With "market economies and rule of law in nations with economies in
transition" as its agenda, the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) held its 5th Economic Forum in Prague
from June 11-13. Participants included representatives of the
Commonwealth of Independent States, the Black Sea Economic Cooperation
Council, the Council of Baltic States, the European Union and others,
including Albania.
The OSCE enforces bourgeois multi-party democracy, the "free-market"
economy and bourgeois human rights based on the defence of private
property as the ultimate achievements of humankind and the "values" to
which every country must submit. Amongst other things, it blocks
investments to countries which do not comply.
The OSCE Forum coincided with the release of the 1997 United Nations
Development Program report. It confirmed that the peoples of eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union have experienced the biggest drop
in living standards precisely since the imposition of free market
economies began. 120,000 million people, or a quarter of the
population, in that area of the world are now living in poverty
compared to four million in 1988.
Nevertheless, OSCE Permanent Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
Henrik Wohlk opened the forum by citing Albania as a trouble-spot for
the OSCE, describing it as a "prime example of the fundamental
importance of rule of law." He suggested that the pyramid scheme and
the absence of laws regulating them are the problem. The pyramid
scheme was a quickly unveiled mechanism to get the people to pay the
rich. Its false promises of prosperity were more quicky seen than are
the other many mechanisms to pay the rich, such as state
deficit-financing.
This "rule of law," which the OSCE refers to is the dictatorship of
the financial oligarchy and the "transition" is towards its
perfecting. In most countries IMF and World Bank drafted legislation
is already in place for taxation, to create budgetary and fiscal
measures that ensure every penny of the public treasury is allocated
to the interests of the financial oligarchy, to revoke those laws
which entitled people to certain levels of health care, education and
social security, etc. In the end, what will exist is the capitalist
"rule of law," a body of legislation perfected for the capitalist
economy which has developed to the stage where tribute to the
financial oligarchy is exacted from the entire society. Under this
"rule of law" all the mechanisms to make the people pay are given the
highest level of legitimacy, fully backed by the instruments of the
police, the army, and the security apparatus.
CPC(M-L)
Shawgi Tell
Graduate School of Education
University at Buffalo
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
