Re: Analysts - Putin to Launch Systematic Campaign Against Oligarchs

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

 

>Vladimir Ryzhkov, a leading liberal MP, said Putin's criticism of
non-governmental organisations sent a bad signal.

"That sounded like a veiled threat," Ryzhkov told reporters.<

 

Comment

 

"Veiled threat?" . . . well, one can of course have different definitions of the word "veil." Mr. Putin is the "man" . . . the leading political representative of a power state with a credible nuclear deterrent, "safeguarding" the corporation called Russia. Unlike corporation America where it is easier to get a Camel through the eye of a needle than for capitalists to be jailed for corruption, swindling citizens and theft over and beyond the sale and purchase of labor power, Putin's statements are neither veiled or contain hidden meaning.

 

Putin has stated in no uncertain terms that "you are going to pay or you are going to pay twice."

 

Russia does have a history of jailing and shooting corrupt factory managers . . . and "enemies of the people."  I am not a cheerleader for Putin but merely state the obvious. There is economic logic in Putin's political behavior and reorganization of corporation Russia.  

>Putin has been riding a wave of strong economic growth, largely driven by
high prices for oil. He revealed economic growth for the first quarter of
the year was 8%, and at that rate Russia could meet his goal of doubling
GDP - set in last year's state of the nation address - by 2010, instead of
the previous target of 2012.<

 

Comment

 

Corporation Russia is not going to become the worlds low cost producer and replace corporation China in the world market . . . who ousted Mexican labor as low cost producer and exporter to the American market. Corporation Russia can sell oil, military wares, nuclear technology and facilities, vodka, furs and Soviet memorabilia in the world market. (Yes, I actually own some old Rubles - not gold Rubles and have considered marketing Hip Hop clothing with a very Red "Hammer and Sickle" prominently displayed).  

 

Nor is Russia going to market automobiles.

 

Think collectivization and accumulation and the export of Soviet agriculture products as the basis for the expansion and development of the industrial infrastructure of the 1920s. Accumulation appears as money possession or wealth in gold and other recognizable legal forms (fiat money). Accumulation also means the accumulation of productive capacity or ones commodity creating capacity - reproduction.

 

Russia is not China and cannot produce for export a multiplicity of goods for the Wal Marts of the world. Not simply because of low cost producer corporate China, but more importantly the overwhelming need to modernize and beef up the internal capacity to grow GDP on the basis of revolutionizing the infrastructure for housing, medical establishment, transportation and other real needs.

 

Corporate Russia appears to be poised for another period of bloodletting and Putin has apparently lined up the individual flesh and blood capitalists as the first to make the blood sacrifice.

 

History is strange or at any rate starling. The old joke amongst the bourgeoisie stated that if Soviet power overthrew world capitalism - bourgeois property relations, it would have to preserve at least one capitalist country to figure out how to price its goods.

 

Apparently, Putin is going to jail capitalists to preserve the bourgeois property relations and expropriate their wealth in order to continue to expropriate the wealth of the Russian workers on the basis of capitalism.

 

Stalin  . . . like Tupac and Elvis ... lives and no one escapes their history. A class unraveling of Russia in real time is infintely more interesting than the ideology of "thick neck," beefy industrial workers and capitalists slugging it our in the streets.

 

Stalin said the greatest enemy of the Soviet people holds a party card. Putin says the danger to the restoration of bourgeois property is the bourgeoisie. The bureaucracy says, "Here we go again."

 

Melvin P.