Although this is certainly good news, one must take certain facts into consideration and take certain facts into consideration. What I said in regard to the Communist Party victory in Mongolia is applicable here as well. I stated,
Monthly Review Current Commentary. 13 March 2001. Communists Return to
Power in Moldova: Hope for a Communist Democracy in the Former Soviet
Union? Excerpts.The February 25, 2001 electoral victory of the Moldovan Communist party
marked the first return to power of a Communist party in any of the
sovereign fragments of the Former Soviet Union ("FSU"). If you have left
wing politics and can use a dose of optimism, this event is a positive
portent for—at last—an end to the Mafia capitalist regimes of
"democratic reform" that constitute the glory of the U.S. victory in the
cold war. The most interesting question is not what the Moldovan
Communists can achieve in their sovereign ministate, but what can be
hoped to happen as a result in the rest of the FSU community.... [W]ere you mistakenly to believe the Moscow English language press
corps, you would have concluded that these various oppositional
Communist parties are ever in the process of disappearing. It is
endlessly, and incorrectly, repeated that these CPs are supported
entirely by old poor people, and it is indeed undeniable that old poor
people are everywhere in the FSU dying at rates that in the past were
attained only in times of war, plague and famine. But the Russian party
has maintained its core of support at between a quarter and a third of
the population, and the Ukrainian party has been growing stronger. In
fact, support for these parties is broad based and persistent, and the
officially unthinkable notion must be entertained that these
oppositional Communists could return to power in the FSU with majority
support.It's therefore of great interest that on February 25, 2001, the
oppositional Communist party of Moldova won control of the government of
the Republic by a decisive victory in an undeniably free, democratic,
etc. etc. election. Unlike U.S. president Bush II, the Moldovan
Communist party actually won more votes than their main opponent;
indeed, it even won a majority of all votes cast. No other oppositional
Communist party in the FSU has yet achieved this result; it's an
interesting "first."... Moldova joined the Soviet Union in 1940, and by the end of World War
II its population was decimated and the little that had been previously
achieved in the way of industry was totally destroyed. As part of the
Soviet Union, Moldova underwent rapid development of infrastructure,
agriculture and industry. Electric power became universal, where
previously it had reached only the heart of the largest cities. Rapid
economic development depended on the supply of raw materials and
finished products from the rest of the Soviet Union: coal, gas,
petroleum, iron & steel, motor vehicles, fertilizers, cotton and woolen
textiles, lumber and paper. In turn, Moldova supplied fruit, wine,
canned goods, refrigerators, washing machines, silk fabrics and knitted
goods, and "hi tech" industry and science for the Soviet space and
maritime programs.The demolition of the USSR severed these links, crucial for the
metabolism of both Moldovan industry and agriculture, which withered. By
2001 industrial production in Moldova was a third of that of 1991.... The election of February 25 has given the Western intelligence
agencies a new and bothersome task; it will now be necessary to
undertake to co-opt, or failing that destabilize and subvert, a
democratically elected Communist government of a sovereign segment of
the FSU. Because there is a sense in which the FSU remains a community,
a territory that threatens to break with the "reform" program poses a
significant danger to the shining achievements of the U.S. victory in
the cold war.... Meanwhile the sole significant political organization throughout
the Ukraine is the Ukrainian Communist Party, which has been growing
steadily in strength and which probably won the last elections but for
Kuchma's massive electoral fraud.... What may be the most important change resulting from February 25 is
that the national Moldovan television is now under the control of the
Moldovan Communists, who have openly said that they shall end the media
blockade of left wing and communist points of view... The Ukrainian
Communist Party, which has grown into a major force despite a total
media blackout, now may finally have a media window.
My reply,
This kind of electoral victory must be viewed very critically, without
an elevation of hopes and dreams, as it will more than likely result in
a replay of what has occurred many times in Eastern Europe in recent years.
The scenario begins with the undermining and overthrow of socialism by
some revisionist traitors. That, of course, is followed by a deluge
of changes in order to institute capitalism. This, in turn, results
in a drastic increase in unemployment, prices, wealth differentials, crime,
and poverty. Thousands of programs that were formerly financed out
of the general fund such as no-charge medical care, no-charge education
from kindergarten through college, no-charge daycare, parks, playgrounds,
health spas, vacation resorts, sports programs, cultural programs (opera,
ballet, etc.) and so on ad infinitum are terminated and become open only
to those who can pay for them directly out of their own pockets.
As a result of all this mayhem, those claiming to be communists and promising
to rectify this catastrophe are voted back into power in a subsequent general
election. But their program turns out to be nothing more than an
attempted alleviation of the mess WITHIN THE CAPITALIST STRUCTURE that
has recently been established. As a result the situation turns out
to be little better than, and often worse than, the capitalist control
the masses thought they were expelling.
So where did these “communists” make their primary mistake.
That’s not particularly difficult to determine. They erred in not
reasserting public ownership of the means of production, distribution,
and exchange. In simple terms, they assumed control of the government
but left the wealth, that which really matters, in the hands of a few--a
prescription for disaster. There is absolutely no way they are going
to adequately cope with the myriad of problems confronting the masses without
expropriating WITHOUT COMPENSATION the means of production, distribution,
and exchange. In other words, they are going to have to take the
factories, land, equipment, buildings, tools, machinery, transportation
facilities, communications. banks, and everything else that produces wealth
away from the few who own them and do so without paying a dime for their
seizure. Will this cause violence? How could it possibly be
avoided? If you were a millionaire or billionaire receiving incredible
amounts of wealth from the labor of others while doing absolutely nothing
to earn it, what would you do? If our new "communist" leaders think
they can ameliorate the conditions of the masses by any other method than
expropriation, all I can say is good luck, you’ll definitely need it.
And before you embark on any other path than the one I have outlined, before
you embark on a path which is doomed from the outset, I strongly suggest
that you consult the ANC in South Africa or Mugabe's Party in Zimbabwe.
After much warfare they finally obtained control of the government only
to find they were very much on the short end of the stick when agreements
were reached with the former power structure and the dust settled.
Unfortunately the primary, unavoidable by-product of this repeated
implimentation of a foredoomed program on the part of those claiming to
be communists is that the masses develop a strong dislike for the word
“communist” and start viewing those claiming to be communists or Marxists
as no better than capitalists themselves. Marxism-Leninism is discredited
in the eyes of millions and one can easily see why. The masses are
repeatedly being deceived into believing that phoneys, charlatans, social-democrats,
and revisionists are the real mccoy. They are tricked because, to
put it succinctly, people who call themselves communists or Marxist-Leninists
all too often are anything but and their programs are nothing more than
disguised pie-in-the-sky dreams.
For the cause,
Klo
