, while industrial
production fell by 10.4 percent and the prices for consumer
goods doubled.
But U.S. plans for a cold counter-revolution in Yugoslavia
were suddenly stymied when the "reforms" were halted in October
1990. Even more unhappily for the United States, Markovic was
ousted.
The current Yugoslav government led by Slobodan Milosevic
was widely criticized in the U.S. media in 1996 for reversing
the path toward privatization in the economy. As the Washington
Post wrote in its Aug. 4, 1996, edition: "Milosevic failed to
understand the political message of the fall of the Berlin Wall
... . ... while the other Communist politicians [in Eastern
Europe] accepted the Western model ... Milosevic went the other
way."
How is it that Milosevic could change course and reverse the
trend to full-scale capitalist restoration? It is because the
Yugoslav state apparatus, which was created in the cauldron of
a profound socialist revolution during World War II, is not
under the domination of a Yugoslav capitalist class.
Milosevic, and Tito before him, made many harmful
compromises with imperialism. They promoted economic
decentralization as against centralized planning. This spurred
the growth of an acquisitive bourgeois class among the various
nationalities and republics in the old Yugoslavia. But the
class character of the state apparatus has not been
fundamentally altered. It has not fallen under the domination
of the Yugoslav bourgeoisie.
The Clinton administration's efforts to destabilize and
overthrow the Milosevic government are not intended simply to
remove one leader and replace him with another. More is at
stake.
The imperialist governments want to change the class
structure in Yugoslavia to guarantee the full-scale restoration
of capitalism. The dire consequences of such a
counter-revolution are evidenced by the now evident catastrophe
that has befallen the working class in Russia and throughout
the region.
Milosevic is the elected leader of Yugoslavia. He still
retains a solid base of support among many workers who may not
agree with all his policies but fear a takeover of the country
by out-and-out capitalist forces of reaction.
How many times has the United States demanded "elections" in
other countries so that CIA-supported candidates could stand a
chance? How interesting that this is not the case in Yugoslavia
today.
"Let's forget about elections. I'm in favor of putschist
methods. He's got to go without elections," said Vesna Pesic, a
leader of the anti-Milosevic opposition. Pesic was awarded a
medal by President Bill Clinton "for her work for democracy,"
according to a recent New York Times article.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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