RUSSIA CAPITALISM II

Spanish

 

 Lee Raymond (CEO of Exxon-Mobil 1993-2005). “We are not an American company and I do not take decisions based on what is good for the USA.

Anders Aslund. “The biggest story of corruption in human history”

John Browne (former Managing Director of BP). "The problem is not the lack of laws but their selective application. This is what creates the feeling of anarchy. Whilst legalistic bureaucratic processes continue to be the distinctive hallmark of Russia, one never knows if someone is going to turn a blind eye or if the laws were correctly applied".

Russian capitalism 1.0

Capitalism was introduced into Russia in the XIX Century. We are dealing with an already mature form of capitalism which had already experienced its first industrial revolution. As in the USA and other countries, it was capitalism compatible with the strengthening of the nation state. It was installed and prospered with the creation of a national industrial nucleus, protected against external competition by tariff barriers. It was also capitalism with advanced monopolist characteristics in which trusts and holdings dominated the panorama and forced states to engage in imperialist wars.

Metalworkers at the end of XIX Century

One of its leaders was Sergei Witte, the minister in charge of supervising the building of the trans-Siberian railway. A follower of Fredrich List, he wanted a strongly protected domestic industry for Russia and defended the passing of protectionist legislation. He also promoted the modernisation of the education system (business schools) to improve technical training in the country and in 1887, passed a law limiting working hours in factories. His attempts to reform agriculture brought him up against the nobility and he fell from power in 1903.

The first capitalist penetration into Russia was a long and complex historical process of assault and remodelling of the state, which in the end failed after the disaster of World War I and the resistance of the population to being turned into cannon fodder.

Russian Capitalism 2.0

The capitalism which was reintroduced into Russia at the end of the XX Century had very different characteristics.

In the new trans-national monopolist capitalism, nation states no longer constituted the base and principal lever of the corporations, but were mere accessories, interchangeable and to a certain extent unnecessary. For capitalism 2.0 the USSR constituted a vast and rich communal territory to loot which had up until then resisted its advances.

In contrast to the first failed experiment, the second capitalist conquest of the USSR by ‘shock therapies’ and ‘express’ privatisation, was a lightening process of infection, dismemberment and de-structuring, which lasted less than five years.

Russia was almost instantly converted into a corrupt mafia economy, fuel dependent and on the periphery of trans-national monopoly capitalism. There was no ‘transition’ in any sense of the word. Transnational monopoly capitalism does not require a nation state to operate. The institutional juridical framework, laws and public regulations, the social contract and national magna cartas are often a waste of time and an obstacle to business competitiveness and appropriation of added value.

An opportunity for neoliberalism to loot on such a scale doesn’t arise every day. The reconquest of Russia was designed and planned to make it the biggest capitalist orgy ever seen. First loot, dismantle, privatise, steal, accumulate…there is plenty of time later for the tedious business of administration, and the construction of laws and rules which neoliberal capitalism finds so abhorrent. Day and night capitalism 2.0 picked through the ruins of the soviet state without providing any alternative institutional juridical framework.



The grotesque privatisation theft of public wealth without the existence of even the minimal legal framework or juridical security led to a lightening escalation, enormous and unprecedented, of criminal activity given the legal loopholes and lack of economic regulation. The dismantling of institutions which protected public property was not followed up with an alternative which would protect private property and contracts.

The obvious answer in the face of the institutional vacuum and the lack of security and legal protection was to go in search of the support and protection from Russian organised crime which evolved ‘spontaneously’ to become the principal bulwark of the private capitalist economy, the defender of illegally acquired public property, the guarantor of the validity of financial and commercial contracts, becoming a sort of arbitrage system in the shadows which sustained the new capitalist order and is able to dictate and force the adherence to basic norms so as to reduce uncertainty in exchange and business.

In the 1990’s more than 70% of the contracts made were signed outside the legal framework. The growth in the number of criminal gangs involved in business violence was spectacular. In 1991 there were 952 criminal groups, in 1992, 4 300 in 1993, 5 691.

The explosive emergence of organised crime during the first years of the 1990’s can be considered an informal institutional response to protect property rights and contracts, the necessary third leg of the stool for the correct functioning of the new neoliberal order.

Financial-Industrial Groups FIG’s

Terminal neoliberal bubble capitalism is profoundly short-termist. Financial speculation dominates and takes first place in front of the real economy which is increasingly forced to play a secondary role as the base of the hyper-leveraged financial casino. It is its absolute irresponsibility for the criminal consequences of its attacks, bubbles and bursts, swindles, shock therapies, labour reforms, constitutional reforms, thefts of shares, salaries pensions and savings… that makes it the worst system of social organisation ever devised.

As the results of its envestida are unavoidable the degeneration of Russian capitalism into a mafia certainly fails to meet all the criteria hoped for in the field of law and order to consolidate the penetration of transnational monopolies and financial capital.

One alternative to a ‘failed state’ is the creation of clans which try to usurp the functions which would otherwise be carried out by a consolidated state. In the absence of valid institutions social groups tend to reorganise themselves gathering in tribal structures, clans or groups following a code of criminal obedience such as the mafias. The planet is filling up with substitute structures or alternatives to the nation state model which work in parallel to the state the majority of its functions.

Something like this has taken place in Russia; No new capitalist state administration has been constructed above the erased slate of the Soviet system which is capable of operating in the trustworthy or functional fashion required by transnational monopolist capital. After ten years of chaos during which the Russian people were reduced to the cruellest misery and lost more than ten million souls what has emerged is a corrupt and necessary pseudostate which shares power between an amalgamation of mafia clans which interact and share out business via ‘Financial Industrial Groups.’

The emergence of the FIG’s

During the first round of privatisation (1993 to 94) 16 500 public companies (two thirds of the total) were privatised through a system of vouchers or certificates shared between the directors, the workers and the Russian citizens (capitalism of the people).

The freeing of prices in January 1992 set off a huge inflation which depreciated savings deposits in the banks by 99%. The companies, now without state contracts, were unable to continue paying their workers.

The majority of the ‘peoples capitalists’ found themselves obliged to sell their vouchers cheaply to the few who had ready money. By 1994 three quarters of the companies had passed into the private hands of corrupt officials and gangsters. People’s capitalism had come to an end. Appropriation, hoarding, dismemberment and the sharing out of public shares by kleptocratic criminal groups at the centre of decision making was the tonic for the privatisation process. For this reason Yeltsin shelled the parliament in 1993, a body which had shown itself too fond of popular capitalism.

Potanin, Chubais and other Yeltsin cronies, now freed from parliamentary control, designed a plan in the spring and summer of 1995 by which the Russian government would receive loans from the Russian bank guaranteed by shares in the main strategic industries (petrol, energy, gold, diamonds, nickel). In the event of the government failing to repay the loans, the banks would have the right to auction the shares of the companies.

The loans for shares plan has been cited as the largest robbery in history. From the beginning it was a planned operation of the theft of shares, organised by and for a group of future oligarchs, drawn from a small circle of corrupt officials in collusion with organised crime. As was foreseen from the very beginning, the Russian government was unable to repay the loans by the set date. They were placed on auction where those participating were individuals or companies controlled by the same banks. In all cases the share packages were picked up for a small sum above the derisory starting price.

The corrupt and penniless government requested loans from the banks (controlled by mafias and oligarchs) guaranteeing the loans with monopolies and public companies.

Onexim Bank, controlled by V. Potanin, one of designers of the plan, picked up 34% of Norilsk Nickel (producer of a fifth of the nickel and two-fifths of the platinum in the world) for $170,1 million (the 0,1 represented the plus which was paid on top of the starting price of the auction. In 2003 its price was estimated at $53 000 million. Other companies auctioned were Sibneft (oil) acquired for $100, 3 million, Sidanko (oil) .for $130 million, Yukos, (one of the biggest oil producers in the world) which was acquired by the bank Menatep owned by Mijail Khordorkovski for $159 million. After the division of the spoils seven ‘bankers’ had obtained control of 50% of the Russian economy. Once the cake was cut up (Yukos , Sibneft etc.) a privileged group of oligarchs was created, Potanin,,,,,,,,,,,,,M Prokhorov with enormous resources to support the political and economic course laid down by Yeltsin (re-election in 1996).



Consolidation of the FIG’s

At the end of the 90’s organised crime had achieved substantial control over the privatised businesses thanks to its role as the arbitrator and guarantor of the system, resolving corporate disputes, ensuring the payments of debts and fulfilment of contracts. They also began to provide loans to entrepreneurs (start ups) and businesses, exchanging loans for shares and ended up controlling many of their clients.

After privatisation a few monopolist, mafia-dependent, industrial structures, with highly concentrated capital completely dominated the social and economic panorama in Russia.

R.M Gates, the former director of the CIA, estimated in 2001 that two-thirds of commerce, 80% of banking, a good part of the stock exchange and 150 large public corporations were controlled by organised crime. 40% of the GNP was in the hands of the mafia in connivance with corruption.

After privatisation, Financial Industrial Groups immediately sprung up, amalgams of monopolies and banks which claimed to be Russian versions of Japanese keiretsu or South Korean chaebol. In reality these business structures worked as clans linked to specific groups of organised crime. The principal FIG’s were Inkombank Group, Most-Bank Group, SBS-Agro Group, Oneximbank Group, Rossiyski Kredit Group etc.

By the mid-90’s there were 27 large FIG’s that concentrated 446 corporations (65 banks) and had more than 2 million employees. Many of these FIG’s remained under the control of organised crime from the time of their foundation. On the behalf of the principal FIG’s, there formed a cloud of minor FIG’s on the bank-corporation model in each and every sector of the economy with the banks operating as financial managers (money laundering) and as a source of information at the service of criminal groups.

At the head of each group there are businesses of a monopolist character joined with one or several banks. At the second level are grouped secondary firms and a third level of subsidiaries. A key element of the group is a structured lobbying organisation which seeks to promote its interests to the state bodies. The management and control as well as the appropriation of the major part of the income is concentrated in a small number of individuals who possess between 30 and 50% of the shares of the group.

These FIG’s administer and control the social infrastructure (clinics, outpatient centres, kindergartens, housing, Trades Unions) of their employees, operating as true clans.

A telling feature of the structure of the clan is that the banks can retain the wages of the employees for months to use in speculation which can bring in (or not) additional income for the clan. It is also not unusual to divert the wages owed to support electoral campaigns of candidates who are favourable to the clans. It is a complicated system of mutual financial connections between businesses, banks and regional or federal government agencies and above all the personal connections of the clan.

In this way the clan structures constitute the basis of political power. The intersection of interests between both spheres of power is often complex. Some clans support various parties simultaneously and many parties have the support of various clans.

What gives these clans solidity is their wide links with organised crime. Although there is a certain degree of formal economic competition between them the struggle is largely informal. The important things are personal connections, pacts and agreements to divide up the markets and spheres of influence, the establishment of ‘rules’, pacts of competition etc. apart from the usual criminal practices of blackmail, bribery murders etc. It is a battle between forces trying to regulate the market. Each clan tries to regulate the market in its favour and the strongest clan, not the most competitive producer, is the one that wins.

In no other case in history has organised crime achieved such economic and political power as in the neo-capitalist countries of the former Soviet Union. So much corruption at the highest level can have no other result than to create a perfect symbiotic relationship between the official administration and organised crime. The Russians inhabit a neoliberal capitalist medium in which illegality is most rewarded and sought after and in which organised crime has taken over the function of control and government of society.

The arbitration of Putin and stabilisation

The rise of Putin took place during the period of hyper-depression, with GNP in free-fall, 80% of the population in poverty, President Yeltsin drunken, kleptomaniac and ill, the organised crime groups entrenched in the majority of the economic sectors warring amongst one another and chilling levels of corruption. Putin embodied arbitration as the sine qua non to maintain the new status quo.

The new state reorganised by Putin and his associates works as the arbitrator of the post-Soviet clan structure by establishing itself as the most powerful clan. With scarcely any tangible income, the Russian state was dissolving like a sugar lump. At the behest of the markets and the international agencies Putin recovered for the state part of the income from energy which was being hijacked by some of the mafia clans (forced bankruptcy and nationalisation of Yukos, the arrest of Mikhail Khordorkovsky and the Gazprom monopoly) and ensured himself of the backing of the majority of the oligarchs (Genaddy Timchenko, Vladimir Yakunin, Yurly Kovalchuk, Sergey Chemezov)

He also renationalised shares in the hands of foreign multinationals. Royal Dutch Shell and its Japanese associates found themselves obliged to cede their holdings in the promising joint venture, Sakhalin II, to exploit the rich oil and gas fields. BP were compelled to cede the rich gas field of Kovykta (in Eastern Siberia) to Gazprom.

In 2003 the state controlled only 10% of oil production. In 2008 44% of oil production had returned to the pubic sector which also controlled 85% of gas production.

Has Putin created a vertical command structure of the Prussian or Soviet type? A sort of restoration of authority? The reality is more prosaic. Putin’s state is Putin’s clan. What there is in all instances of the Russian mafia state is a complex web of client loyalties in which everyone works frenetically for their own ends and in which some cover or protect others or share the tasks (for example the police and army extort and receive protection moneyfrom small businesses whilst the secret services -FSB- have exclusive rights over the large corporations.

There is no political rivalry between a supposed liberal wing (Mendev would be the standard bearer) and a statist wing (sioviki or pro-Putin). The reality behind the thick curtains of the press and the TV is not an ideological struggle but a shadowy illegal war between a dozen mafia clans which use every type of trick to control the maximum portion of income and cash flows which the system produces. It is competition between competitors with the same purposes and objectives.

A common objective is the appropriation of a business by a rival clan (raiderstvo) which is a well documented phenomenon in Russia. Very often the manipulation and abuse of apparently legitimate mechanisms such as bankruptcy or criminal trials are the preferred methods to gain control of (steal) businesses. Raiderstvo could not exist without the direct support and connivance of the authorities, the prosecutors, the police and the courts. The same Russian state authorities have brought about a multitude of acquisitions of private businesses using similar means. More than 100 000 businessmen are imprisoned at present, and one in six businessmen report having been victims of criminal attack.

The raiders falsify the power of attorney and illegally transfer corporate shares or start frivolous judicial actions and pay the judges to award the claimants millions of dollars in damages. Plots to force bankruptcy, judicial plots, falsification of land deeds….. are all commonly used tactics.

To lose your place in this network could mean ruin and prison and this also goes for the highest ranking members. The apparent 'stability' has more to do with the enormous danger inherent in leaving someone else in charge or leaving a department than anything else. The anti-prevarication laws, courts and judges exist to destroy and liquidate anyone who falls out of favour with the mafia customer networks. If there is any type of hierarchy or verticality in Russia today it is impunity. If you are a member of the FBS (secret service) you can also work as a hit man given that your official job ensures you total impunity in your second job.

In this manner, the peculiar stabilisation of Putin, the depreciation of the rouble and the meteoric rise in prices of primary materials and fossil fuels pulled the country out of hyper-depression and the abyss of a failed state. Between 1999 and 2008 Russian GNP grew at an average rate of 8%. In 2004 The GNP had regained the level of 1991.

Once the initial predatory euphoria had passed and after the de-structuring, dismantling and dismembering and sharing out of the pubic shares had taken place the markets and the multinationals are not totally pleased with the present situation given the arrogant precipitation and criminal greed. A few doses of corruption, illicit trafficking, prevarication and fiscal fraud sit fairly well with the current multinational capitalist system. Business schools teach that a certain amount of informality rejuvenates and makes capitalism more dynamic. Failed states and criminal capitalism, however, do not sit too well with the majority of businesses. This is the present dilemma facing the stabilisation achieved by Putin. Russia was on the point of turning into a (nuclear) failed state at the end of the 90’s. Putin’s stabilisation avoided disaster but converted Russia into a criminal capitalist state, diverting a good part of the shares and flows of income from the habitual channels of accumulation of neoliberal monopoly capitalism.

The Russian Matrix

Neoliberal politicians and economists confirm that Russia and the old eastern bloc countries have been ‘normalised’ thanks to the advice and guidance of the IMF and other neoliberal agencies (G7). In any case the neoliberal ‘transitionology’ accuses the soviet legacy for the strange deformities of present Russian capitalism. The normalisation of Russia is explained in the following way:

1. The transition has not been too catastrophic a process. The depression was fairly mild (more of a recession) and the economy rapidly recovered (by 2003 GNP had recuperated the level of 1989).

2. What was to blame, in any case, was not Yeltsin’s rapid liberalisation and the shock therapies of the IMF and other neoliberal agencies (G7), but the nature of the soviet system itself, which caused its collapse and subsequent depression. The rapid liberalisation led to greater ills being avoided.

3. The escalation of organised crime together with galloping corruption was the heritage of the soviet system.

4. These countries have crossed over from the shadow of an authoritarian centrally planned economy to a virtuous democratic system of free enterprise in which consumer demand governs the supply beneath the rule of law and in which wages and income are fixed by negotiation in accordance with the law of supply and demand.

5. Criminality has been reducing over time. The oligarchs and kleptocrats who looted and appropriated the soviet patrimony have been transformed, in the same way as the robber barons John Rockefeller and JP Morgan, into first class entrepreneurial businessmen, true motors of westernisation.

6. The old countries of the Soviet Union have been converted into economies with large middle classes advancing rapidly towards the status of developed western economies.


1. The transition has not been too catastrophic a process. The depression was fairly mild (more of a recession) and the economy rapidly recovered.??


The post-Soviet hyper-depression (1990-98) was much deeper than the American Great Depression and cost the lives of 10 million Russians.

Sovietologists used to accuse the soviet statistics of being exaggerated (the tendency of the planned system to provide good production results). CIA statistics recalculated the data presented between 1913 and 1987 to show a median growth of 4% per year in GNP in roubles (1917-1987, 4,7 % in dollars).

Angus Maddison, one of the specialists in the Soviet economy who most cut back the official statistics, published his results in 2003 which showed figures of a drop in GNP of 45% between 1989 and 1998 and an unemployment level of 25%.



The reality of the hyper-depression was not only a matter of numbers. Sociological studies show an unprecedented increase in deaths (3,4 million died prematurely between 1990 and 1998) caused by privation and misery in the absence of wars, pandemics or other extraordinary factors. The hyper-depression shown by Maddison’s figures was real and lethal.

The addendum to the hyper-depresson was the neoliberal bubble of 1996-1998 and the subsequent crash. The Russian administration was financing its growing expenditure with loans from foreign countries. The foreign investors acquired Russian debt in exchange for high interest rates. Solely to be able to pay the interest on these, the Russian government began to ask for loans in the form of short-term bonds (GKO’s). To be able to attract nervous investors they had to put the interest higher and higher. In May 1997 they paid interest rates of over 150% per year.

After the re-election of Yeltsin the government allowed the purchase of GKO’s by foreigners. Chase Manhattan, US, Credit Suisse, First Boston, Republic Bank… threw themselves into the hunt for GKO’s. In order to pay the interest the government issued further GKO’s. It was a typical Ponzi pyramid scheme. The new loans paid the interest on the previous ones.

The foreign and Russian participants in the GKO casino made fortunes whilst the orgy lasted. The GKO’s were so lucrative that the Russian banks themselves invested in them instead of making commercial loans.

On October 6 1997 the principal Russian stock exchange index reached its historic maximum (571 points, a year later it would fall to 37 points) making it the strongest emergent financial market on the planet. But the Russian dream lasted only a short time. With the hangover of the Asian financial crisis of 1997 the investors began to withdraw silently, converting their rouble shares into dollars.

Nevertheless, in spite of the warning signs the markets believed that Russia was too ‘nuclear’ to fail. Bank of America, Credit Suisse, First Boston Corp., Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Citibank had lent huge sums to the speculators.

In May 1998 Larry Summers convinced Clinton to obtain an extraordinary contribution of $10 000 million from Congress to the IMF to ‘save capitalism in Russia’. In spite of this Goldman Sachs took out a subscription of Eurobonds worth $1,025 million which were fully subscribed.

In August the Moscow stock exchange was forced close a few times because of falls of over 10%. Liquidity disappeared from the market. The Russian government declared itself bankrupt, announced a unilateral suspension of payment of GKO’s and allowed the rouble to float. Bank deposits were frozen by decree- two months of corralito. In less than 24 hours the sudden fall of the rouble made prices shoot up - and debit cards ceased to function. Dozens of banks closed and disappeared (only a handful of banks controlled by the mafia and the oligarchs were rescued by the Russian Central Bank). In a few days the savings of the Russian citizens evaporated. Unable to withdraw their savings the citizens could only watch helplessly as their value diminished with the rouble.

Those that had not lost their job found that they could not receive their wages. When they were finally paid, their wages had lost two-thirds of their value (the average fall was between $160 and $55 per month) and the number of Russians living below the official poverty line passed 40%.

GNP in 1997 had been $422.000 million. In 1998 it scarcely reached $132 000 million, a fall of 74%.

Share prices fell 90% in a year. The rouble fell 75%. Inflation shot up. In the face of financial and monetary collapse the Russians resorted to barter. The teachers in Voronezh were paid their salaries in tomb stones. The ‘transition’ was a catastrophic process without any palliative. In the 90’s the direction of globalisation directed by the IMF-World Bank tandem led to the conversion of the Second World (the old Soviet bloc) to the Third World, with the greatest and fastest increase in poverty registered in history, from 14 million to 170 million in less than four years.
The hyperdepression generated a veritable demographic disaster, unprecedented in times of peace. An average of a million Russians a year were wiped off the demographic statistics from 1991 until the middle of the first decade of XXI Century.

The Russian demographic tragedy Graph

2. What was to blame, in any case, was not Yeltsin’s rapid liberalisation and the shock therapies of the IMF and other neoliberal agencies (G7), but the nature of the soviet system itself which caused its collapse and subsequent depression. The rapid liberalisation led to greater ills being avoided.??

The USSR had demonstrated its great capacity for recuperation from disaster on various occasions (1917-21 and 1940-45). In addition other centrally planned economies evolved into capitalist markets without creating a depression.



What caused the hyperdepression was the unbridled greed and short-termism of neoliberalism which directed and planned the famous shock therapies. Washington was always in the know about about the most serious criminal activities.. Clinton allowed the Wall Street financiers to direct American policy with respect to the capitalist transition of the former Soviet bloc. The standard bearer of the whole operation was the ‘Russian Privatization Center’ which had close links to Harvard University. The centre received funds and loans from the US Treasury, the IMF, the European Bank of Reconstruction and development, the European Union, Germany and Japan which totalled over $400 000 million.

The Clinton and Gore administration did not hesitate to hush up the scandals, criminal conspiracies, frauds, robberies and money laundering in their own back yard - the Bank of New York was used to launder money for Russian organised crime - ignoring CIA information which reported the situation, alleging the fear of a communist opposition to Yeltsin. All the information of corruption, fraud and penetration of organised crime were disregarded and the IMF and the US Treasury continued supporting and enriching the new Russian ‘capitalists’, that is to say the mafia, and large-scale corruption continued with the increasing bubble. Those principally responsible for American policy towards the transition were Vice-President Al Gore and the then Treasury functionary and now high economic advisor to Obama and inventor of the ‘Bad Bank’, Lawrence Summers. These two referred to the notorious and corrupt oligarchs Boris Nemtsov and A. Chubais (their intimate personal friends) unblushingly as the ‘economic dream team’ of Russia.

3. The escalation of organised crime together with galloping corruption. Was this due to the Soviet heritage???

During the Soviet period there did exist organised mafias which supplied illegal imported goods to the nomenclature. Their role and importance was, however, absolutely marginal. The normal nexus between the economic, social and political breakdown and the advance of organised crime was increased by lightening privatisations and the dismantling of structures which protected public property without any alternative being substituted which would protect private property and contracts.

The alternative to the institutional vacuum and the lack of security and judicial control was to look for protection and support from organised crime which evolved ‘spontaneously’ to become the principal support of the new private capitalist economy, the defender of dubiously acquired private property and the shadow guarantor of the validity of financial and commercial contracts. Organised crime became institutionalised as the only structure capable of dictating and enforcing the basic rules necessary to reduce uncertainty in the trade and business of the new capitalist order.

This situation has not changed substantially. A certain natural evolution in the ways of extracting income by increasing the range and sophistication of extortion methods has taken place. In 2009 Russia suffered the consequences of the financial crash of 2008 resulting in a fall of GNP of 8%. The ‘official’ crime figures recorded an escalation of crimes (the Ministry of the Interior reported the commission of 492 000 economic crimes, an increase of receiving bribes of 13% in relation to the previous year and losses of $33.000 million as a result of these crimes).



Price Waterhouse Coopers, the external auditor, concluded that Russia led the ranking in economic crime (a category which included uncompensated appropriation, accounting fraud, corruption, money laundering, tax fraud, price manipulations and cartels). According to the audit at least 71% of Russian businesses had suffered some sort of criminal attention from the kryshka ( ‘the roof’, a euphemism for the protection offered by organised crime, a figure which was 13% higher than in 2007) with a notable return to more violent methods of extortion.

4. These countries have crossed over from the shadow of an authoritarian centrally planned economy to a virtuous democratic system of free enterprise in which consumer demand governs the supply beneath the rule of law and in which wages and income are fixed by negotiation in accordance with the law of supply and demand.???

The virtue of the new neoliberal system was based on an unequal redistribution of the income and wealth on an enormous scale. Multimillionaires sprung up like mushrooms whilst the hyperdepression (a drop of GNP between 1991-1995 of 34% and 70% in 1998) led to mass pauperisation and an unprecedented social crisis (accompanied by an accelerated gap between rich and poor). Crime figures and murders doubled whilst life expectancy dropped by 5 years. By the end of 1992 40% of the pensioners were receiving less than half the subsistence level. After the debacle of the 90’s economic recovery did not bring with it political or economic liberalisation but in fact the opposite.

The gagging of the media

Russia is the third most dangerous country in the world for journalists (after Iraq and Algeria). Putin dominated all the TV channels and the great majority of the newspapers. Only the internet escaped but the FSB are working hard to establish control of the net.

85% of Russians report that the television is their main source of information. At the beginning of his term of office Putin clashed with Boris Berezovsky and seized control of ORT (the chain with the largest audience) converting it into his largest mouthpiece (Channel One). He then forced the oligarch Vladimir Gusinski to abandon the country placing his TV chain (NTV) in the hands of Gazprom. In 2003 Putin dominated or completely controlled the media and the ‘news’ was changed into something similar to the propaganda of Franco’s NODOS. Russian TV does not reflect reality or spontaneity (all programmes and shows are censored and there is no live coverage) but creates a disconnected parallel universe.

The Kommerzant newspaper (the property of Berezovsky) maintained an independent point of view and was valued for its information on business and politics. The newspaper was bought by an affiliate of Gazprom in 2006. Izvestiya had already been bought by Gazprom in 2005 and stopped informing the public, turning into a trashy tabloid. Other publications absorbed by the Putin clan are Nevavisimaya gazeta, Novye Izvestiya, Moskovskiye novosti, Segodnya, Itogi, Obschaya Gazeta, Komsomolskaya Pravda… The few publications remaining outside the Putin orbit are regional papers or very small.

In the internet the Putin clan is rapidly regaining lost ground. Live Journal, the American server which hosts the most popular blogs among the 300 000 Russian bloggers, was acquired in 2006 by Anton Nosik, a wealthy capitalist residing in the USA with close links to the Kremlin.

In February 2008 the ‘law of communication media’ was passed that tried to muzzle the internet. In April 2008 an even more restrictive law was passed reinforcing the previous legislation. At the end of 2008 Rinet the best known and oldest Russian server, used by many dissident bloggers, was forced to close following the persecution by the secret police that seized all the servers in order to investigate them.

Trades Unions?

The ‘official’ unions are similar to the old Francoist vertical unions. They play a client role, subordinate to the clan or Financial-Industrial Group to which they belong and act as distributors of the profits made by the FIG’s.

The cowardice of the official unions is so great that over the last few years new alternative unions have emerged and developed (funded only by members) which have become relatively strongly entrenched amongst miners, port workers steel workers and workers in the multinationals, in spite of repeated cases of reprisals, torture and assassinations carried out by gunmen contracted by the bosses.

These ‘free’ unions attack the anti-labour legislation (fruit of successive neoliberal ‘labour reforms’) which allow little margin for protest and organisation and have organised illegal strikes against multinationals, Nestle, Leroy Merlin (megastores), and against RUSAL (the largest aluminium producer in the world in the hands of the oligarch Oleg Deripaska), obtaining considerable wage rises.

5. Criminality has been reducing over time. The oligarchs and kleptocrats who looted and appropriated the soviet patrimony have been transformed, in the same way as the robber barons John Rockefeller and JP Morgan, into first class entrepreneurial businessmen, true motors of westernisation.???

The crime and corruption figures have not dropped at all during the 20 years following the beginning of the transition but completely the opposite. Corruption and crime have become wedded to Russian capitalism (some writers in Wikipedia refer to the Russian federation as a mafia state).



The endemic and institutionalised corruption in the Russian education system from kindergarten to the top universities is a thermometer adjusted to the global criminal corruption which envelopes Russian society.

The oligarchs and new rich send their children to study abroad. Private education institutes in Britain and Switzerland, at all educational levels, receive substantial fees from their welcome Russian clients.

For the Russian on the street, however, the new capitalist education system is paid. Payment, however is not confined to registration fees and education-related costs but bribery of all types is the norm. The system of ‘informal ‘payments is generalised in all areas. For the students, the normality of bribery prepares them for a society in which bribery and corruption reign. Families pay between $2000 and $4000 in bribes to get their children into kindergartens (demand exceeds supply and there are waiting lists for over three years). In order to study in the nearest schools, to get good marks, to pass the course, to get university entrance (to get a good mark costs between $3 500 and $5 500), to be able to get into a good university, to be able ‘repeat’ an examination (the poorly paid teachers set difficult exams to oblige their pupils to repeat in order to get an informal supplement which enables them to subsist.



In an article in The Guardian at the end of 2010, referring to telegrams about Russia published by Wikileaks, the following characteristics of the functioning of the state are described

• The Russian spies use the services of mafia bosses to facilitate arms dealing.
• The police, the spy agencies and the prosecutors control and operate extortion rings to ‘protect’ their clients (businessmen, politicians, gangsters…) in return for juicy premiums.
• Bribes work as a parallel tax flow and are channelled directly into the pockets of the police and the security services (FSB).
• Investigators of the Russian mafias in Spain have compiled an extensive list of Russian prosecutors, military and politicians implicated in the networks of organised crime.

To avoid military service, register a new company, buy an apartment, get a school or university place, pass an exam, be declared innocent of criminal charges be they valid or false, receive medical treatment… all require bribes. The plague of bribes is endemic, inflating the cost of transactions by up to 50% from buying arms to constructing a motorway.

With time, what has happened is not the decriminalising of the Russian society and economy, but on one hand the forced adaptation to the system on the part of the businessmen, workers, clients and suppliers, which makes them accustomed to operate in an environment of crime and corruption (adapt or die), and on the other hand a natural evolution and sophistication of corrupt criminal practices.

There is no dual system (with a dominant formal economy versus a residual informal economy) but both sectors connive and intermingle with a profound predominance and preponderance of crime, and ‘formality ‘ or ‘normality’ is a mere façade.

In fact organised crime offers businessmen a wide range of services: protection from extortion by other groups, defence from legal harassment by corrupt state agencies, protection of property, payment of debts, help with Customs, risk assessments by banking services controlled by the mafia (these banks are very useful in obtaining information for criminal enterprises - transfers and credit cards- and are crucial for transferring money or money laundering.



Russia lies at the lower end of the 22 countries evaluated in the Transparency International Bribe Payers Index and in a position lower than China. The TIBPI index tries to measure corporate corruption in place of public corruption which is measured in Corruption Perception Index on a global scale, and which in 2010 placed Russia at number 154 of the 178 countries with a figure of 2,1 on a scale of 1 to 10.

6. The old countries of the Soviet Union have been converted into economies with large middle classes advancing rapidly towards the status of developed western economies.???

According to Medvedev, the middle classes are the key instrument in the objective of modernising the politics and economics of Russia.

According to a study by Rosgosstrakh (a public insurance company) in 2007, the group which registered the largest increase in income were those who earned between $125 000 and $250 000 per year. There were 200 000 households (0,37% of the total) with annual incomes of over a million dollars. Only 6,7% of Russians earn over $930 a year. The average per capita income is $279 and the average wage is $420 (the average agricultural wage is under $190 and that of teachers is $273) therefore even at the decisive moment of economic recovery the number of possible members of the middle class was extremely small.

The per capita statistics do not include any reference to inequality, mortality, illness, the tremendous environmental degradation, the deterioration of infrastructure and public services.

The rich live in exclusive neighbourhoods protected by electrified fences (like Rublyovo-Unpenskove Road, on the outskirts of Moscow) although the great majority of their most favoured gated communities lie outside of Russia. This new capitalist class feels insecure in its own country. It has its families living in London or Paris, its children studying at Oxford or Cambridge and its money in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands.

Economic growth has been and will continue to be enormously disproportionately in favour of the super-rich. In neoliberal circumstances, as is occurring in the USA and the EU, the middle classes are a sector in danger of extinction.




Russia information:

Russian Analytical Digest

Stephen Holmes: Fragments of a Defunct State

Steven Rosefielde: Russia: An Abnormal Country

Abrazo del Koala: Como se hacen los grandes negocios en Rusia

 Lee Raymond (CEO de ExxonMobil entre 1993-2005): "No soy una compañía de EEUU y no tomo decisiones basándome en lo que es bueno para EEUU"

Anders Aslund : ‘La mayor historia de corrupción de la historia humana”

John Browne, (antiguo consejero delegado de BP): "El problema no es la falta de leyes, sino su aplicación selectiva. Esto es lo que crea la sensación de anarquía. Mientras que los procesos burocráticos legalistas siguen siendo el sello distintivo de Rusia, nunca se sabe si alguien va a hacer la vista gorda o si las leyes se aplicarán correctamente".

Capitalismo ruso 1.0 

El capitalismo se introdujo en territorio ruso en el siglo XIX. Se trataba ya de un capitalismo maduro que había experimentado ya su primera revolución industrial. Como ocurría en EEUU y en otros países, era un capitalismo compatible con el fortalecimiento de los estados nación donde se instalaba y que prosperaba con la creación de un núcleo nacional industrial protegido frente a la competencia exterior mediante barreras arancelarias. Pero era también un capitalismo con avanzados rasgos monopolistas en el que los trusts y los holdings ya dominaban el panorama y forzaban a los estados a embarcarse en guerras imperialistas.

Trabajadores del metal a finales del s. XIX

Unos de sus paladines fue Sergei Witte, el ministro que supervisó la construcción del ferrocarril transiberiano. Conocedor de Frederich List, quería para Rusia una fuerte industria doméstica protegida y defendió la promulgación de una legislación proteccionista. También promovió la modernización del sistema educativo (escuelas de comercio) para aumentar la preparación técnica del país y en 1987 promulgó una ley limitando la jornada laboral en las fábricas. Su intento de reforma agraria le enfrentó con la nobleza y fue apartado del poder en 1903.

La primera penetración capitalista en Rusia fue un largo y complejo proceso histórico de asalto y remodelación del estado que al final resultó fracasado tras el desastre de la 1ª G.M. y la resistencia de la población a convertirse en carne de cañón.

Capitalismo ruso 2.0

La reintroducción del capitalismo en Rusia a finales del s.XX, tuvo unas características muy diferentes.

Para el nuevo capitalismo monopolista transnacional los estados nacionales ya no constituyen la base y palanca principal de las corporaciones sino meras piezas accesorias, intercambiables y en cierta forma prescindibles. Para el capitalismo 2.0, la URSS constituía un basto y rico territorio comunal a fagotizar que se le había resistido hasta entonces. A diferencia de la primera experiencia fracasada, la segunda conquista capitalista de la URSS, vía “terapias de choque” y privatizaciones “express”, fue un proceso de infección, desmembración y desestructuración relámpago que duró menos de un lustro.

Rusia se convirtió, casi instantáneamente, en una economía corrupto-mafiosa, petróleo dependiente, en la periferia del capitalismo monopolista transnacional. No hubo “Transición” en ningún sentido. El capitalismo monopolista transnacional ya no precisa de estados base para su operativa. El marco jurídico institucional y las normativas y regulaciones públicas, el contrato social y las cartas magnas nacionales, son a menudo un contratiempo y un obstáculo para la competitividad de los negocios y la apropiación de las plusvalías.

Para el neoliberalismo una oportunidad de saqueo de tal magnitud no se presenta todos los días. La reconquista de Rusia se diseñó y planificó para convertirse en la mayor orgía capitalista jamás contada. Primero saquear, desmantelar, privatizar, robar, acumular, … siempre habría tiempo para la tediosa construcción administrativa, legal y reglamentaria que tanto aborrece el capitalismo neoliberal.De la noche a la mañana, el capitalismo 2.0 reinaba sobre los escombros del estado soviético sin haberse levantado aún ningún marco jurídico institucional alternativo.

La grotesca robo-privatización de lo público sin que existiera el mínimo marco legal ni la mínima seguridad jurídica, generó una escalada relámpago, descomunal y sin precedentes, de las actividades criminales en respuesta a la laguna legal y el desgobierno económico. El desmantelamiento institucional que protegía la propiedad pública no fue substituido por otro alternativo que protegiera la propiedad y los contratos privados.

La respuesta evidente ante el vacío institucional y la falta de seguridad y protección jurídica fue la de buscar la protección y el apoyo del crimen organizado ruso que evolucionaría “espontáneamente” para convertirse en el principal sostén de la economía privada capitalista, el defensor de la propiedad privada mal adquirida y garante de la validez de los contratos financieros y comerciales, constituyéndose como una especie de sistema de arbitraje en la sombra que sostiene el nuevo orden capitalista y es capaz de dictar y hacer cumplir ciertas normas básicas para reducir la incertidumbre en los intercambios y los negocios.

Más del 70% de todos los contratos a mediados de los 90 se cumplimentaron al margen del marco legislativo. El crecimiento en el número de bandas criminales involucradas en la violencia empresarial fue espectacular. En 1991 había 952 grupos criminales; en 1992, 4.300; en 1993, 5.691; …

Así pues, la emergencia explosiva del crimen organizado durante los primeros años 90s puede considerarse como una respuesta institucional informal para proteger los derechos de propiedad y los contratos, la tercera pata imprescindible para el buen funcionamiento del nuevo orden neoliberal.

Los Grupos Financiero-Industriales (FIGs)

El capitalismo terminal burbujista neoliberal es profundamente cortoplacista. La especulación financiera domina y va por delante de una economía real reducida cada vez más a un mero papel secundario como base del hiper-apalancado casino financiero. Es su absoluta irresponsabilidad por las consecuencias criminales de sus envestidas fulgurantes, de sus burbujas y pinchazos, estafas, terapias de choque, reformas laborales, reformas constitucionales, robos de activos, salarios, pensiones, ahorros, … lo que lo convierten en el peor sistema de organización social jamás imaginado.

Como los resultados de sus envestidas son impredecibles, la degeneración mafiosa del capitalismo ruso seguramente no respondió del todo a los parámetros esperados en orden a la consolidación de la penetración de los monopolios transnacionales y el capital financiero.

Una alternativa al “estado fallido” es la constitución de clanes que intentan desempeñar o sustituir las funciones que corresponderían a un estado consolidado. En ausencia de instituciones administrativas válidas, los grupos sociales tienden a reorganizarse amparándose en estructuras tribales, clánicas, o grupos de obediencia criminal como las mafias. El planeta se está llenando de estructuras substitutivas o alternativas al modelo de estado-nación que funcionan en paralelo o substituyen la mayoría de las funciones del estado.

Algo así ha ocurrido en Rusia. Sobre la tabula rasa del estado soviético no se ha edificado un nueva administración estatal capitalista fiable y funcional según los parámetros deseados por el capitalismo monopolista transnacional. Tras diez años de caos en los que el pueblo ruso fue reducido a la miseria más atroz y perdió más de 10 millones de almas, en Rusia coexisten un seudo-estado corrupto e imprevisible que comparte el poder junto a una amalgama de clanes mafiosos que interactúan y se reparten los negocios a través de los “Grupos Financieros Industriales”.

Emergencia de los FIGs Durante la primera ronda privatizadora (1993-94), 16.500 empresas públicas (2/3 del total) fueron privatizadas por el sistema de vales o certificados repartidos entre los directivos, los trabajadores y los ciudadanos rusos (capitalismo del pueblo).

La liberación de los precios en enero de 1992 provocó una inflación descomunal que depreció los ahorros depositados en los bancos en un 99%. Las empresas, ahora sin contratos estatales, no podían siquiera pagar salarios. La mayoría de los “capitalistas populares” se vieron obligados a malvender sus vales a los pocos que tenían dinero fresco. En 1994, 3/4 de las empresas habían pasado a las "manos privadas" de funcionarios corruptos y gansters. Se había acabado el “capitalismo del pueblo”. Apropiación, acaparamiento, desmembramiento y reparto de de activos públicos por grupos criminales cleptócratas en los centros de decisión fueron la tónica del proceso de privatización. Por si acaso, Yeltsin bombardeó el parlamento en octubre de 1993, una cámara que se había mostrado demasiado proclive al “capitalismo popular”. Ya sin el control parlamentario, Potanin, Chubais y otros amiguetes de Yeltsin, diseñaron un plan, en la primavera-verano de 1995, según el cual el gobierno ruso obtendría préstamos de la banca rusa con la garantía de acciones de las principales industrias estratégicas (petróleo, energía, oro, diamantes, níquel, ... ). En caso de impago del gobierno, los bancos tendrían el derecho a subastar las acciones de las compañías.

El plan "préstamos por acciones" ha sido calificado del mayor robo de la historia. De principio a fin fue una operación planificada de sustracción de activos organizada por y para un grupo de futuros oligarcas provenientes de un pequeño círculo de funcionarios corruptos compinchado con el crimen organizado.

Un gobierno corrupto y sin ingresos pidió prestado a los bancos (controlados por mafiosos y oligarcas), avalando los préstamos con los monopolios y empresas públicas. Como estaba previsto desde buen principio, no devolvió los créditos obtenidos en la fecha de su vencimiento. Se pasó a la subasta, donde los participantes eran individuos o compañías controladas por los mismos bancos. En todos los casos los paquetes de acciones subastados se obtuvieron por un pequeño plus sobre el precio irrisorio de salida.

Onexim bank, controlado por V. Potanin, uno de los diseñadores del plan, se quedó con el 38% de Norilsk Nickel (productor de 1/5 del níquel y 2/5 del platino mundial) por 170,1 millones de $ (el 0,1 añadido a los 170 millones fue el plus que se pagó sobre el precio de salida de la subasta). En 2003 su valor estaba tasado en 53.000 millones de $. Otras compañías subastadas fueron: Sibneft (petróleo), adquirida por 100,3 millones de $, Sidanko (petróleo), por 130 millones de $, Yukos (uno de los productores de petróleo mayores del mundo), que fue adquirida por el banco Menatep, el banco de Mijail Khodorkovski, por 159 millones de $ ... Tras el reparto siete "banqueros" habían obtenido el control del 50% de la economía rusa.

Una vez repartido el pastel (Yukos, Sibneft, Lukoil, Surgutneftegaz, Norilsk Níkel, Mechel, …), se había constituido un grupo privilegiado de oligarcas (V. Potanin, B. Berezovsky, M. Khodorkovsky, M. Prokhorov) con enormes recursos para apoyar la continuidad del rumbo político y económico marcado por Yeltsin (reelección en 1996).

 Datos sobre los FIGs rusos

La consolidación de los FIGs

A finales de los 90s el crimen organizado había conseguido un control sustancial sobre las empresas privatizadas gracias a su papel de árbitro y garante del sistema, resolviendo disputas corporativas, asegurando el pago de deudas y la resolución de los contratos. También se habían convertido en prestamistas para emprendedores (Start-ups ) y empresas, intercambiando préstamos por acciones y acabando por controlar a muchos de sus clientes.

Tras la privatización, unas pocas estructuras industriales monopolistas mafioso-dependientes, con un capital altamente concentrado, dominaban, al completo, el panorama económico y social de Rusia.

R. M. Gates, antiguo director de la CIA, estimaba en 2001que 2/3 del comercio, el 80% de la banca, buena parte de las bolsas de valores y 150 grandes empresas públicas, estaban controladas por el crimen organizado. El 40% del PIB estaría en manos de la mafia en connivencia con la corrupción y los negocios

Tras la privatización se constituyeron de inmediato Grupos Financiero-Industriales (FIGs), amalgamas de monopolios y bancos que pretendían ser la versión rusa de los keiretsu japoneses o chaebol sur-coreanos. En realidad, estas estructuras empresariales funcionaban como clanes vinculados a determinados grupos del crimen organizado. Los principales FIGs eran: Inkombank Group, Most-Bank Group, SBS-Agro Group, Oneximbank Group, Menatep Bank Group, Rossiysky Kredit Group, etc.

A mediados de los 90 había 27 grandes FIGs que concentraban 446 corporaciones (65 bancos) y tenían más de 2 millones de empleados. Muchos de estos FIGs quedaron bajo el control del crimen organizado desde su misma fundación. A parte de los grandes FIGs, se formó una nebulosa de miles FIGs según la fórmula banco-corporaciones, en todos y cada uno de los sectores de la economía con los bancos funcionando en régimen de gestoría financiera (lavado de dinero) y fuente de información al servicio de los grupos criminales.

A la cabeza de cada grupo hay algunas empresas de carácter monopolista junto a uno o varios bancos. En un segundo nivel se agrupan algunas firmas secundarias y un tercer nivel de filiales tapadera. Un elemento clave del grupo es una organización de lobbying estructurado que procura por sus intereses ante las instancias estatales. La dirección y el control así como la apropiación de la mayor parte de las rentas obtenidas, se concentra en un reducido número de individuos que poseen entre el 30 y el 50 % de las acciones del grupo.

Estos FIGs administran y controlan las infraestructuras sociales (clínicas, ambulatorios, guarderías, vivienda, sindicatos, …) de sus empleados operando como verdaderos clanes.

Un indicio de la estructura de clan es que los bancos pueden retener durante meses los salarios de los empleados para usarlos en alguna operación especulativa que puede revertir (o no) rentas adicionales al clan. También es corriente "desviar" los salarios debidos para apoyar campañas electorales de candidatos favorables al clan. Se trata de un complicado sistema de lazos financieros mutuos entre empresas, bancos y agencies de gobierno regionales o federales y sobre todo de conexiones personales de clan.

De hecho, estas estructuras clánicas constituyen la base del poder político. La intersección de intereses entre ambas esferas de poder es a menudo compleja. Algunos clanes apoyan diversos partidos simultáneamente y muchos partidos tienen el apoyo de diversos clanes.

Lo que da solidez a estos clanes son sus estrechos lazos con el crimen organizado. Aunque exista cierto grado de competencia formal económica entre ellos, en lo fundamental la lucha es informal. Lo importante son las conexiones personales, los pactos y acuerdos para dividirse el mercado y las esferas de influencia, el establecimiento de “reglas” pactadas de competencia, etc, a parte de las prácticas habituales criminales como los chantajes, sobornos, asesinatos, etc. Se trata de una batalla entre fuerzas que están tratando de regular el mercado. Cada clan trata de regular el mercado a su favor y el clan más fuerte - no el productor más competitivo – es el que se impone.

En ningún otro caso histórico el crimen organizado ha conseguido tanto poder económico y político como en los países neo-capitalistas de la antigua URSS. Tanta corrupción al más alto nivel no podía tener otra consecuencia que la de crear una perfecta relación simbiótica entre la administración oficial y el crimen organizado. Los rusos habitan un medio capitalista neoliberal en el que la ilegalidad está más premiada que perseguida y en el cual el crimen organizado se ha atribuido la función del control y el gobierno de la sociedad.

El arbitraje de Putin y la la estabilización

La ascensión de Putin se gestó durante el período de la hiperdepresión con el PIB en caída libre, el 80 % de la población en la pobreza, un presidente Yeltsin borracho, cleptómano y enfermo, las bandas del crimen organizado encastradas en la mayoría de sectores económicos, enfrentadas, guerreando entre si a pistoletazo limpio, y unos niveles de corrupción escalofriantes. Putin encarnó el arbitraje como condición sine qua non para el mantenimiento del nuevo estatus quo.

El nuevo Estado reorganizado por Putin y sus allegados funciona como árbitro de la estructura clánica post-soviética constituyéndose como el clan más poderoso. Sin apenas ingresos tangibles, el estado ruso se estaba diluyendo como un terrón de azúcar. A despecho de los mercados y las agencias internacionales Putin recuperó para el estado parte de las rentas energéticas que estaban siendo acaparadas por algunos clanes mafiosos (quiebra forzada y nacionalización de Yukos y arresto de Mikhail Khodorkovsky y monopolio de Gazprom) y se aseguró el respaldo de una mayoría de los oligarcas (Gennady Timchenko, Vladimir Yakunin, Yuriy Kovalchuk, Sergey Chemezov).

También renacionalizó activos en manos de multinacionales extranjeras. Royal Dutch Shell y sus asociadas japonesas se vieron obligadas a ceder sus participaciones en la prometedora joint venture Sakhalin II para explotar dicho rico yacimiento de petróleo y gas. BP se vio compelida a ceder el rico yacimiento de gas de Kovykta (Este de Siberia) a Gazprom

En 2003 el estado controlaba sólo el 10% de la producción de petróleo. En 2008 el 44 % de la producción petrolífera había vuelto al sector público que además controlaba el 85% de la producción de gas. La reciente reconstitución del antiguo monopolio de la producción de energía eléctrica ha soliviantado los vociferantes foros del neoliberalismo.

¿Ha creado Putin una estructura vertical de mando del tipo prusiano o soviético? ¿Una especie de restauración autoritaria? La realidad es más prosaica. El estado de Putin es el clan de Putin. Lo que hay en todas las instancias del estado mafioso ruso es una compleja red de lealtades clientelistas en la que todos trabajan frenéticamente por su cuenta y en la que unos tapan o protegen a otros o se reparten las tareas (por ejemplo la policía y el ejército extorsionan y recaudan a los pequeños negocios mientras que el servicio secreto – FSB - tiene la exclusiva de las grandes corporaciones).

No existe un enfrentamiento entre una supuesta ala “liberal” (Memdev aparecería como su portaestandarte) y un ala “estatista” (siloviki o pro Putin). La realidad tras las espesas cortinas de la prensa y la TV, no es una lucha “ideológica” sino una solapada guerra ilegal entre una docena de clanes mafiosos que utilizan todo tipo de trucos para acaparar la máxima porción de las rentas y flujos de caja que produce el sistema. Se trata de una competición entre competidores con los mismos propósitos y objetivos.

Un objetivo habitual es la apropiación de una empresa por un clan rival (raiderstvo). La toma de posesión ilegal de empresas, "Raiderstvo", es un fenómeno bien documentado en Rusia. Muy a menudo la manipulación y el abuso de mecanismos aparentemente legítimos tales como la quiebra y el enjuiciamiento penal son los métodos preferidos de obtener el control/robo de las empresas. El Raiderstvo no podría existir sin el apoyo directo y la connivencia de las autoridades, los fiscales, la policía y los tribunales. Las mismas autoridades estatales rusas han llevado a cabo multitud de adquisiciones de empresas privadas utilizando métodos similares. Más de 100.000 empresarios están encarcelados en la actualidad y uno de cada 6 empresarios reconoce haber sufrido acoso criminal.

Los raiders falsifican los poderes de procuradores y transfieren ilegalmente activos corporativos o inician causas judiciales frívolas y pagan a los jueces para que otorguen a los demandantes millones de dólares en daños y perjuicios. Complots para forzar una quiebra, complots judiciales, falsificación de títulos de propiedad de terrenos,…, son tácticas muy utilizadas.

Perder tu puesto en esta red pude significar la ruina y la cárcel y esto incluye a las más altas instancias del tinglado. La aparente “estabilidad” tiene que ver más bien con la enorme peligrosidad que implica dejar un cargo o salir de un departamento que cualquier otra cosa. Las leyes anti-prevaricación, tribunales y los jueces, existen para destruir y liquidar a cualquiera que caiga fuera de los favores de las redes clientelistas mafiosas. Si existe algún tipo de jerarquía o verticalidad en la Rusia actual es la de la impunidad. Si eres un oficial de la FSB (servicio secreto) puedes trabajar también como sicario puesto que tu empleo oficial te asegura la impunidad total en su segundo empleo.

Así pues, la particular estabilización de Putin, la depreciación del rublo y la subida meteórica de los precios de las materias primas y los combustibles fósiles sacaron al país de la hiperdepresión y del abismo del estado fallido. Entre 1999 y 2008 el PIB ruso creció a una media del 7% anual. En 2004 el PIB había recuperado el nivel de 1991.

Pasada la euforia depredadora inicial y tras la desestructuración, desmantelamiento, desmembramiento y reparto de los activos públicos, los mercados y las multinacionales no están del todo a gusto con la situación actual surgida de su arrogante precipitación y de su codicia criminal. Unas ciertas dosis de corrupción, tráficos ilícitos, prevaricación, y fraude fiscal, le sientan bastante bien al actual sistema capitalista multinacional. La informalidad rejuvenece y dinamiza, dirían en las escuelas de negocios. Pero los estados fallidos o el criminal capitalismo no son demasiado buenos para la mayoría de los negocios. Este es el dilema actual frente a la “estabilidad” conseguida por Putin. Rusia estuvo a punto de convertirse en un estado (nuclear) fallido a finales de los 90. La estabilización de Putin evitó el desastre pero convirtió a Rusia en un estado criminal-capitalista, detrayendo buena parte de los activos y flujos de rentas de los canales habituales de acumulación del capitalismo monopolista neoliberal.

El Matrix ruso

Los políticos y economistas neoliberales afirman que Rusia y los antiguos países del Este, gracias al consejo y guía del FMI y otras agencias neoliberales (G7), se han “normalizado”. En cualquier caso, la “transitología” neoliberal acusa al legado soviético por las extrañas deformidades del capitalismo ruso actual. La normalización rusa se entiende como:

1. La transición no ha sido un proceso demasiado catastrófico. La depresión fue más bien suave (más bien una recesión) y la economía se recuperó rápidamente (en 2003 se habría recuperado el PIB de 1989)

2. El culpable, en todo caso, no fue la rápida liberalización de Yeltsin y las “terapias de choque” del FMI y el G7 sino la naturaleza del sistema soviético que causó su colapso y la subsiguiente depresión. La rápida liberalización habría evitado males mayores.

3. La escalada del crimen organizado junto a una corrupción galopante se deben a la herencia soviética.

4. Estos países han cruzado el umbral desde un estado autoritario con economía centralmente planificada hasta un virtuoso sistema democrático de libre empresa en el que la demanda de los consumidores gobierna la oferta bajo el imperio de la ley, y en el que los salarios y las rentas se fijan negociadamente de acuerdo con la ley oferta y demanda.

5. La criminalidad se ha ido reduciendo con el paso del tiempo. Los oligarcas y cleptócratas que saquearon y se apropiaron del patrimonio soviético se han transformado, como ocurriera con los “robber barons” John dockefeller y J.P. Morgan, en empresarios emprendedores de primera clase, verdaderos motores de la occidentalización.

6. Los antiguos países de la Unión Soviética se han convertido en economías con amplias clases medias, avanzando rápidamente en el trayecto hacia el estatus de las economías occidentales desarrolladas.

1. ¿La transición no ha sido un proceso demasiado catastrófico?. ¿La depresión fue más bien suave (más bien una recesión) y la economía se recuperó rápidamente?

La hiperdepresión post-soviética (1990-98) fue mucho más profunda que la gran depresión norteamericana y costó la vida a más de 10 millones de rusos.

Los sovietólogos acusaban de exageración a las estadísticas soviéticas (tendencia del sistema planificado a presentar buenos resultados de producción). Estadísticos de la CIA recalcularon los datos presentando una serie entre 1913 y 1987 con un crecimiento medio del PIB anual del 4,0% en rublos (1917-1989: 4,7% en dólares)

Angus Maddison, uno de los especialistas en economía soviética que más recorta las cifras de estadísticas oficiales, publicó sus resultados en 2003 que constatan la hiperdepresión con una caída del PIB del 45% entre 1989-1998 y un desempleo del 25%.

La realidad de la hiperdepresión no fue sólo una cuestión de cifras. Estudios sociológicos confirman un aumento sin precedentes en las defunciones (3,4 millones murieron prematuramente entre 1990-98) causadas por las privaciones y la miseria sin que se produjeran guerras, pandemias u otros factores extraordinarios. La hiperdepresión, constatada por las cifras de Maddison, fue real y letal.

El colofón a la hiperdepresión fue la burbuja neoliberal de 1996-98 y el crac subsiguiente. La administración rusa estaba financiando sus crecientes gastos con préstamos del exterior. Los inversores extranjeros adquirían deuda rusa a cambio de altos intereses. Sólo para poder pagar estos intereses el gobierno ruso empezó a pedir prestado emitiendo deuda en forma de bonos a corto plazo (los GKOs). Para poder colocarlos a unos inversores con la mosca en la nariz hubo que subir, subir y subir los intereses. En mayo de 1997 se pagaban unos intereses ya superiores al 150% anual.

Tras la reelección de Yeltsin, el gobierno permitió la compra de GKOs por extranjeros. Chase Manhattan, UBS, Credit Suisse, First Boston, Republic Bank… se lanzaron a la caza del GKO. Para poder pagar estos vencimientos el gobierno recurrió a emitir más GKOs. Se trataba el típico esquema piramidal Ponzi: Con los nuevos préstamos pagar los intereses de los anteriores.

Los inversores rusos y extranjeros participantes en el casino GKO se hicieron de oro mientras duró la orgía. Los GKOs resultaban tan lucrativos que los mismos bancos rusos invirtieron masivamente en ellos en lugar de hacer préstamos comerciales.

El 6 de octubre de 1997 el principal índice de la Bolsa rusa alcanzó su máximo histórico (571, un año después caería a los 37 puntos) convirtiéndose en el mercado financiero emergente más ardiente del planeta. Pero el sueño ruso iba a durar muy poco. Con la resaca de la crisis financiera asiática de 1997 los inversores que empezaron a retirarse silenciosamente convirtiendo sus activos en rublos a dólares.

Sin embargo y a pesar de los malos indicios, los mercados confiaban en que Rusia era demasiado “nuclear” para caer. Bank of America, Credit Suisse, First Boston Corp., Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs y Citibank habían prestado grandes sumas a los especuladores.

En mayo de 1998, L. Summers convenció a Clinton para obtener del Congreso una contribución extraordinaria de 10.000 mill. de $ al FMI para “salvar el capitalismo en Rusia”. Aún en junio de 1998, Goldman Sachs abrió una suscripción de eurobonos rusos por valor de 1.025 millones de $ que colocó íntegramente.

En agosto, la bolsa de Moscú tuvo que cerrar varias veces al producirse caídas diarias de más del 10%. La liquidez desapareció del mercado. El gobierno ruso se declaró en bancarrota, anunció una suspensión de pagos unilateral de los GKOs y dejó flotar el rublo.

En menos de 24 horas la caída en picado del rublo hizo subir los precios al por menor más de un 30%. Los depósitos bancarios fueron congelados por un decreto – 2 meses de corralito – y las tarjetas de débito dejaron de funcionar. Docenas de bancos cerraron y desaparecieron (sólo un puñado de bancos controlados por la mafia y los oligarcas fueron rescatados por el Banco Central ruso). En pocos días se evaporaron los ahorros de los ciudadanos que, sin poder sacarlos de los bancos, veían como iban perdiendo su valor junto con el rublo.

Los que no perdieron su empleo se encontraron con que no podían cobrar su salario. Cuando finalmente cobraron, éste había perdido más de los 2/3 de su valor (la caída media fue de 160$ a 55$/mes) y el número de rusos viviendo por debajo de la línea oficial de pobreza pasaba al 40%.

El PIB de 1997 había sido de 422.000 millones de $. En 1998 apenas llegó a 132.000 millones, una caída del 74%.

Los valores de la bolsa cayeron un 90% en un año. El rublo un 75%. La inflación se disparó. Frente al descalabro monetario y financiero se volvió al trueque. Los maestros de Voronezh tuvieron que cobrar sus clases en lápidas mortuorias. Así pues, la “Transición” fue un proceso catastrófico sin paliativos. En los 90 el gran hito de la mundialización dirigida por el tándem FMI-BM resultó en la conversión del “2º Mundo” (antiguo bloque soviético) en 3r Mundo, con el mayor y más rápido incremento de la pobreza registrado en la historia: de 14 millones a 170 millones en menos de cuatro años.

La hiperdepresión generó una verdadera debacle demográfica sin precedentes en tiempos de paz. Una media anual cercana al millón de rusos fue borrada de las estadísticas demográficas desde 1991 hasta mediados de la primera década del siglo XXI.

 La tragedia demográfica rusa

2. ¿El culpable, en todo caso, no fue la rápida liberalización de Yeltsin y las “terapias de choque” diseñadas por el FMI y el G7, sino la naturaleza del sistema soviético que causó su colapso y la subsiguiente depresión?. ¿La rápida liberalización habría evitado males mayores.?

La URSS había demostrado gran capacidad de recuperación del desastre en varias ocasiones (1917-21 y 1940-45). Además, otras economías de planificación central evolucionaron hacia una economía de mercado capitalista sin que se produjera una depresión.

Lo que causó la hiperdepresión fue la codicia y el cortoplacismo desenfrenado neoliberal que orientó y planificó las famosas terapias de choque. Washington estuvo siempre al corriente de los manejos criminales más burdos. Clinton dejó que fueran los financieros de Wall Street los que dirigieran la política norteamericana respecto a la transición capitalista del antiguo bloque soviético. El portaestandarte de toda la operación fue el "Russian Privatization Center" con fuertes lazos con la Universidad de Harvard.

El Centro recibió fondos y préstamos del Tesoro de EEUU, del FMI, del Banco Mundial, del Banco Europeo de Reconstrucción y Desarrollo, de la Unión Europea, de Alemania y de Japón que superaron los 4.000 millones de $.

La administración de Clinton y A. Gore no dudó en tapar los de escándalos, contubernios criminales, fraudes, robos y lavado de dinero en su misma trastienda - el Bank of New York fue utilizado como lavadora del crimen organizado ruso - desatendiendo los informes de la CIA que denunciaban la situación, alegando el temor a un triunfo de la oposición comunista a Yeltsin. Todos los indicios sobre corrupción, fraude y penetración del crimen organizado fueron descartados y el FMI y el Tesoro USA siguieron reforzando y enriqueciendo a los nuevos "capitalistas" rusos, es decir a la mafia y la corrupción a gran escala, con tal de que la burbuja siguiera creciendo. Los principales responsables de la política norteamericana con respecto a la transición rusa fueron el vicepresidente Al Gore y el entonces funcionario del Tesoro y hoy alto consejero económico de Obama y artífice del "Bad Bank", Lawrence Summers, los cuales, refiriéndose a los oligarcas tan notorios como corruptos - Boris Nemtsov y A. Chubais - (íntimos amigos personales de ambos) les calificaron, en 1996, sin sonrojo alguno, como el "dream team económico" de Rusia.

3. La escalada del crimen organizado junto a una corrupción galopante ¿se deben a la herencia soviética.?

Existían mafias organizadas durante el periodo soviético que suministraban productos de importación ilegal a la nomenclatura. Pero su papel y su importancia eran absolutamente marginales. El nexo habitual entre el descalabro económico social y político de una depresión y el avance del crimen organizado se vio incrementado por las privatizaciones relámpago y el desmantelamiento institucional que protegía la propiedad pública sin que fuera substituido por otro alternativo que protegiera la propiedad y los contratos privados.

La alternativa al vacío institucional y la falta de seguridad y protección jurídica fue la de buscar la protección y el apoyo del crimen organizado ruso que evolucionaría “espontáneamente” para convertirse en el principal sostén de la nueva economía privada capitalista, el defensor de la propiedad privada mal adquirida y garante en la sombra de la validez de los contratos financieros y comerciales. El crimen organizado institucionalizado como la única estructura capaz de dictar y hacer cumplir ciertas normas básicas para reducir la incertidumbre en los intercambios y los negocios del nuevo orden capitalista.

Esta situación no ha variado sustancialmente. Se ha producido una cierta evolución natural en las formas de extracción de rentas aumentando la gama y sofisticación de los procedimientos de extorsión. En 2009 Rusia sufrió las consecuencias del crac financiero de 2008 experimentando una caída del PIB del 8%. Las estadísticas “oficiales” del crimen admitieron una escalada de los delitos (el ministerio del interior reconoció el descubrimiento de 429.000 crímenes económicos, un aumento de los sobornos el 13% en relación a 2008 y unas pérdidas relacionadas con este tipo de delitos de 33.000 millones de $).

 
El auditor externo Price Waterhouse Coopers concluyó que Rusia detenta el liderazgo en el ranking del crimen económico (una categoría que incluye apropiación indebida, contabilidad fraudulenta, corrupción, lavado de dinero, fraude fiscal, manipulación de precios y cartelización). Según la auditoria al menos un 71% de las empresas rusas habían experimentado alguna forma de intervención criminal de la krysha (“tejado”, eufemismo de la protección que ofrece le crimen organizado) (un 13% más que en 2007) con una notable vuelta a los métodos más violentos de extorsión.
 

4. ¿Estos países han cruzado el umbral desde un estado autoritario con economía centralmente planificada hasta un virtuoso sistema democrático de libre empresa en el que la demanda de los consumidores gobierna la oferta bajo el imperio de la ley, y en el que los salarios y las rentas se fijan negociadamente de acuerdo con la ley oferta y demanda.?

La virtuosidad del nuevo sistema neoliberal se concretó en una redistribución desigualitaria de la renta y la riqueza de unas proporciones descomunales. Los multimillonarios aparecieron como setas mientras la hiperdepresión (PIB -34% entre 1991-95; -70% en 1998) conducía a una pauperación en masa y una crisis social sin precedentes (acompañada por una diferenciación espacial acelerada). Los índices de criminalidad y asesinatos se doblaron mientras la esperanza de vida se reducía en 5 años. A finales de 1992, el 40% de los pensionistas cobraban menos de la mitad del nivel de subsistencia. Tras la debacle de los noventa, la recuperación económica no ha traído la liberalización de la economía o de la política sino más bien todo lo contrario.

Enmudecimiento de los medios de comunicación:

Rusia es el tercer país más peligroso del mundo para el periodismo (detrás de Irak y Algeria) Putin domina todos los canales de TV y la gran mayoría de los medios escritos. Sólo se le escapa Internet pero el FSB está trabajando duro para establecer controles en la red.

El 85% de los rusos afirman que la TV es su principal fuente de información. Al principio de su mandato, Putin chocó con Boris Berezovsky y lo desplazó del control de ORT (la cadena con mayor audiencia) convirtiéndola en su principal portavoz (Canal Uno). Seguidamente forzó al oligarca Vladimir Gusinsky a abandonar el país pasando su cadena de TV (NTV) a manos de Gazprom. En 2003 Putin dominaba o controlaba la TV al completo y los “informativos” se convertían en algo parecido a la propaganda de los NODOS del franquismo. La TV rusa no refleja la realidad ni la espontaneidad (todos los programas y shows son en diferido y censurados desde 2004) sino que crea un universo paralelo desconectado.

El periódico Kommersant (propiedad de Berezovsky) mantenía un punto de vista independiente y era valorado por sus informaciones sobre negocios y política. El periódico fue comprado por una filial de Gazprom en 2006. Izvestiya ya había sido comprada por Gazprom en 2005 para dejar de informar y convertirse en un anodino tabloide. Otras publicaciones absorbidas por el clan de Putin son Nezavisimaya gazeta, Novye Izvestiya, Moskovskiye novosti, Segodnya, Itogi, Obschaya Gazeta, Komsomolskaya Pravda, … Las pocas publicaciones que han quedado fuera de la órbita putiniana son de tipo regional o de dimensiones muy reducidas.

En Internet el clan Putin está recuperando rápidamente el terreno cedido. Live Journal, el servidor norteamericano de alojamiento de blogs más popular entre los más de 300.000 blogueros rusos, fue adquirido en 2006 por Antón Nosik, un acaudalado capitalista con residencia en los EEU y cercano al Kremlin.

En febrero de 2008 se promulgó la “ley sobre los medios de comunicación” que pretendía poner un bozal a Internet. En abril de 2008 un nuevo decreto ley, aún más restrictivo, reforzaba la ley de febrero. A finales de 2008, Rinet, el más conocido y antiguo proveedor de acceso a Internet ruso, usado por muchos blogueros disidentes, fue obligado a cerrar acto seguido de una perquisición conducida por la policía secreta que se llevó todos los servidores para investigarlos. 

¿Sindicatos?

Los sindicatos “oficiales” son semejantes a los amarillentos sindicatos verticales de la época franquista. Juegan un papel clientelar subordinado al clan o Grupo Financiera Industrial al que pertenecen y actúan como distribuidores de los beneficios que otorga el FIG.

El amarillismo de los sindicatos “oficiales” es tan exagerado que en los últimos años han aparecido y se están desarrollando nuevos sindicatos alternativos (con fondos solo de cotizaciones) que se han implantado con relativa fuerza entre los mineros, portuarios, trabajadores del ferrocarril y obreros de empresas multinacionales, a pesar de los repetidos casos de represalias, torturas y asesinatos perpetrados por los sicarios contratados por la patronal.

Estos sindicatos “libres” se saltan las legislaciones anti-obreras (fruto de sucesivas “reformas laborales” neoliberales) que dan escaso margen a la protesta y a la organización y han organizado huelgas ilegales (2007) contra multinacionales: Nestlé, Leroy Merlin (grandes superficies), y contra RUSAL (el mayor productor de Aluminio del mundo, en manos del oligarca Oleg Deripaska ) obteniendo aumentos de sueldos considerables.

5. ¿Los que saquearon y se apropiaron del patrimonio soviético se han transformado, como ocurriera con los “robber barons” John dockefeller y J.P. Morgan, en empresarios emprendedores de primera clase, verdaderos motores de la occidentalización.?

Los índices de criminalidad y corrupción no han descendido en absoluto durante los 20 años transcurridos desde el inicio de la “transición” sino todo lo contrario. La corrupción y la criminalidad se han convertido en consustanciales del capitalismo ruso (algunos autores, en la Wikipedia, se refieren a la Federación Rusa como a un estado mafioso)

La corrupción endémica e institucionalizada existente en el privatizado sistema educativo ruso, desde el jardín de infancia hasta la universidad de élite, es un termómetro ajustado del nivel de corrupción criminal global que atenaza a la sociedad rusa.

Por supuesto, los oligarcas y nuevos ricos rusos envían a sus vástagos a estudiar al extranjero. Las instituciones educativas privadas de Inglaterra y Suiza, en todos los niveles educativos, recolectan sustanciosos ingresos de sus acaudalados clientes rusos.

Pero para el ruso de a pie, el nuevo sistema educativo capitalista es de pago. Pero el pago no se limita a la matrícula y los gastos relacionados con el estudio sino que son regla los sobornos de todo tipo. El sistema de pagos “informales” está generalizado en todos los ámbitos. Para los estudiantes, la “normalidad” de los sobornos educativos los prepara para una sociedad en la que imperan la corrupción y la criminalidad. Las familias pagan entre 1000 y 2000 $ de sobornos para ingresar a sus niños en las guarderías (la demanda supera la oferta y las listas de espera superan los 3 años), para poder matricularse en el instituto más próximo, para obtener buenas calificaciones, pasar de curso, para superar la selectividad (con buena nota costaba en 2010 entre 3500 y 5500 $), para poder ingresar en determinada universidad, para poder “repetir” un examen (el profesor mal pagado prepara, adrede, un primer examen difícil para obligar a sus pupilos a repetirlo a cambio de un suplemento informal que le permita subsistir), …

En un artículo en The Guardian de finales de 2010, referente a telegramas sobre Rusia publicados por WikiLeaks, se describen algunos rasgos del funcionamiento de una estado de estas características:

• Los espías rusos utilizan los servicios de capos mafiosos para llevar a cabo operaciones de tráfico de armas.

• La policía, las agencias de espionaje y los fiscales controlan y operan redes de extorsión “protegiendo” a sus clientes (empresarios, políticos, gansters, … ) a cambio de suculentas primas.

• Los sobornos funcionan como un flujo impositivo paralelo y finalista, canalizado directamente a los bolsillos de la policía y los servicios de seguridad (FSB)

• Investigadores de las mafias rusas en España han compilado una extensa lista de fiscales, militares y políticos rusos implicados en las redes del crimen organizado.

Evitar el servicio militar, registrar una nueva compañía, comprar un apartamento, conseguir una plaza escolar o universitaria, pasar un examen, ser declarado inocente por cargos criminales, sean falsos o válidos, recibir tratamiento médico, … todo ello requiere sobornos. La plaga de sobornos es endémica inflando hasta un 50% el coste de cualquier transacción, desde una compraventa de armas hasta la construcción de una autopista.

Con el tiempo, lo que ha sucedido no ha sido una descriminalización de la sociedad y la economía rusas, sino, por un lado, una forzosa adaptación por parte de empresarios, trabajadores, clientes, proveedores, etc., al sistema, acostumbrándose a operar en un entorno habitual de corrupción y criminalidad (adaptarse o morir), y por otro una natural evolución y sofisticación en las prácticas criminales corruptas.

No existe ni siquiera una dualidad sectorial (economía formal dominante versus economía informal residual) sino que ambos sectores se solapan y entremezclan con predominio y preponderancia profunda del crimen sobre el conjunto y cuya “formalidad” o “normalización” es simple y pura fachada.

Actualmente el crimen organizado ofrece a los empresarios una extensa gama de servicios: protección contra la extorsión por parte de otras bandas, defensa contra el acoso de la ley por parte de agencias estatales corruptas, protección de la propiedad, cobro de deudas, asistencia en aduanas, asesoría de bufetes de expertos “legales”, servicios de la banca controlada por la mafia (la operativa de estos bancos es muy útil para obtener información para el negocio criminal - transferencias, cartas de crédito, … - y resulta crucial para las transferencias de fondos y el blanqueo de capitales) , …

Rusia se encuentra en la parte inferior de los 22 países evaluados y un lugar por debajo de China en el Índice Transparency International Bribe Payers Index, que mide el nivel de soborno corporativo. El índice TIBPI pretende medir la corrupción corporativa en lugar de la corrupción del sector público que ya refleja el índice Corruption Perception Index de manera global, que en 2010 puso a Rusia en el puesto 154 de 178 países con una puntuación absoluta de 2,1 en la parte baja de la escala del 1 a 10.

6. ¿Se han convertido en economías con amplias clases medias avanzando rápidamente en el trayecto hacia el estatus de las economías occidentales desarrolladas?

Según Medvedev, las clases medias constituyen el instrumento clave para el objetivo de la modernización económica y política de Rusia.

Según un estudio de Rosgosstrakh (una empresa pública de seguros) en 2007, el grupo que registraba mayor incremento de renta era el situado entre los que ganaban entre $125,000-$250,000 anuales. Había 200.000 hogares (0,37 % del total) con ingresos anuales superiores al millón de $. Sólo el 6,7% de los rusos ganan más de 930 $/mes. La renta media per cápita es de 279 $ y el salario medio es de 420 $ (el salario medio agrícola no llega a los 190$ y el de los maestros y profesores es de 273 $) . Así pues, incluso en el momento álgido de la recuperación económica el número de posibles miembros de las “clases medias” era extremadamente pequeño.

Las estadísticas "per cápita"  omiten cualquier referencia a la desigualdad, la mortalidad, la morbilidad,  la tremenda degradación medioambiental, el deterioro de las infraestructuras y servicios públicos, ...

Los ricos viven en barrios exclusivos  con vallados electrificados (como la Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Road en las afueras de Moscú) aunque la gran mayoría sus más preciadas comunidades valladas están fuera de Rusia. Esta nueva clase capitalista se siente insegura en su propio país. Tienen a sus familias viviendo en Londres o París, a sus hijos estudiando en Cambridge o en Oxford y su dinero en Suiza o las Islas Caimán.

El crecimiento económico ha sido y seguirá siendo enormemente desproporcionado a favor de los super-ricos. En circunstancias neoliberales, y como está ocurriendo ya en los EEUU y en la UE, las clases medias son un sector en peligro de extinción.

Información sobre Russia:

Russian Analytical Digest

Stephen Holmes: Fragments of a Defunct State

Steven Rosefielde: Russia: An Abnormal Country

Abrazo del Koala: Como se hacen los grandes negocios en Rusia

THE GLOBAL MONOPOLIST GULAG

Spanish

Lockuptown y Foxconn, flagships of neoliberal Gulag

Two days after the most anti-labour labour reform in history the president of the employers federation stated that, “we are on the right road” " but a week later he was already complaining that the “the labour reform was conceived incompletely and is insufficient”. ". Where are we headed??

Human rights, and amongst them, labour rights, lie at the heart of the nation state. The objective of monopoly capitalism is the systematic reduction of these rights throughout the planet. Neoliberal globalisation generates emigration between nations and the breakdown of the nation state. It is rapidly making the relationship between citizens, their rights, obsolete. Neoliberal monopolist production chains are increasingly turning people into expatriates: workers are being reduced to immigrants within their own countries (as in the special zones inside emerging countries or immigrants to the penal industrial complex). .

The Nazis denationalised their victims so that their human rights expired and ceased to exist. They were converted into pariahs whose human rights disappeared in the absence of a functioning state. The only substitute for their lost nations was the concentration camp. Neoliberalism is following in their footsteps, but on a global level. Workers of the XXI Century, products of the extreme global flexi-precariation, the ideal workforce of neoliberal monopoly capitalism, are workers to use and then throw away, in the same way as the Nazi Gulag used them in private German monopolies.

Precedents

The colonialist empires, particularly the British Empire, systematically employed concentration camps to combat and crush anti-colonial resistance. In the mid-1950’s, to put down and punish the Mau-Mau rebellion of the Kikuyu, the British organised the extermination of 100 000 people in concentration camps (in spite of a diligent British programme to destroy the evidence, the brutal genocide of the British Gulag in Kenya is sufficiently documented). GULAG británico de Kenia.

The colonial empires promoted and extended the penal colony system of forced labour for criminals and political dissidents. During the XVIII and XIX Centuries they were sent to North America, Norfolk Island, Tasmania and the Andaman Islands. The penal colonies were intended to achieve a number of objectives at the same time: to get rid of the prisoners, to make their escape more difficult, to achieve economic self-sufficiency and to colonise new territories. Prisoners were often placed amongst free colonists in a state of semi-slavery.

The Tsarist penal system (katorgas) combined concentration camps with colonies, fusing the punitive and colonising functions, providing forced labour (criminals, POW’s and political dissidents) for the state timber and mining (gold and silver) industries and the construction of roads and infrastructure. The prison officials combined rewards with harsh punishment to stimulate the productivity of the prisoners. In the mid XIX Century the convicts were branded with the (Cyrillic) letters ‘C’ on one cheek, ‘O’ on the forehead, and ‘K’ on the other cheek (member of the Katorga) to prevent them from escaping. In spite of this, it is calculated that some 50 000 escaped prisoners lived on the Siberian taiga over the 19th Century, often organised in gangs of brigands.

The Stalinist GULAG

The Soviet Union used Siberia in the same way as the Russian Empire had done, as a colony for common criminals and political dissidents. The Soviet penal system was organised along similar lines and was institutionally regularised as the GULAG from 1929. In 1928 there were 30 000 internees. After the mass arrests of the Great Purge (basically of anti-Stalinist leftists accused of counter-revolution) at the beginning of the 1930’s, the population of the GULAG multiplied. .

The growth of the Gulag corresponded with the centralised industrialisation campaign. The Gulag was the terrorist leverage of soviet burocratic capitalism and participated in the exploitation of natural resources, colonisation of remote areas and the construction of infrastructure and industrial projects. .

In 1931-32 there were some 20 000 prisoners in the camps. In 1935 there were 800 000 in the camps and 300 000 in the colonies. In 1939 when World War II was looming there were a total of between 1.2 and 1.5 million in the camps and colonies of the Gulag. After the war, the number of prisoners in the Gulag increased considerably with the incorporation of POW's and convicts from the new purges, reaching 2.4 million at the beginning of the 1950's, of whom 456 000 were political prisoners.

After the death of Stalin in 1953 there were revolts and uprisings in the Gulag (the Bitch Wars) and uprisings in the colonies of Kengir and Vorkuta). By the end of the 1950's virtually all the work camps had been closed down but the colonies continued in existence for a few more years until the Gulag system was officially dissolved on 25 January 1960.

The Baltic-White Sea Canal, the Baikal-Amur road, parts of the Moscow metro network and the University of Moscow itself were built with forced labour from the Gulag. Secret laboratories (sharashka) also existed, where convicted scientists worked on developing new technologies.br />
Generally speaking, the Gulag officials combined punishments with incentives to increase productivity (better rations, cash prizes, wages, reduced sentences both individually and collectively and preferential treatment for the most productive workers).

The Color GULAG. Slavery hire

W. E. B. Du Bois: "The slave was freed, stopped for a brief moment in the sun, and returned again to slavery". 

James Boggs (Black Political Power, 1963): "The U.S. crime is that it is the first and only country, having legally freed his slaves, enslaving continued from infamous 1877 treaty that allowed employers to maintain de facto southern blacks into slavery to allow time for the nascent industrialization north could compete with British manufacturing."

 While American media denounced the horrific Soviet GULAG, the USA slave GULAC continued to operate till the 2nd W.W.

In the amendment to the constitution, passed in 1865, abolishing slavery, contained a clause: " except as punishment for a crime".


After the defeat in the civil war, southern businessmen and planters managed to keep hundreds of thousands of blacks in slavery until the mid-twentieth century. Reconducieron southern courts freed slaves to their old plantations ( Jim Crow Laws). In late 1865, every Southern state had passed laws outlawing vagrancy, defining it so broadly that virtually any freed slave not under the protection of a white could be arrested for such a crime. It was a crime for a black change jobs without permission, talking loudly in the company of a white woman walking along a railroad track, sit next to a white on a train, having sex with a white woman, ...

Slavery by another name

Blacks could be arrested, claiming any trifle or falsity, and sold to labor camps. Those convicted could be rented to white employers. In times of labor shortage, the arresting agents claiming that black citizens were committing crimes and, without even judging them, were "rented" to businessmen or planters. In the absence of prisoners, many young people and teenagers were simply kidnapped and sold directly to the capitalist slave twentieth century.

In the labor camps thousands died from disease, abuse and poor diet. In some years, mortality exceeded 40%. The new hire slavery generated millions of dollars to states and local governments. For many years the slave trade was the main source of income for the state of Alabama.

In 1903 several slave bosses (Edward McRee,congressman from Georgia, and others), a sheriff (Mc Clelland) and a lawyer (William F. Crawley) were prosecuted for keeping in slavery thousands of black workers (the sheriff take them, the lawyer judged and rented them to the employers). They were fined $ 1,000. Her lawyers argued that there was no federal law that specifically make a crime of slavery.

After the outbreak of the 2nd GM, participation of black soldiers in the war, the tightening of federal action and probably because of the reduced need for unskilled labor, marked the true end of black slavery in the USA.

The Nazi Gulag

In contrast to the Stalinist state Gulag, the Nazi Gulag was organised by common agreement. The Nazi state used the SS to provide a constant flow of captive workers to the companies in exchange for a certain sum per unit provided.

If, in 1939, the opinion of German capital was divided, the initial successes of the Wermacht led to the immense majority of industrialists warmly and definitively embracing Nazism. With the imminent invasion of the USSR in sight, the large companies with knowledge and experience in the area (IG Farben, Siemens, and AEG) offered themselves as experts for the immediate exploitation of resources and seizure of the Soviet factories and industrial installations. Members of the 100 main corporations (Siemens, Krupp, Maresmann, Rheinmetall, Flick, GHH, IG Farben) participated with interest in the committees created for the project.

As new territories fell into German hands, the concentration camps followed. In the case of counter-attacks, factories and their labour forces were evacuated. A programme of forced labour was initiated under SS Gauleiter Sauckel who press-ganged over 5 million ostarbeiters from the occupied territories into work.

German production and management in the Nazi era

. Leistungsernaehrung (food for productivity)

As food became scarcer and the Germans protested about the cutting of their rations which were being diverted to forced labourers, German businessmen devised a scheme to stimulate productivity worthy of the top businesses schools, the leistungsernaehrung. The workers were divided into three classes A, B and C. Group B received a normal ration provided that their production was’ normal’. Group C was penalised for its lack of productivity by ceding part of its ration to group A.

. Destruction through work What was unique about the Nazi Gulag was the discovery and systematic application of the ‘destruction at the end of work’ method “ ”( Vernichtung durch Arbeit). ). It operated by constructing concentration camps next to the large industrial plants to provide forced labour to the companies according to demand at the time. It was a type of human “RENTING” . The SS of the concentration camps were paid a sum per prisoner by their clients with the understanding that the prisoners would be replaced in event of collapse, labour accident or falloff in productivity. In contrast to the Stalinist Gulag, in the Nazi Gulag the concentration camp was not a stock, but a flow, of labour. The SS did not provide their clients with individual workers but with specific units of workforce. They were treated as workers to use and throw away. Whenever productivity was seen to drop they were murdered and rapidly replaced. The system worked well whilst the SS could continue offering their capitalist clients an apparently endless flow of new prisoners. .

The first concentration camp to provide forced labour to the German industrialists was Auschwitz, for the construction of the chemical-industrial complex (IG Farben) of Auschwitz Monowitz in Silesia which finally rivalled the Ruhr complex. The camp at Oranienberg provided workers to Heinkel, Ravensbruck supplied women to Siemens, Mauthausen provided Steyr Daimler Puch, the camp at Sachsenhausen provided Daimler-Benz, the camp at Dachau provided BMW…. After 1943 each and every one of the large German industrial plants had at least one SS concentration camp attached to it. Over-exploitation, bad treatment, lamentable living conditions and lack of food, turned the camps into death traps for their inmates..

The global monopolist Gulag

Monopoly capitalism has never, ever renounced the advantages which a Gulag possesses. New forms of Gulag are beginning to proliferate at the hands of monopolist neoliberalism intent upon owning the planet.

In contrast to the previous Gulags, in the global monopoly Gulag, the initiative comes from the businessmen and although their participation in the manipulated public sector is limited, the participants, suppliers and clients are the large private corporations.

1. “Lockuptown”

Lockuopown is the second biggest city in the USA in the number of inhabitants. 6 000 000 prisoners inhabit the largest prison system in the world. A mass-imprisonment on a scale never before reached in history. A Gulag that keeps more Afro-Americans behind bars (2, 4 million) than had been slaves in 1850.

Whilst the majority of cities suffer from decrepit infrastructure and sub-prime finances, Lockuptown is living in an age of splendour and progress. We are dealing here with prisons which, for the large part, are privatised. Two big monopolist corporations (CCA y GEO Group) share this particular market with an income of nearly $3 000 000 000 in 2010. CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) operates 65 penal establishments, whilst the GEO group controls 118 detention centres shared between the USA, South Africa, the UK and Australia.

Florida penal complex

These are not rehabilitation units but a sophisticated prison-industrial complex with the intention of making money and a monopoly income. The number of prisoners has increased 772% between 1970 and 2009. CCA and GEO Group have consistently lobbied the legislators to punish recidivism in petty crime with long sentences (zero tolerance), to imprison immigrants and to condemn minors to life sentences (more than 500 minors are serving life sentences in its Texas establishments), with the unmistakable intention of increasing its volume of business.

A widely used strategy  for such companies is to select areas and cajole economically depressed county administration with promises of new jobs, money and economic rejuvenation, thanks to the construction of a private detention center in the area. This is a speculative maneuver committed to materialize the hope of the arrival of prisoners to fill beds. The bonds issued for financing must be endorsed by the local government that becomes additional support in the lobby to arrest and detain more and more people.

Privatized Prisons and Prison Labor IS Slavery

Whilst unemployment grows in the USA, the large monopolist multinationals have converted the North American Gulag into special de-localised zones within its own borders. The multinationals Lockheed and Raytheon Corporation subcontract the assembly of war material to the Gulag. This includes the sophisticated electronic components that guide the Patriot anti-missiles, paying wages of 17 cents an hour to prisoners without Trades Unions or medical insurance, working under a militarised regime without any protection measures. These workers live in minute cubicles the size of a toilet and 'enjoy’ an hour a day for exercise.

Conglomerates like IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, ATT, Wireless, Texas Instruments, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3 Com, Intel, Northern Telecom TWA, Nordstrom, Revlon, Macey's ,have decided to emulate Krupp, Heinkel, Daimler Benz, BMW, IG Farben, Siemens, the efficient German monopolies of the Third Reich who exploited Jews, Ostarbeiters, (Poles, Czechs, Bulgarians) and Soviet POW's of the NAZI Gulag relocating their factories and assembly plants to Lockuptown.

In this modern American Gulag forced labour is not a flow but a stock. Whilst the Nazi Gulag was able to use a continuous flow of prisoners through war and occupation, Lockuptown exploits a permanently growing stock thanks to the fact that the expenses of maintenance and lodging falls to the taxpayer.

2. The program USA visa H-2B, a variant of neoliberal slavery  

Washington politicians and corporate lobbyists have redesigned a legal slave framework (circling the 13th Amendment of the Constitution) to exploit immigrant labor. A "localization" of usual business model of multinational corporations, which supply chain uses captive labor.
In theory it is a program designed to fill jobs that nationals reject. To certify that there is no local demand for such jobs, slave firms place their advertisements in low circulation publications for the nationals without work not notice.

The H-2B visa program imported 83,000 "guest workers" to the U.S. in 2011. Receptionists and cleaning staff in hotels along the Gulf of Mexico (Four Seasons, Biltmore, Ritz Carlton, tourist resorts Nantucket Island ....), welders and pipe fitters in shipyards, fish processors, harvesters strawberries, vegetables, sugarcane, environmental janitors, gardeners, forestry workers.

Features

• Recruiters intermediaries charge fortunes for the visa and papers, so that immigrants are over-indebted and dare not return before for fear of reprisals.

• Exclusion from the labor market. Under the program H-2B visas, immigrants are not allowed to work for anyone other than the contracting firm.

• systematic restriction of movement. The employer confiscates the passports, visas, identity cards (Brand Candy recruiters in Mexico, retained the passports of their guests workers demanding $ 1,000 additional to return them). The isolation of the victim reaches the point of not revealing the location or address of the place where he lives and works.

• harmful living conditions, such as poor diet, denial of access to medical care, denial of free time, not enough time to sleep ...

• The slave working conditions: The salaries are cut by deductions for board and lodging. The shifts are unusually long with little or no interruption. A few days of rest. Frequent cases of withholding of wages.

• Intermediaries contractors retain immigrants' remittances to their relatives as "collateral".

• Often, the Applicant is not more than a intemediate firm that subcontracts immigrants to other companies.Five Star Contractors LLC imported Brazilian welders, housing them in containers, charging $75/week while founding customers shipyards to arrend them. Welders had yet paid Brazilians contractors $ 7,000 .

WalMart providers, pressured by the monopsonist, are likely to hire this type of slave labor. 12 companies supplying fish, flowers, vegetables and other foods, were denounced by repeated abuses and sexual harassment of workers.

The shipyards Signal Internacional hired 590 Indians welders through an Bombay intermediary contractor who charged them between $ 11,000 and $ 18,000 apiece. Workers staying in trailers crammed into narrow groups of 24. Signal International deducted $1050 per month from the salary of each employee in respect of accommodation and food. Signal International threats with deportation gainst any protest (four immigrants where deported and one attempted suicide)

3. Foxconn City Foxconn City is another flagship of the monopolist global Gulag which emulates or replicates the US penal system or the Nazi concentration camp. Foxconn has factories in Asia, Africa, and Latin America in which are concentrated 1.2 million workers who assemble 40% of the electronic products of the planet.

One of the principal entrance barriers is the speed of variation in global models (innovation) that is promoted in their poisonous marketing campaigns. The multinationals in the electronics and computing sectors (and the same in motor industry companies, IKEA or Zara) demand an inhuman level of flexibility (just in time) to their suppliers, mainly at the end of the production and assembly chain. Changing the global model every few months, as the electronics multinationals do, requires the functioning of gigantic assembly plants, with hundreds of thousands of workers capable of reorganising and reopening the production processes in a few weeks, using intensive 24 hour shifts 7 days a week. The global monopolist system of production and marketing demand levels of labour flexibility so high that they can only be provided by the global monopolist Gulag.

In its star factory Foxconn City there are 450 000 workers paid a few cents an hour. As in the case CCA and GEO Group, Foxconn has specialised in the savage exploitation of the workforce and offers its depersonalised, delocalised services to the same multinationals ACER Inc., Amazon.com, Apple Inc., Cisco, Dell, Gateway, Hewlet- Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Vizio, which also contract with the former.

Foxconn City (also known as iPod City) is a city without houses, schools or childcare, a crude complex to exploit undocumented workers. (nongmingong). This is not one of the thriving old industrial towns. Foxconn City is designed for the pitiless exploitation of labour by externalising the cost of reproducing the labour force. The Longhua factory in Shenzhen is an enormous fenced compound which covers 3 square kilometres 2 and includes 15 factories with anti-suicide nets, dormitories (with anti-suicide nets), internal television (Foxconn TV) and a recreation zone with shops, a bank, restaurants, kiosks and a hospital.

There are no Unions or work committees. There, workers, young emigrants from the impoverished agricultural areas of the interior, without valid work documents (nongmingong) , without residence permits ( Su hukou rural - carnet de identidad_residencia - les impide el acceso a bienes y servicios subsidiados, tales como atención médica, vivienda, pensiones y educación para sus hijos, lo que limita su capacidad para integrarse en la sociedad), are purposely mixed with co-workers that work different shifts, come from different areas and speak different dialects with the intention of avoiding or minimising social interaction. They are young workers without human rights, without the right to consume or reproduce, thrown into a militarised system of shifts in which they are required to work without stopping whilst their productivity is satisfactory. They can be fired and replaced immediately by new recruits (less than 2% continue to work for more than 5 years). Rapid rotation ensures maximum productivity and dilutes the responsibility of the effects of overwork and the continued exposure to pollution.

Apple (seguramente inspirado en "Tiempos Modernos" de Chaplin) adoctrina a los mánagers de Foxconn en la utilización de cronómetros y sofisticados dispositivos informáticos de ingeniería industrial para poner a prueba la capacidad de sus trabajadores aumentando paulatinamente el ritmo/cuota, hasta averiguar el límite máximo de explotación que puede aguantar un empleado.

Obediencia, obediencia, absoluta obediencia

At the entrance gate to Dachau, the cynical slogan ‘work makes you free’ was displayed “Arbeit macht frei” (work makes you free’). “Vernichtung Durch Arbeit“ (“Death through work”) was the real programme “.General Oswald Pöhl head of the WVITA check Central Economic and Administrative Office of the SS organised the liberation through work in the following way “ The hours of work were unlimited. Anything that could cut down work time should be reduced to a minimum. Any interruptions or breaks at midday which were not geared to feeding would be prohibited. ”.


Al general Oswald Pöh se le ha de perdonar no estar a la altura de sus colegas de Foxconn en el tema de las relaciones públicas

The Dachau ‘programme’ ought to feature in the work management course for the CEO’s of Foxconn, given its evident similarities and objectives. General Oswald Pöhl may be forgiven for not being quite up to the same level as his colleagues at Foxconn in the field of public relations.

Cuando un obrero/obrera es castigado, se le obliga a leer en voz alta una declaración de autocrítica. Como en el caso de WalMart, los mánagers de planta dan "conferencias" al principio y al final de cada jornada de trabajo. Es decir, tras un turno de 12 horas, los empleados son sometidos a una terapia mental para que rindan hasta la extenuación  (lo mejorcito del totalistarismo comunista/fascista en los manuales del management neoliberal)

Although Foxconn houses its workers in miserable conditions and pays rock-bottom wages, as do CCA and the GEO Group, a good part of the expenses of construction and installation is borne by Chinese state subsidies and when the multinational clients require production points, the Chinese state provides, in exchange for a small sum, per head, hundreds of thousands of young students engaged in 'work experience'. They are obliged to work 12 hour shifts, nights included, for months, with the threat of possibly not being allowed to graduate.

Foxconn's imitators

KYE produces microchips for Microsoft. It also employs thousands of students on 'work experience projects' to reach production targets. The workers (women between 18 and 23) the majority of whom do not have identification documents,earn 52 cents an hour for 88 hours a week on the production line (97 hours in the factory). The workers and students sleep in narrow dormitories in the same factory. They are responsible for cleaning the dormitories and the factory without any cost to the company,

Metal Plastics and Electronics produces keyboards for Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Dell. The shifts are 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. In the production chain the keyboard to be assembled circulates before the worker every 7, 2 seconds (500 keyboards an hour). During theses 7, 2 seconds each worker has to assemble the keyboards and components at a rate of 1, 1 seconds per piece, 3 250 times an hour, 37 750 times a day 252 250 times a week. The net wage is 41 cents an hour. As in KYE the workers sleep in the same factory.

Yuwei Plastics and Hardware Product Company produces components for Ford. The shifts are 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. At times of peak demand they work 30 days a month. The employees have to assemble couplings at the rate of one every 12 seconds, 3 600 a day.

Pou Chen Group makes footwear for PUMA. The average age of the workers is between 20 and 22 at 31cents an hour. They work shifts of between thirteen and a half to sixteen and a half hours a day. From 7.30 to 9 or 11 at night, with a day or two a month for rest. A pair of shoes sells for $70. The labour cost is $1.16. Net profit to PUMA is $34.09 per pair. Puma makes a profit of $12.24 for each hour, $38 188, 80 for each worker per year.

El Gulag global

Monopolist exclusion

An essential part of the capitalist Gulag is the provision of a continuous flow of workers whose reproduction cost is externalised (they come free). Workers to use and discard. Workers ‘without’. Without human rights, labour rights, rights to medical treatment education, housing, heating. Workers who are denationalised, immigrants without papers, Trades Unions, contracts, organisation, resistance, self-esteem…… br />
The neoliberal monopoly system is generating levels of inequality and polarization never reached by any previous civilisation. Under capitalism, extreme inequality and lack of demand (under-consumption) result in over-capacity, crisis and unemployment.

Where there are no major social differences, the majority of the population constitutes a market and stimulates production and the extraction of profit in competitive enterprises and monopolies. But where there are abysmal differences, in monopolist business as opposed to the competitive model, then profits can be maximised by fixing prices only within reach of the rich minority.

The cruel thing about this equation is that the poor segment of the population remains excluded from consumption (e.g. for AIDS drugs) given that the monopoly (thanks to barriers such as patents or intellectual property) impedes the possible provision of goods at prices less than those of competing enterprises.

As the monopoly divides the market and only produces for the rich minority, factories close down and those excluded from consumption now become excluded from work. The neoliberal monopoly system is an infernal machine of exclusion, unemployment and under-consumption.

Demand for the Nazi Gulag was ensured by the needs of the armament industry and the war. Nazi extermination, apart from its paranoid racist element, was dictated mainly by the scarcity of food. The Holocaust, from its beginnings in the Warsaw Ghetto, was set in motion because the diversion of food to the Gulag workers led to a decrease in German rations. When the plans for the invasion of the Soviet Union were laid, a separate sinister “


Hunger Plan”, was hatched which intended the death by starvation of 30 million Soviets.

The Stalinist Gulag was inseparable from the inicial estart up of the system but after Stalin’s death the USSR functioned for another 30 years without a Gulag. br />
In contrast, the unstoppable advance of the neoliberal Gulag is just a part of the functioning of the capitalist system in its current phase. Crisis, depression and stagnation let loose the most virulent and sadistic instincts of the system. In conditions of overproduction and depression, maintaining monopoly incomes requires a paroxysm of exploitation (exploitation Gulag) whilst the liquidation Gulag (slums) operate as a safety valve to absorb the collateral damage of exclusion and growing misery. .

Slums

Of the 3000 million city dwellers over 1000 million live in slums, which like the Nazi extermination camps don’t provide numbers or statistics. However, the number of inhabitants does not stop growing. 30 million country-dwellers immigrate to the cities every year, expelled by the overwhelming advance of the agrarian multinationals, speculative finance funds in collaboration with international agencies, and it is calculated that the number will reach 3000 million by 2050 (Mike Davis: Slums planet).

Wikipedia needed 29 pages to the list of slums on the planet .

Slum Ashamian, Ghana

Google Earth allows us a birds-eye view of the extermination camps of the global Gulag.

3000 million country-dwellers remain in the world. Following the route taken by the multinationals and their agents they will soon (in a couple of decades) be substituted by 20 million 'modern farmers' who will expel the rest from the land.

Will there be work for all of them? When something like this on a small scale occurred in 19th Century Europe, the industrial revolution absorbed some of the former country-dwellers and others were relocated to America, Australia etc. in lands stolen from the indigenous population.

In the 21st Century the destination of the dislocated and excluded will be the slums, the true modern concentration and extermination camps. The 21st Century will go down in history as the century of slums.

The Northern Gulag

Ravi Kanbur: “ All the official poverty indices have one characteristic in common, to maintain constancy. The death of a poor person reduces poverty. If the poor die the poverty index goes down. .”

Boris Nemtsov ( diputado primer ministro de Yeltisn, 1997): "Rusia habría de entrar en el siglo XXI unicamente con gente joven"

If we look at the list of slums all the countries affected belong to the south. Does this mean that in the north there is no exclusion or that the levels of exclusion are not as absolute as exist in the Third World?

Until the 1990’s, prior to the capitalist penetration into Russia and Eastern Europe, the levels of exclusion in the north were nowhere near those of the Third World. The old Second World countries soon began to suffer, however, stupefied by the blows of poverty and exclusion in place of the promised abundance as the new and illustrious guests at the table of arrogant and triumphant capital.

" The ‘Transition’ was marketed as a sort of crossing of the desert to the Promised Land of abundance of liberal market capitalism. The Transition would have to be taught and supervised. This would be the first experience of ‘teaching' which shortly afterwards would affect other European states not in a stage of transition

‘The Transition', from its inception, took on almost biblical proportions in political and institutional discourse. La "Transición", merecía ser tutelada, acelerada y supervisada por el FMI y el Dep. de Estado norteamericano. Se impusieron "terapias de choque" que provocaron una hiper depresión más profunda y grave que la gran depresión de los años 30. Entre 1991 y 1995 el PIB ruso se contrajo en un 34%, los salarios reales se redujeron a la mitad  y el 85% de la población quedó bajo el umbral de pobreza.

‘The Transition', from its inception, took on almost biblical proportions in political and institutional discourse. Today, 20 years later, with Eastern Europe and the Balkans forming a deprived sub-periphery of the global market, totally dependent on the multinationals (banks and corporations), and without any other perspective but to submit to the designs of an essentially destructive system, the official line continues to insist that the ‘transition is incomplete’ in spite of the fact that the long journey through the desert in pursuit of the mirage has left an endless trail of corpses.

All the ingredients of the cocktail for the re-entry into the system (financial bubbles, devaluation, privatisation of public services, liquidation of the protection and pension schemes, social polarization, crime) have led to misery and exclusion for hundreds of millions of people and an incomparable increase in the death rate. Not a single country escaped the bloody guidelines imposed by monopoly penetration.

Datos de la CIA

Today, 20 years later, with Eastern Europe and the Balkans forming a deprived sub-periphery of the global market, totally dependent on the multinationals (banks and corporations), and without any other perspective but to submit to the designs of an essentially destructive system, the official line continues to insist that the ‘transition is incomplete’ in spite of the fact that the long journey through the desert in pursuit of the mirage has left an endless trail of corpses.

The northern Gulag is scattered and silent. Disconnection and exclusion have led to a nosedive in the population of entire nations. It is a dispersed Gulag ( crime, alcoholism, hypothermia, suicide, domestic violence) that goes on silently claiming its victims that in the end make up a cold statistic which does not merit mention in the media.


Russia has lost more than 14 million people (its population could remain below 111 million in 2050). The zone which made up the old USSR has lost more than 30 million people since the capitalist re-entry (23 million were lost during World War II). Rusia ha perdido más de 14 millones de personas, Ucrania ha perdido casi 7 millones (un 13,2% de su población en 1991). La zona que abarca la antigua URSS ha perdido más de 30 millones de personas desde la rantreé capitalista (23 millones durante la II GM).

Recognised demographers (Murray Feshbach) project a sharp decrease in the Russian population over the next decades (110 million in 2050)..


The population graphs of the old Second World countries follow the Russian model, an ascent until 1991 and a pronounced decline after this date.





The murderous Gulag of the North is creeping unstoppably south. An epidemic of suicides accompanies the new religion of austerity as the financial crisis destroys increasing levels of the population. In Greece 5 500 people committed suicide in 2011, an increase of 45% from the previous year. In Portugal the suicide rate in 2009 was double that of the start of the decade. In Ireland the suicide rate of those less than 65 years of age grew 13% between 2007 and 2008. In Italy suicides for economic reasons increased 52% in 2010 alone.

The other archipelago

The planet is being converted into an immense Gulag, an ocean of misery and exploitation with extermination camps dotted here and there. There is, however, another parasitic archipelago of gated communities where the rich isolate and hide themselves away as they desperately try to consume all the products of the earth during their short lifespan (and to hell with them). .

The monopoly capitalist system intends to survive in an archipelago of paradise islands behind unassailable parapets, guarded and protected by expensive and sophisticated security services in the middle of a vast ocean of misery and crime. Whilst the monopoly depression destroys more jobs, they are armed with lawyers protecting intellectual property and patents, private guards and armies, security and vigilance companies and a coterie of jewellers, architects, decorators, majordomos, beauticians and vintners, who work outside the global Gulag to guarantee them the comfort and security to enjoy their monopolist incomes.

Next to a decadent, decrepit and unsafe Buenos Aires is the prosperous and resplendent Nordelta, a secure city, privately guarded, fenced and wired, with exclusive golf courses and sports marinas, with luxury hospitals and schools, a dream city for rich tax-evaders who live as expatriates from an Argentina which they exploit, only paying taxes in their new private city..