Russian Economics and Muscovite Regimes - Assignment Example

 Russian Economics An Analysis of Muscovite Regimes Question 1 Illustrate and explain why Muscovite productive regimes are inferior from a positivist, neoclassical perspective. In responding focus on Putin's authoritarian market rent-granting (2000-2008). Be sure to consider the factor, production, distribution and utility possibilities spaces. Also take positivist account of macroeconomic concepts like optimal economic growth, full employment, price stability, civic action, and social justice. Why are Russian claims of just and prosperous futures far off the marks? Use both positive and normative criteria. Is Russia's Muscovite market rent-granting system second best, or substantially worse than Chinese market communism? Explain, elaborating their comparative merit. Are there any reasons to believe that Russia is more socially just than America as Putin and Medvedev contend? Explain. Since the dismantling of the communist trading block in response to dissolution of the former USSR, Russia and its fifteen former Republics and adjacent national economies in Eastern Europe in 1990 and 1991, systemic transformation has been uneven at best. Muscovite regimes of bearing the mark of deep materials and labour expenditure during the USSR’s politico-economic regime has resulted in a configuration of continued waste in the Putin era. However, areas formerly central to the economy such as military, nuclear physics and space endeavors have been pared according to liberal democratic norms, despite the former three times relative expenditure on those activities during the communist period. Structural adjustment policies have also affected the Russian market, and the impact has been to great effect as former state run entities like energy utility facilities were acquired by private holdings, but with ‘shock therapy’ results due to inflation, and faulty maintenance. Mechanisms intended to ‘open’ the market in the 1990s quickly saw escalation of insufficient monetary policies that led to hyperinflation and a resultant decline in consumer purchasing power. Ultimately, it has been corruption that has impacted acceleration of even growth in Russia, and current exports are projected toward 2030 are at 3.5 percent in stable growth. Set against neighbor China, which currently maintains communist centralization of authority and command economic policies despite rapidly accelerated growth through capitalization, it is apparent that market communism offered a smoother transition than the market rent-granting system employed by Russia. Comparatively speaking, we now see that bureaucratic reforms have little impact, if liberal market principles are actively engaged. Market rent-granting dates back to a Medieval structure, also recognizable in other parts of Europe in nations such as Italy where aristocrats, or in the case of communist Russia, autocrats administered state properties for their own benefits or pomestie with promissory of tax and labour obligation, in return for tolerance of corruption, inefficiency and accountability in general. If autocrats were rent-granters, they also appeased the leadership of Russia in the sense that absolute exploitation of the peasantry led to modest, self paying rewards in comparison to state gains. This feudal orientation is a fairly predictable outgrowth in a context where advances in technology were met by authoritarian usurpation toward oppression of a relatively servile, massive peasant population without incidence for argument in an economy characterized by underdeveloped markets. In the nineteenth century, Catherine the Great eliminated indentured servitude, and denunciation of lifetime service by Tsar Nicholas II’s premier Piotr Stolypin furthered this position in the crafting Rent policies intended to authorize peasant landownership in the ukaz of November 9. Acquisitions from noncompetitive institutionally held assets constituted the legal terms of the rent relationship, rather than labour or capital value added. Real property ownership or rights of entitlement as understood in liberal market contexts through civil or common law, was not accessible, however, and cannot be understood through this framework, as all Muscovy policies fostered state entitlement to the economic value of production in the last instance. The power of ‘command’ by the Russian state was absolute in that the history of Patrimonialist Muscovy administration of ‘rent-granting’ relationships also included state sponsored measures of monitoring and overt control through secret police and military oversight. It is here in the interstices between economy and law that we find the technological continuum within the Muscovite relation of governance and corruption. Law and its definition(s) as regulation of rent-granting activities and all other forms of industry and professional agreement, found a site in ‘work’ and its facility as a means of individual or private power. Muscovite regimes in short operated in the realm of totalizing law enforcement and legal patrimony by which the state at every turn infiltrates justice, retribution and profits in a world where machinations of privilege are always the provenance of centralized authority. The transition to democracy did not, however, rebuke this cultural method of self-conquest, and tacit consent to corruption remains, and most likely will continue to be, the main barrier to liberal democratic potential. While never to be spoken about as Stalin’s Gulag Economy in the Putin era, the utility of the state for the ‘public good’ remains to be questioned by many Russians whom cite nostalgia for the communist moment, and its minimalist, albeit distributive, economy. Steven Rosefielde argues following Francis Fukuyama that ‘trust’ is the foundation of democracy. Without trust, the Social Contract as understood in classical neo-liberalism cannot find its grasp. In contrast, according to Rosefielde, Muscovy perspectives from the Tsars, to Lenin, Stalin, Yeltsin to Putin, have not been able to entirely build consensus adequate to assuage the masses in that country. Economic, and specifically labour exploitation, coupled with frequent inflation and deep distrust of a state known for privacy invasion, Muscovite policies of autocratic decision making and proliferation of a regime of law in the absence of trustworthy support, distinguishes Muscovy political culture from liberal policies of the West – exemplified in democratic free enterprise and individual constitutional and human rights. The relationship between individuals and advanced technologies furthers this complication; especially as access that was once the sole propriety of autocratic rulers and their technocracy, has now shifted to access by way of highly stratified capitalization and high rolling corruption. In short, for the many Russians, liberal access to the ‘future’ in the form of scientific and technological opportunities, and venture capitalist market expansion, remains elusive. Between 2000 and 2008 President Vladimir Putin, engineered Muscovite authoritarian reconsolidation. Putin’s own history as an autocrat is quite apparent, and his career prior to presidency attests to deep integration into the nation’s state apparati of rent-granting. Prior to ascension to deputy chief of the presidential staff, and chief of the Main Control Directorate of the Presidential Property Management Department in 1997 appointed by President Boris Yeltsin, Putting had already served in the military and the KGB. It is not surprising, that Putin restored the authoritarian martial police state toward management of Yeltsin’s Market Muscovy, yet with modern forces of media support and a network of business financiers concerned over financial crises since 1998, which left the ruble devalued and the national economy’s pipeline to foreign credit sealed. Putin was driven to restore ‘discipline’ as a mechanistic measure against ruble devaluation and diminishing returns on exports. Lowering price parity initiated resume of financial health for Russia, but only after consumers had sacrificed new found public choice in Western goods. Reconsolidation of Muscovite state power had its boon, however, and the period after 2002 saw a 57 percent increase in oil output from 6 to 9.4 million bpd which made Russia the largest global petro producer. The impact was significant in terms of wealth and the consumer and new construction benefits were quite apparent. Over consumption of imports at present handicaps the high price of Russian exports comparatively, and the continuance of Muscovy principles in certain sectors instigates pockets of anticompetitive markets, rent-granting, and state sponsored corruption. Review of the work on participatory democracy underscores the value of community property as a source of ‘public good.’ Property ownership also sustains much of the framework on ‘social justice’ in relation to interests of the State. If Russia is more socially just than America as Putin and Medvedev contend then it is precisely in this tradition that socialist, public aggregation might foster support for the claim that Muscovy policies are at least, if not better, at integrating public choice into a model of governance defined by ‘social justice’ through participatory action. While Russia’s creditworthiness, debt management, international capital flows, exchange rates, price stability, employment, technology, and regulatory responses may be subject to further development, according to Rosefielde, Market Muscovy’s dominance over neo-liberal perspectives is unlikely. Question 2 How does the Putin-Medvedev economy differ from Stalin's siege mobilized terror command? Was the performance of the Soviet terror-free command economy 1955-1989 better than Stalin's model? What aspects of the communist-Muscovite model remain in force today? In what sense does the contemporary Russian economic model constitute a third test of the Muscovite paradigm after Stalin's siege mobilized terror-command and Khrushchev's terror-free command schemes? Assess Russia's prospects given Muscovite systemic continuities and the historical record. In Steven Rosefielde’s (2010) Red Holocaust, he outlines the failure of communism in the former Soviet Union, and argues that autocratic violence, and sometime totalitarian terror by way of social engineering manufactured consent toward an exceptional, officially sanctioned campaign of state sponsored violence. Drawing parallels to the national socialist technologies that led to the Holocaust of European Jews under German Nazi leader Adolph Hitler, Rosefielde maintains that the technocratic aspect of Russia’s authoritarian, or oppressive centralized regime, instigated a massive genocide of approximately sixty million people, and perhaps even more unknown to disclosure. Driven by a command economy and militarized statist infiltration of the everyday lives of rent-seekers, or Russian peasants mostly dependent upon state run economic subsidies and political interventions that basically resulted in distributive dependency, the Red Holocaust as it is sometimes called, was the resort of political, ideological and personal causes crafted by dictators especially vested in judicial control toward an ends that would not destabilize efforts against potential dissent by citizens deeply disgruntled with the strictures of communist civil society. Communism’s ‘obituary’ in the former Soviet Republic, according to Rosefielde, was truly instigated by what he defines as part of a larger international history of transcommunist holocaust, which has left millions dead globally in nations like China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba and Nepal. In comparative evaluation totalitarian hate crimes, he looks to the intensity by which ‘revolutionary’ communist political movements must maintain a culture of institutional violence once circumscribed into bureaucratic service. The mere inefficiencies deployed by communism within national economies, unless adequately cross checked by citizens (and the verdict is still out on this), lay the ground for a panopoly of state interventions that almost always, if not by force, deliver the foundations of totalitarian technocratic dictatorship. Dystopic realities in the face of counter revolutionary thoughts inevitably, or at least as we see in the history of the former USSR, and elsewhere, create a gap between tacit consent and popular insurgency. From the Great Terror to the Gulag State, and later ethnic cleansing whilst democratic reforms where underway, speaks to the variation by which ‘captive nations’ assist states in ‘dirty deeds done dirt cheap.’ Even in the context of democratic Russia, the continuity by which KGB investigation into the everyday lives of citizens not charged with crimes, might be advanced through official channels in the new state marked by otherwise liberal economic, and free transaction based relationships of all sorts in the Putin-Medvedev era, is still apparent through maintenance of the country’s authoritarian police state. While far from absolutism characteristic of Stalin's siege mobilized terror command, where everything from economic transactions to personal relationships might be subject to death sentence, the command once present in both state and market is still present within certain aspects of state authority. Centralization of police authority, then, might be a new area of research by which intellectual inquiry might push the envelope on assessment of activities, and modalities of law enforcement, and entitlement under national and other jurisdictions. For those of us in the West, this is of keen import, as little knowledge of Kremlin covert activities and extra-legal measures is even further amplified through omission of knowledge in the most obvious area of inquiry in other parts of the world that have undergone transitions to democracies like the Southern Cone region of South America. In sum, little proxy might be given to a discussion on Russia's propensity to repeat a history of genocide in the face of historical materialism attributed to continuity of Muscovite systemic applications without thorough analysis of legal statute, and the process by which codification of legislative intent toward reforms of a state dedicated to transparency and rights protection practices might be achieved in a climate where corruption is maintained as a stalwart aspect of regime authority. This is not to say the Executive would want it that way, but at the end of the day, we are faced with real international legal and policy norms, and a realm of conjecture by historians whom are otherwise posing real concern about the potential of Russia or any former communist state, returning to those bureaucratically engineered practices in the context of volatility. Since the transition from the Soviet Union, Russia has survived a lot. Rosefielde’s proposition that the sediments of violence are somehow contained within economic cycles in history is readily countered if we look to the Mikhail Gorbachev's ambitious program of glasnost and the radical reforms of perestroika. In reality these transition policies were quite popular politically abroad, yet less effective than hoped domestically. According to Rosefielde they actually resulted in acute economic depression in the face of a quite frightening evolution in the country’s political history as the very sovereignty of the nation-state was deconstructed, and destruction of the once infallible political ideology that promulgated all culture and administrative oversight in the country, dissolved beyond reach, along with fifteen independent republics, which culminated in the Kremlin's release of thirty percent of Russia’s territories and nearly half of its population. In the Post-Soviet era, the nation’s first democratic President, Boris Yeltsin, continued the direction of the nation’s intent toward Muscovite liberalization, which literally shocked the economy and its consumers into an open and global market society. With it, Yeltsin’s policy of openness restored media freedom, drastically cut military expenditures, and narrowed the powers of the secret police. Revitalization of enforcement within the state through amplification of the powers of the secret police and military in Vladimir Putin's imperial authoritarian restoration has been a disappointment to many whom foresee the line between right wing political preference and entrenched bureaucratic authoritarianism well known in other parts of the world. Through this lens of dislocation, we might begin to draw conclusions about the potential that Rosefielde insists lies beneath a thin surface veneer. As aforementioned, South American nations in the 1970s and 1980s provide an apt window onto the situation, where tens of thousands of citizens were disappeared as ‘Leftist’ or ‘Marxists’ insurgents or radicals by state actors, both military and police, determined to rid the nation of anti-capitalist factions through counter-insurgency tactics like kidnapping, illegal incarceration and torture. It is here that Rosefielde’s prospectus on the problem both succeeds and fails. After all, South America’s bureaucratic authoritarian regimes reveal a proximate picture historically, in that societies otherwise engaged in a free market, liberal economy are subject to state sponsored terror. At present, the bad news is seemingly located in the realm of censorship, or the curtailing of civil liberties, press and independence of large corporations. Some would say enough is enough, law enforcement is toward the public good, and the safety of Russia’s economy given widespread corruption and crime associate with the country’s uncomfortable advance toward poverty in some segments of the society. If the eradication of injustice within Russian society is no longer merely dependent upon economic distribution in the post-communist era, and many would argue this to be true as the nation asserts its potential to a Social Contract bereft of a divided compact of rights were property is merely for utility of the state, then a new regime of intellectual query into what would constitute ‘justice’ in a country distinguished by such a large and complicated political and social structure is warranted. The virtue within justice, and purely in the instrument of law as interpolated by state practice is perhaps the most critical site of analysis toward understanding the limits of violence. As in all nation-states, law’s very origin in the tensions between ownership of property and individual rights finds universal location within the broader scope of equa-liberties, and including analyses of economic aggregation and reform. Thus far, we see little connection to the performance of the ruble as a sole indicator of coercion by the state. In Russia, the extension by which the state asserts its force beyond the constraints of tacit consent and laws of mere regulation is most likely rooted elsewhere. If violence is a factor of historical materialism as Rosenfielde argues, we see an imposition of Marxism yet again, as ideology emerges from communism, rather than national-socialism, and the fine line between the two negates a totalitarian regime of anti-Marxist critique. References Steven Rosefielde, Russian Economics from Lenin to Putin, Blackwell, 2007. Steven Rosefielde, Red Holocaust, Routledge 2010. Steven Rosefielde and Stefan Hedlund, Russia Since 1980: Wrestling with Westernization, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Part I: Red Holocaust: First wave 1. Dystopia 2. Twenty Million Souls 3. Colectivization and Terror-Starvation 4. The Great Terror 5. Gulag 6. Ethnic Cleansing 7. Captive Nations 8. Sword and Torch Part II Second Wave 9. Overlapping Empires 10. Killing Fields Part III The Sixth Commandment, Part IV Terror-Command Economy 12. Siege Mobilization 13. Asian Terror-Command 14. Terror-Free Command 15. Illusion of Progress Part V Red Holocaust Denial 16. Corpus Delicti 17. Presumption of Innocence 18. Justifiable Homicide 19. Beyond Good and Evil 20. Clemency and Retribution Part VI Hitler's and Hirohito's Holocausts 21. Genocide and Lethal Labor Exploitation Part VII After the Second Wave 22. Prospects Author Bio Steven Rosefielde is a Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. One of the world's leading experts in Soviet/Russian Studies, Comparative Economic Systems and International Security, he is the author of numerous books including the Russian Economy: From Lenin to Putin (2007). Related Subjects 1. World/International History 2. Russia -The Former Soviet Union & East European Studies 3. Russian & Soviet Politics Read More