Louis Proyect wrote: < Yesterday's NY Times magazine section had an extraordinarily frank article on the collapse of Russian society brought on by capitalism... What is also notable is that the author is John Lloyd, a reporter for the Financial Times, a rock-ribbed Tory publication. > Politically, John Lloyd is best described as semi-New Labour, in other words, he largely goes along with the New Labour project, but he has some humanitarian feelings towards the poorer people in society, unlike the fully-fledged New Labourites who are as contemptuous of them as the Tories, in fact even worse as they have a feeling of a nasty and sinister born-again Christian righteousness about them. As an historical footnote, many years ago Lloyd used to be in the British and Irish Communist Organisation, a very cranky outfit about which list members from Ireland can tell many entertaining tales. The Financial Times is the effective 'internal bulletin' of the British bourgeoisie, which does not prevent it from running articles like Lloyd's. It's wrong to call it 'rock-ribbed Tory', not least when the Tories are alienating much of their big-business backing by adopting a strong anti-Europe line. Other list members in Britain may be able either to confirm or correct me, but I think that the FT called for a vote for New Labour in the 1997 general elections. Whatever it did, certainly New Labour is rapidly becoming the favoured party of the British bourgeoisie. As for the substantive question of deprivation in post-Soviet Russia and the other former Soviet republics, it is very important for the ugly truth about the inability of capitalism to develop the economy to be broadcast. Here's a snip from an article in a recent New Interventions. +++++++ < Russia’s GNP in 1997 stood at 57.1 per cent of the 1989 figure; agricultural production fell by 36.1 per cent, and industrial production by 52.1 per cent during that period. Investment as a proportion of GNP stood at 23 per cent in 1991, and eight per cent in 1997; and one should note that GNP for the latter year was less than two-thirds of that for the former. Industrial plant and equipment is rapidly ageing, with only 10 per cent of it in 1995 being under five years old. Agricultural production has declined at a rate approaching the catastrophic fall during the collectivisation drive of the early 1930s. From 1990 to 1996, grain production fell by 40.1 per cent, eggs by 33.7 per cent, cows by 21 per cent, cattle by 40.6 per cent, sheep and goats by 59.4 per cent and pigs by 49.1 per cent. Only potato production had increased. This has led to a deteriorating diet. Life expectancy is falling, the birth rate has halved since 1985, and the death rate has risen, with the result that the population of Russia is actually falling. > The data is from Pete Glatter and Mike Haynes, ‘The Russian Catastrophe’, International Socialism, no 81, Winter 1998-99. Paul F Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
