Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 13:15:39 -0800 (PST) From: Dennis R Redmond <dredmond-AT-gladstone.uoregon.edu> Subject: M-I: Re: Working class politics in Poland On Sun, 2 Nov 1997, Stephen E Philion wrote: > How do you explain that Poland is not going the smart route? What > constraints keep it from doing so? Actually, they are indeed going the smart route, but noone is saying so. The Poles, after having endured Rightwing and Leftwing authoritarianisms for most of the 20th century, are past masters of saying what the authorities want to hear, and then going and doing whatever the hell they want to do anyway. Sure, the Government pays ritual obeisance to the IMF, but is the welfare state really being destroyed in Poland? Are enterprises slashing payrolls, elimininating daycare creches, etc.? The evidence is mixed at best: yes, housing and fuel subsidies have vanished, prices were decontrolled and health and education expenditures slashed. But the Government has also been slapping tariffs on imports, giving soft loans to state enterprises, ladling out unemployment insurance, boosting pensions and the like. The noxious goons over at the World Bank fretted in a recent report that welfare payments in the Visegrad states were still largely directed to the middle-class, rather than the "truly needy", i.e. people aren't giving up their Central-European style benefits without a fight. The Czech unions, for example, won lots of progressive legislation in the 1989-92 period, and unemployment has been kept below 3% via state aid, training grants etc. Hungary still has its welfare net. And throughout all of Eastern Europe, the political climate has turned sharply against the market Stalinism of the global rentiers and their would-be comprador juniors. I suspect the constraints are mostly external: Eastern Europe still has too much foreign debt, and until the Eurostate starts spending its way out of the Long Depression of the 1990s and sucking in huge volumes of imports, Visegrad won't be able to export enough goods to pay for genuine development. -- Dennis --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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