Comments on: Eastern Europe on the Brink

By: lloyd rowsey

lloyd rowsey — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:37:12 +0000

Thank you, M.W. Absolutely first rate.

What happened at the same time in Albania? Parallel but relatively independent developments?

By: russell olausen

russell olausen — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:23:11 +0000

Interesting, the comment on the death toll due to freezing.Have a look at N.A. and European continents temperatures; its not hard to see great hardship in these temperatures. Give freezing, equal rights to boiling.What I mean is lets help these deprived Iron Curtain residents to the basics of survival.Lets give them the lump of coal the globalists are so desperate that they get.Bad joke.I pity anybody who took our financial masters advice and I’m sure anyone saving to retire would agree.

By: Cincinnatus Town

Cincinnatus Town — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 02:46:22 +0000

Thanks for this article. Re-reading The Global Gamble, I’m struck at how prescient Gowan was in this book. No surprise that his recent piece on the Economic crisis – http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2759
- is such a comprehensive summary of its origins and of the policy prescriptions being advanced by those charged with saving finance’s control of capitalism as a first priority.

By: lichen

lichen — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:43:34 +0000

Yeah, the average living standard dropped when the people were betrayed and forced into an even more brutal capitalism than was practiced in the west at the time; a few became rich, but many more were thrown into the streets of Russia, Poland, Hungary…

And no, neoliberalism is not dead quite yet; In France and Italy, Greece…the social movements are doing battle with right wing governments that are intent on making more brutal cuts in social spending and privitizations.

By: Marton Zsenei

Marton Zsenei — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:10:03 +0000

To Grzegorz Lindenberg: you should not speak for East Europe. I was born and I am living in Hungary.
Some facts: In a country of 10 million the one to 3 million are living under the minimal living standard.
1oo 000 children starve. (in the country once named goulash communism)
Almost the whole Hungarian industry eliminated or bought out by westerners. For example: once we had 11 sweet factory in the country, now we have one and it is in Austrian hand. You can know about the Ikarus bus factory: once the half of the Soviet Union used our buses. Now it is closed down.
65 people freezed to death in Hungary in December, Januar, which was unheard before.
As you can read in wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/János_Kádár
” …Many Hungarians are nostalgic about the Kádár era, due to the dramatic fall in living standards caused by the adjustments to a capitalist economy in the 1990s. …”
So please does not speak the higher living standard.
The first of all, when we have chosen the capitalism and why it should if it comes with it the “dramatic fall in living standards.”
Here is a Hungarian joke:
What did the Hungarian people wanted in 1990?
Socialism without nomenklature.
And what we have got: the capitalism of the nomenclature.

To be continued.

By: Michael Kenny

Michael Kenny — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:00:47 +0000

Unlike many trans-Atlantic articles on Europe this one actually bears some resemblance to the European reality! Mr Werbowski is, as far as I can tell, Canadian, which may well explain that. Three things need to be borne in mind. First Mr Werbowski is describing events that occurred 10 -15 years ago, before these countries became members of the EU. Unlike today, they had no say in the EU decision-making process and were thus in no position to head off decisions which were unfavourable to them. Second, the situation is not really much worse in the former communist dictatorships that anywhere else in Europe or, indeed, the developed world, for that matter. The idea that it is is being hyped essentially by the American “emerging market” gurus, whose bad, neo-liberal, advice, essentially, caused the problem, who were booted out of Eastern Europe when the EU arrived and now have an axe to grind with both of the above. Third, the EU economies are so intertwined that the Member States simply couldn’t allow any of their number to go down since that would, in practice, drag them all down. They will thus have to find the resources to prop up any weak Member State, and not just in Eastern Europe.

The blessing of all of this is that the 1990s situation Mr Werbowski describes is now past history. Neo-liberalism is dead as a dodo. The American model has failed and all of Europe, not just the former communist dictatorships, is slowly turning back to the good old European social market economy which served us so well.

By the way, Ralf Dahrendorf wasn’t a Social Democrat. He was a Free Democrat (i.e. the neo-liberal pro-business party).

By: Grzegorz Lindenberg

Grzegorz Lindenberg — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:15:21 +0000

I do not think you ever visited an EE country during comunism. I do not think you understand what has been going on here in the last 20 years. Just one example. You write: “the process was rife with corruption and resulted in millions of Czechs, Poles, and Hungarians losing their savings invested in state-owned yet foreign-run companies”. This is total nonsense. There were no Poles with savings invested in state owned and foreign run companies for a simple reason: there is no way for Poles at least to invest their savings into state owned companies. And I have never heard of millions of Poles losing their savings in any way in the last 20 years.
I understand you dislike market system that was introduced in Poland. I am sick and tired of such people, who have lived their whole life in affluent societes and still they deny Eastern Europeans their right to higher living standards. If you have briliant ideas how to run a country than begin with experimenting in your own, ok? Do not mess around with ours – it already had 50 years of communist experiments.