Yeltsin gets desperate: of markets and the capitalist mode of pro- Market prices by New Year's Day?

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Yeltsin's plan will mean increased misery for Russian workers and peasants.

socialized economic system to a capitalist, market-driven economy is proving to be far 10 SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1991 By NAT In Moscow, on Oct. 28, Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian republic, declared that the time had come to act "decisively, sternly, without hesitation."

Speaking to the Congress of Peoples Deputies, the highest parliamentary assembly in the Russian republic, Yeltsin warned that the people must brace themselves for the pain of a complete, instant decontrol of all prices to take place before the end of this year. Yeltsin went on to hold out the hope that the bitter medicine he wants to administer will cure the collapsing economy:

"I appeal to all citizens of Russia to understand that a one-shot change to market-controlled prices is a dire, compulsory but inescapable step. After a half year," he optimistically predicted, "prices will decline, consumer goods will begin to appear on the market. And by the fall of 1992, as I promised before the elections, the economy will stabilize, life will gradually begin to improve."

But there are at least two things wrong with Yeltsin's seemingly frank scenario. His medicine will be far more bitter than he lets on. First of all, he has no intention to let all prices peacefully find their levels in the market place. We can be certain that wages (the price of a day's work) will not be allowed to freely—or peacefully-rise in line with all other prices. This is because capitalist market relations dictate that the owners of all other commodities must be free to refuse to offer their goods for sale if the market price is too low, while workers must not be permitted to exercise the same right with the same degree of freedom.

And secondly, there is no evidence that even the most extreme leap can take Russia, or any of the other republics, onto a new economic playing field, where it is hoped that the laws of capitalism will pull these economies out of the tailspins they are in. It's certainly not likely for at least years to come-if at all!

Lessons of the Polish experience Ironically, Yeltsin's "decision" to take a fateful running jump into a market-driven economy was made almost simultaneously with the Polish election, which registered a massive protest against the same medicine administered to the sick Polish economy. Poland's "reforms," widely regarded as the most extreme in Eastern Europe, have left Polish workers and their ailing economy sicker than ever.

Just prior to the Polish election an economist there, Tomas Telma, with the pro-capitalist consulting firm, Planecon, argued that Poland was on the road to capitalism. But, he said: "It may take Poland another five to seven years to get back to where it was in 1989"

The election results testified to the outrage of Polish workers, whose wages were kept under much greater constraint while prices freely rose in accord with the capitalist law of supply and demand. The result is that store shelves are now bulging with all kinds of quality goods and workers no longer have to stand in line for hours. But although there are now plenty of quality goods to buy without waiting, they mostly remain out of the workers' reach just the same.

And worse; living standards for the great majority are sharply down and unemployment has reached 11 percent of the workforce and is rising. However, widespread strikes by Polish workers forced President Lech Walesa's pro-capitalist government to pacify them by maintaining low, administered prices on vital necessities and by making other ameliorating concessions.

Thus the economy remains in crisis because the resistance of workers has blocked the Walesa regime from achieving its goal of a "free" market. That goal requires elimination of the remaining social guarantees. Despite inroads already made, these guarantees still keep a firmer floor under wages and a higher level of security for the unemployed than is possible in a truly market-driven economy.

But major capitalist investments will not be made until the key to a real market economy is in place. That key is a level of worker insecurity that will give the purchasers of labor power the upper hand in maintaining the lowest possible labor costs.

And even then, the huge costs required to build new modern plants or modernize the old ones would be justified only if there were markets for the avalanche of new competitive goods that would pour forth. This dilemma has not failed to cross the minds of potential investors in the capitalist world.

So far in every one of these countries the privatizers have held back from taking decisive steps toward a market system out of fear that it would provoke workers to take actions that might prove uncontrollable. The ruling groups know that any successful major defensive struggle may not stop there. Such defensive victories are an invitation to go further, to mount a counter-offensive to gain new ground. And, they know, worker victories in one sector have the nasty habit of inspiring workers elsewhere to follow the example of their victorious class sisters and brothers.

The attempt to retrogress from a socialized economic system to a capitalist, market-driven economy is proving to be far more difficult than anyone imagined. The most aggressive campaign yet to leap to capitalism, in Poland, has not met with success. And, ironically, Poland is currently in a capitalist-style recession just the same. Moreover, in all of these countries, which are still far from crossing over into capitalist "paradise," a new crop of entrepreneurs manages to continue to add themselves to the growing ranks of exCommunist Party millionaires.

This does little to induce workers and farmers to accept the much greater sacrifices needed before foreign capital will agree to invest on a scale sufficient to at least bring the economy to pre-1989 levels—much less to fulfill the promise of Westem-style living standards. Meanwhile, world imperialism continues to stall, even in providing emergency assistance to the dangerously destabilized Soviet regime.

Can history be turned back?

It took thousands of years of class society to develop an elaborate system of commodity exchange before capitalism could come into existence. The pre-existing slave and feudal societies permitted the benign growth of markets in every village, town and city—an indispensable precondition for capitalism. In the course of many of commodities were abolished in one stroke. The most important blow against the power of the feudal lords, the freeing of the serfs, was at the same time the unlocking of a vast supply of free labor for capitalist exploitation.

That opened the door to a much accelerated expansion of capitalist production and ultimately an integrated world marketplace.

For serfs, their transformation from being chained to the land to being chained to the capitalist class amounted, on balance, to an enormous leap forward. In the France of 1789, the masses were spurred to revolutionary struggle to carry through the capitalist revolution. Their battle cry was the truly inspiring slogan: "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality!" We don't hear such lofty slogans coming from the mouths of the masses in Eastern Europe. We hear only their cries of pain and the snorting of aspiring capitalists as they wheel and deal, producing nothing but misery for the masses and personal fortunes for the few.

When the political representatives of French capitalism, in the 18th century, called on the masses of urban plebians and rural serfs to join in a glorious capitalist revolution they were able to get an enthusiastic response from millions prepared to die for a system of freedom and equality under the law and the promise of economic progress.

Similarly, when the political representatives of Russian workers, in 1917, called on the masses to struggle for land, peace and bread-and then for the overthrow of Czarism and capitalism to achieve it, millions were again prepared to die for the promise of a better life.

Where is the inspiration?

But it's not the same when an entirely reactionary social group attempts to restore an outmoded social system. History is not on the side of those who want to make the clock run backward.

What slogans can the developing owning classes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union raise to inspire the masses to sacrifice for so-called reforms that not only go backward but leave the same oppressive bureaucratic caste-turned capitalist-to rule over a privatized economy?

The Soviet privatizers began their march toward capitalism in 1985 with control of the means of production and of the state firmly in their grasp-something available to no other force in history which sought to make fundamental changes in the social order. But even with this enormous advantage, they have failed to make a breakthrough anywhere. One grand plan after another has bit the dust because of the resistance of the workers.

Gorbachev's perestroika, a scheme for making a gradual transition to capitalism, failed. The much heralded 500-day plan went down the drain before it could get off the drawing boards. Yeltsin's latest plan may well meet a similar fate.

It is symptomatic that despite Yeltsin's tough-sounding talk, his main message amounts to a plea to the workers to accept further sacrifices. His argument boils down to the bare assertion that things have to be made much worse before they can get better.

In any case, the showdown will come when the bureaucracy and its allies in the disintegrating Soviet Union conclude that capitalism can be brought back only by naked force and violence. It is unlikely that Yeltsin, or any of his counterparts in the rest of Eastern Europe, has yet reached such a conclusion. And when they do bite the bullet, whatever pro-capitalist successes might be achieved in Eastern Europe, it will not be decisive. The game won't be over until it's over in the land of the October Revolution.

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Рисунок Н. Белевцева the Russian Empire previously worn by Pravda indicates that everyone has abandoned the state. well, in the Donbass and in the Lviv coal fields, which have exercised an important pressure on Rukh.

Ukraine seems likely to be the first decisive test of the attempts to restabilize bureaucratic rule after the failure of the neo-Stalinist coup. In any event, it is will certainly be a crucial part of the anti-bureaucratic revolution in what the bureaucracy no longer dares to call "Soviet The moment of truth seems to be approaching very rapidly. Yeltsin's declaration of a program on Oct. 28 for fast (and "painful") transition to a market economy, and his statement that elections were an obstacle to economic reform, represented a bold (or desperate) dropping of the demagogic mask that he has worn up until now.

It seems significant that at the same time as he announced this program, Yeltsin also warned that failure to achieve it could "doom a state with a history of many centuries to collapse." Thus, he is apparently also donning the crown of the continuity of Gorbachev, and the other chiefs of the all-Union bureaucracy before him. This must certainly have set alarms ringing in