The Russian banking system did not collapse as did the British and American and today Russians, unlike the British and Americans, can earn a reasonable 7% on their savings. So Russia is more capitalist than the West, which is destroying the peoples savings at a record rate.
Russia has turned its back on the atheism of the Communist era and those professing Christianity has risen from 32% in 1990 to 72% today – almost exactly the same as the 73% of Americans who claim Christianity! ‘
By the time the USSR collapsed and Russians were looking for the prosperity and open institutions which they were told characterised the West, genuine democratic capitalism had largely disappeared from the western democracies, just as parliamentary democracy was in its dying throes
ByRodneyAtkinson:Russia is not the communist empire of the USSR and, despite the ludicrous rhetoric justifying the imperial expansion of the European Union into Ukraine we are not re-entering the “cold war”. While Russia is suffering from the general problems of the “BRIC” countries as American and British money printing (quantitative easing) is scaled back it compares very favourably with the disastrous economies of the USA and the EU. Reserves are at $580billion, unemployment is a mere 5.6% (USA 7% and falling living standards, EU average over 12% with rates up to 27%) Russia’s debt to GDP is 30% (the USA has 100% and the UK 80% while most of the EU is completely off the scale!) it has a trade surplus of $15.7 billion and a growth rate of about 2% in 2013 which compares very favourably with the USA and the Eurozone. The structure of the economy has shifted decisively from dependence on oil, gas and commodities to become a modern industrial economy with a service sector of 66% of GDP and oil, gas and commodities only 16% of GDP.
Nevertheless the Russian Federation supplies a significant volume of fossil fuels and is the largest exporter of oil and natural gas to the EU. In 2007, the European Union imported from Russia 185 million tonnes of crude oil, which accounted for 32.6% of total oil imports, and 100.7 million tonnes of oil equivalent of natural gas, which accounted for 38.7% of total gas imports. The percentage of Russian gas dependence for the countries of the EU is as follows:
• Estonia 100% • Finland 100% • Latvia 100% • Lithuania 100% • Slovakia 98% • Bulgaria 92% • Czech Republic 77.6% • Greece 76%
• Hungary 60% • Slovenia 52% • Austria 49% • Poland 48.15% • Germany 36% • Italy 27% • Romania 27% • France 14% • Belgium 5%
Needless to say none of these countries can afford to antagonise the Russians.
Russia is also a major investor in western markets, in US Government bonds, in London, Paris and Berlin and in residential and commercial property throughout western Europe. The Russian banking system did not collapse as did the British and American and today Russians, unlike the British and Americans can earn a reasonable 7% on their savings. So you could say that Russia is more capitalist than the West, which is destroying the peoples savings at a record rate.
Russia has turned its back on the atheism of the Communist era and those professing Christianity has risen from 32% in 1990 to 72% today – almost exactly the same as the 73% of Americans who claim Christianity!
While the European Union aids and encourages fascist groups in Yugoslavia and Ukraine, Putin can rightly claim: “we fought fascism” and that Russia’s reward has been continual encroachment on the western borders of Russia, with the Ukraine imbroglio being just the latest and most dangerous escapade of a blatantly imperialist European Union (it was EU Commission President Manuel Barrosowho admitted that the EUwas “an empire”. The former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has admitted that the war against Yugoslavia was illegal and that the West had not the faintest idea what a hornets next they were stirring in the Ukraine.
The Russian political economy today is not easy to understand and Russia under Putin can hardly be described as a democracy – although neither can the European Union whose anti democratic deceits and conquests of the European nation states which Allied victory in 1945 had released from the fascist yoke has produced in western Europe the kind of imperial structure which the old Soviet Union defended for 50 years. But Putin is not part of that world. He took over a Russia willing to adopt the concept of nation statehood – just as the USA and the EU was abolishing the concept altogether!
Russian economic structures are monopolistic and corporatist. But it was western corporatists and leftists who after the fall of communism, oversaw and recommended privatisation and created the excesses of politically well placed Oligarchs who now dominate whole industries. The Oligarchs thought they could control the political system and their vast unearned wealth was too tempting not to use to their political and commercial advantage – but Putin was the first to disabuse them of their assumptions.
Putin is rightly resentful because he had cooperated with or permitted western expansion and the independence of former Soviet republics. He allowed US bases in central Asian Republics to aid their fight in Afghanistan, did not kick up a fuss over the Iraq war and did not object to the Baltic States going back to independence – despite their joining the increasingly threatening European Union.
He allowed profitable Western investment from German and British companies and cooperated in the supply of huge gas supplies to Western Europe. For his pains he saw the western destruction of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia and the undermining of Ukraine by the encouragement of blatantly fascist groups to overthrow a government elected according to western rules.
Putin’s Chief of Staff is one Valislav Surkov and the principal creator of what a recent article in the Telegraph called “Russia’s brand of authoritarian capitalism”. By which I assume the writer, the socialist John Kampfner, meant the same kind of corporatist capitalism which dominates the British, American and European economies and which social democrats and stupid Conservatives in the West introduced to Russia as “western capitalism”.
By the time the USSR collapsed and the new Russians were looking for the prosperity and open institutions which they were told characterised the West, genuine democratic capitalism had largely disappeared from the western democracies, just as parliamentary democracy was in its dying throes – giving way to supranational corporatism and bureaucratic control. Both had fallen victim to the new corporatism and Statism of left, right and centre and the series of inevitable financial collapses, (predicted by the very few of us who knew what democratic capitalism was) brought about by collectivist corporatism in the City of London and New York and massively worsened by the unaccountable morass of regulation born of corporate lobbying in Brussels and the final coup de grace from the social and economic devastation caused by the Euro.
As in the past such corporatist inner collapse and failure to provide the new markets of prosperity led inevitably to the need to expand territorially to create the imposed markets of new conquests. The historic German “Drang nach Osten” provided the solution, the latest episode of which is now playing out in the Ukraine.
Of course the kind of economy with which Putin and Medvedev were presented by their predecessor Yeltsin was a different kind of mixture of capitalism and corporatism – the “privatisation” of whole industries. Its form was largely dictated by western “advisers” who also knew nothing of democratic capitalism and the process therefore merely “corporatised” State assets and sold them to individuals and entrepreneurs with good party connections! Hence the enormous wealth enjoyed by the well know Chelsea owner Abramovitch and many others – including Ukrainian Oligarchs who have supported the Kiev coup.
Putin rightly saw (whether from his communist education or his grasp of the potential political power of massive corporations and the kind of fascist societies which usually arise from such structures) that corporatism was a threat and the new Oligarchs were warned to keep to business and not start using their massive windfall assets (totally unjustified by any public service in a competitive market place) to achieve political power.
Russia has a long way to go before becoming a free, open competitive capitalist democracy but the arrogant expansionism of the corporatist, failing EU, led by an insatiable German political class, could well drive them back to authoritarian government, economic centralism and military defence. If this happens then it is the USA and the EU who will be seen as the aggressive cause.
In my 1988 book The Emancipated Society I tried to outline a new synthesis of capitalism and socialism which might have led to a peaceful dialogue between East and West and perhaps even some common ground in political economy. I think Putin, with his grounding in sophisticated political economy and historical awareness of the dangers of European corporatist fascism, might be persuaded.
Rodney Atkinson 30th March 2014
