Just Back From Russia – Prosperous, Capitalist, Nationist, Democratic, Christian

If the average Westerner could see the modern Russia he would see something of his long lost past – before fatuous American neocons, social imperialist Obama democons, Islamophile anti-Christians, imperialist German Europe and men without history in London began the West’s gravest ever geopolitical mistake.

I have just been in Russia – in Krasnodar where I gave a couple of  2 hour lectures with discussion at the Kuban University. The staff and students were very supportive of my analysis of a western political class pursuing, at best out of ignorance, at worst with deliberate malice, the kind of corporatist imperialist behaviour which led to the Second World War – except that so disastrous are the politicians in London and Washington that we now find ourselves on the wrong side, pushing reform minded and friendly Russians (who genuinely seek to imitate western democratic capitalism) towards communist and imperialist China.

All the important geopolitical analysts of the past 50 years – Egon Bahr, who drove Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik, Henry Kissinger, George Kennan – were horrified at the dangerously ignorant US/EU aggression against Russia and the supine “me too” attitude of the poodle Cameron. (Boris Johnson’s attack on Obama for his support for the internally collapsing but aggressive nation-destroying European Union is at least the quality of intellectual argument which might be capable of discussion with Vladimir Putin)

There are few more obnoxious spokesmen for the neocon and EU aggression around the world than George Soros, the classic corporatist leftist (the true left by contrast recognise European fascism and the dangers of US aggression). When he was asked what he appreciates about Merkel’s Ostpolitik, he said that “without Merkel there would be no sanctions against Russia” – nor, we might add, the destructive mass migrations into a bankrupt Europe without democracies, nations and borders!

Russia Making Remarkable Progress 

So what does the Russia I visited look like? It looks a lot more prosperous than most of the United Kingdom – apart from the centre of the new ideology, London (where State corporatism drains both wealth and democracy from the rest of the country).

The people look well dressed, the old communists are an irrelevant and disappearing clique of old men, the Russian flag is waved patriotically not nationalistically, the shopping malls are impressive, the streets are clean, the people friendly and open (but aghast and puzzled at the attacks on Russia by the West) the food is excellent, people see photos and names of their elected representatives on billboards and the public spaces are clean.

Vladimir Putin was brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith and the churches are packed with people of all ages at all times of day. And because their faith is not questioned and attacked by social engineers and destroyers of the family and marriage as in the West his people do not feel threatened.

All the ingredients of a genuine community, entrepreneurial capitalism are in place and are beginning to work – unlike the corporatist concentration of capital in the West with its destruction of parliaments and communities.

Home ownership in Russia is over 80%, income tax is 13% while corporation tax is 20%. This we can contrast with the ever higher income tax rates in Britain while Osborne reduces corporate tax to 18% (while failing to collect even that). No company can operate in Russia without paying the full tax rates there.

Petrol costs 30p per litre and a typical bill for electricity, gas and water for a decent sized family house with 4 people is about £40 per month. The internet costs £4 a month. Health care is free – but unlike the disastrous NHS in Britain it seems to work. Even private healthcare is apparently very reasonably priced.

House building is easy and straightforward with easy planning consents to build as one will within the zones for residential housing with only the gap between houses regulated. The cost of building your house can be offset against your income over a five year period – Now that’s an enterprising tax regime!

Unemployment is about 6% – contrast that with the European Union’s average of 10.5% with individual member state rates up to 23% and youth unemployment between 20% and 55%.

Russian debt to Gross Domestic Product was only 18% at the beginning of 2015 but will be rising after the collapse of the oil price and the West’s ludicrous sanctions reduced Russia’s GDP by 3.7% during 2015.

Compare this tiny indebtedness to the bankrupt USA and Europe:

USA                                  106%

UK                                    103%

France                          116%

Italy                                147%

Germany                        79%

Putin Tackles Corruption 

Putin came to power after Gorbachev had set in train the political revolution against authoritarianism and communism (“A man we can do business with” as Margaret Thatcher said) and after Yeltsin – advised by corporatist economists in the West! – had handed whole swathes of Russian industry over to very few businessmen.

These oligarchs were, Putin realised, not only an economic threat but a political threat to good governance in the new Russia so he began pursuing them for excess profits, tax avoidance and illegal export of capital. Many of them came to London.

There was also local corruption between the State, local government and their employees on the one hand and individuals and businesses on the other with bribes and backhanders and a dangerous industrial mafia taking the law into their own hands. Police would look the other way for a consideration. When I was in Krasnodar (a Cossack area) I saw policemen accompanied by Cossacks dressed in their full attire. Apparently the Cossacks and the police keep an eye on each other!

In the rest of the world, in India, in China, in South America and in Africa the Russians are doing more and more business as trade and investment in the West has been blocked. China is taking more Russian oil and gas and in return China is exporting industrial products to Russia. China and Russia have held joint naval manoeuvres in the Mediterranean and Black Sea – a triumph for western policy! Russia has orders for the construction of nuclear power plants from abroad worth $300 billion. German exports to Russia have collapsed and Russian investment in Germany and Europe as a whole has collapsed – and it is the West which is suffering the most and German businessmen are pushing Merkel to drop Russian sanctions.

One of the ways in which Putin has tried to stamp out corruption in local government contracts, planning etc is to establish a third tear of technocrats with specific non political and non financial duties between applicants and government so that no one comes into contact with anyone they can bribe!

So all in all Russia is well on the way to being a successful, open, democratic, (genuine) capitalist and free nation state – while the US and EU become a sclerotic, corporatist, anti democratic, supranational authoritarian mess. Only the idiocy of western aggression by the kind of politicians and corporate apparatchiks whom the people of Europe and America now despise (witness the chaotic revolutions from Corbyn to Syriza to Podemus to AfD to Trump) could turn Russia, this potential land of peace and plenty, into a new battlefield for world conflict.

Rodney Atkinson

March 2016