Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky on Oligarchs

[michael <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nester sent me these comments in response to my earlier question to the
list.

The Robber Barons were not acting in the world of decadent
imperialism, as the Russian Oligarchs are.  The Barons had a free
hand and a socially accepted moral right, so to say, to accumulate
wealth under the conditions of expanding capitalism.  They feared no
socialist revolution, nor did they have one in the country's past.

They were thus confident and self-assured, and would invest and reap
income with no fear at all of turning their riches into material
objects of their ownership, distributed all over the country, at any
workers' hand to grab.  Thus they capitalized the whole economy while
robbing "every man and his mother", as we say here in Argentina.

I believe Chris D. has a good grasp of what is actually happenning
there.  Putin looks like a new Peter the Great, in fact.  He is
trying -sill once again- to "catch up" with the West, in order to put
Russia on the topmost ranks of the world scenario.  He counts on
nukes to defend the country against foreign aggression, on the
militarized structure of the security services to slap the
bourgeoisie (and more than just "slap", if need be), and the massive
support of the population in the Russian Federation to turn their
country into a modern, capitalist self-centered society with some
social-democratic tinge.

The two first assets are the legacy of the Russian Revolution: the
centralized structure of the State, and the defense capabilities.
Support of the population, his third asset, has been the logical
result of the almost foreign interventionary regimes of Yeltsin and
his likes.

Under such conditions, Putin may possibly attempt, for the third
time, the path of Peter the Great.  And this time he has better
chances.  The second time was Count Witte's, in the aftermath of the
1905 revolution.  Neither Peter nor Witte had a bourgeoisie, a
consistent source of international income, nor an industrial basis to
start with.  Putin has, in a sense, all of them.  While Witte had to
resort to food exports in order to fund his projects (which meant
starving the Russian peasants), Putin can count on the rent of
internationally marketed oil in an environment of dwindling global
reserves!

He also has the "oligarchs", who will be forced by the sword to work
_for_ Russia in the same way the French or English bourgeoisies were
forced (also by the sword) to work for their respective countries by
their local national revolutions before those countries would be able
to enjoy democratic rights.  Those who don't want to bend, will be
smashed, which I will toast to.  Those who bend, will strike deals in
the Japanese or Korean model, thus strengthening themselves, the
Russian state and Russian self-centered capitalism.  And most
probably he can count on a new wave of "new businessmen" welling out
from the young members of the Russian middle class which roots in the
old bureaucracy.

In a sense, Martov won this round in the wrestling game with Lenin
and Trotsky.  This will not solve the problems of world population.
But will bring us nearer to a breakup of the imperialist bloc against
the Third World.  And thus, Lenin and Trotsky will have renewed
importance.  He who laughs last, laughs best.

This is, in essence, my forecast: if Putin succeeds, then we shall
see  a new imperialist nation rising under the Sun within some
decades.  And the bourgeoisie in this imperialist nation will see
itself much in the situation of the German bourgeoisie of the
mid/late 1930s: once the last tasks of reconstruction after the post-
Soviet disaster are over, they will have to launch themselves to
dispute global hegemony with their imperialist counterparts. Or
either they will have to surrender to their counterparts'
colonization, something they will hardly be in a position to do.

This is what Brzezinsky feared so much:  Russia is "too big", said
this Polish reactionary who works for the American Democrats.  And
right he was.

Putin's endeavours may well take us nearer to an inter-imperialist
conflict that we would have ever dreamed of.  And the, who knows, who
knows, Russia will trigger a world revolution again...

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901