Boris Yeltsin's election victory solves nothing. Here DAVE PACKER explains how the project of capitalist restoration, pursued in different ways by all the main contenders in the Presidential elections, is in deep crisis. THIS crisis and the political paralysis cannot continue indetinitelv. Unfortunately the crisis of the pro-bourgeois forces within the bureaucracy is matched by the continued absence of an independent working-class political voice despite growing working class struggles.
An independent working-class party could begin to challenge the bureaucratic counter-revolution and organise for genuinely democratic socialism. Such a party is desperately needed.
Yeltsin's sudden electoral resurrection came with the help of $11 billion in Western Joans. He was helped by supporters in the tightly controlled television and media who feverishly promoted an apocalyptic vision of his opponents as the gulag. Bribery was rampant. Costly promises, including back payment of wages on a huge scale, were made as if the IMF did not exist! The Western agencies and banks, it seems, were all looking the oner way at the ume. It was hardly democratic.
Now President Yeltsin constructs his new government cocktail in the wake of his easy victory in the second round. The workers should be preparing for the worst. A sharp economic crisis, a con tinuing catastrophic drop in production (3 per cent of GDP in first quarter of 1996) and huge budget deficits underpin the situation. The crisis is predicted to come to a head in the autumn. It is the result of market reforms which failed partly because of growing resistance by workers. At the same time, state planning and investment mechanisms are not working.
The Soviet Union used to produce eleven million TVs a year. Now production has collapsed to a mere 700,000. The huge Izmash car and engineering factory in the 1980s employed 60,000 workers. Today it still has 40,000 workers but produces only 3 per cent of what it did a decade ago. These figures illustrate both the scale of the crisis and the non-capitalist nature of the society.
Capitalism could not sustain this for more than a few weeks. The continued employment of 40,000 workers at Izmash and in hundreds of factories like it is proof of the absence of the rule of the market and of the law of value which characterise a capitalist society.
The crisis could propel some sectors of the ruling bureaucracy into seeking an authoritarian solution. Confronted with this Yeltsin may attempt to unite the various components of the bureaucracy under his own paternalistic bonapartism. A deal with Zyuganov and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) might be in the offing, although some of Yeltsin's advisors are opposed to this. "I'm sure" he said, "that there will be room in the new team for all those in whom you (the electorate) placed your trust" (The Observer, July 7 1996).
The trend is away from the aggressively 'liberal bonapartism' of a fading Yeltsin, towards an increased authoritarianism. The world of the 'Iron Heel', may not be far over the horizon! At the centre of power today stands the grimfaced General Alexander Lebed. However, there may be other candidates representing different corporate social torces.