Communist Internet Friday 2nd May 2000 9.30pm gmt A capitalist 'plague' strikes Eastern Europe By Tim Wheeler The bubonic plague struck Europe in 1348 and in just two years wiped out an estimated 30 percent to 50 percent of the population. Up to two-thirds of the population of major European cities died. The plague brought economic growth to a standstill in most parts of Europe until the late 17th century. The plague exerted a powerful influence on culture and religion with notions that the end of the world was near. Mass hysteria led to attacks on women, lepers and Jews who were scapegoated as the source of the plague. Many were burned at the stake. Science, the discovery that bubonic plague was spread by rats infested with fleas, answered the question of how to eradicate the disease. We don't have an outbreak of bubonic plague in Europe today, but we do have a forecast by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe that in the formerly socialist nations of eastern Europe the population will plunge a disastrous 20 percent between now and the year 2050. The population in that region will fall in absolute terms from 307 million to 250 million in the next 50 years. It will have a profoundly negative affect on the economic, political and social development of these countries. The population will quickly age and a shrunken work force will struggle to generate economic growth. While Russia's population is projected to decline 18 percent, Hungary is expected to shrink 25 percent, Bulgaria and Latvia both 31 percent and Estonia, 34 percent. It is a combination of a plummeting birth rate and an equally precipitous decline in life expectancy. Russia's life expectancy fell to a low of 64.1 years in 1994 and has marginally improved since then. There is a differential between men, with a life expectancy of only 57.4 years and women, 71 years. Alcoholism and cigarette addiction are major factors. Diseases like TB, pandemic in Russia before the revolution, have come roaring back along with diphtheria and even cholera. But there are other visible symptoms of this public health crisis such as soaring hunger and homelessness. Beggars, many of them senior citizens, are now a common sight on Moscow streets. Prostitution has surged. Crime, drug addiction, suicide, AIDS, all these pathologies have surged since the counterrevolution. The U.N. report confirms that the advanced capitalist powers also have declining birthrates. They are recruiting skilled workers, scientists, engineers, and other intellectuals from the formerly socialist countries at bargain basement prices, a "brain drain" that will further retard economic development in eastern Europe. Millions of impoverished east Europeans are migrating west in hopes of escaping poverty. These countries are being pushed into neo-colonial servitude. The catastrophic vital statistics that have engulfed eastern Europe since the counterrevolution offers paradoxical proof that socialism was a living system capable of providing a secure and happy life for its citizens. Cold War anti-Communists argued that socialism was an "accident of history," a "detour" from... http://www.billkath.demon.co.uk/cw/acapitalist/acapitalist.html
