EDITORIAL _ ‘Dangerous’ children A glance through recent issues of the Johannesburg Weekly Mail is a voyage through a revolution in progress. A front page carries a large graphic of the Free the Children Campaign titled: “Warning, this child is dangerous to your health” informing you you’re liable to a 20,000 Rand fine and 10 years imprisonment for promoting the campaign to free thousands of failed children. Inside, Shell Petroleum buys a full page ad with a five-word message: “Shell supports a free press.” On another page is an “Apartheid Barometer” carrying the latest figures on detention banishments, political trials and hangings (40 persons were hanged in Pretoria prison alone so far this year). Here also you get information on the latest banned publications. Further on we find that 1,061,281 of the country’s three million whites owned guns in 1986 and that three films scheduled to be screened at the newspaper’s film festival have just been banned. A centre-spread carries a large headline: “Sealing the Hole in the Sky” and details how the regime is systematically cutting off detainees and prisoners from all outside contact. Another story talks about the country’s “walking wounded” — released detainees, many of them very young children, suffering deep psychological scars from torture. The message is relentless; the scope, the totality of apartheid depressing and horrify- ing. It’s here that the heroism of the anti-apartheid struggle begins to be seen in its complexity and overall effectiveness. It’s in this light that the rail workers’ strike, the May Day stay-away by black miners, rent and school boycotts and thousands of daily acts of defiance should be seen. It’s in the full realization of apartheid as a system of repression, an institution of white rule by which a black child with its first breath, is slowly suffocated that we can appreciate the essence of the liberation struggle underway today. Against this background of nascent civil war, of supreme sacrifice and hardship, of two irreconcilable forces vying for power in South Africa, External Affairs Minister Joe Clark says he’ll present Botha with a petition signed by some 30,000 average Canadians urging him to change his ways. Clark sells us short on two counts: First, millions — not merely thousands — oppose apartheid and have made this clear to a hypocritical Tory government for years while Ottawa talked “sweet reason.” Second: the Canadian public wants strong actions — sanctions, boycotts — imposed. Clark and Mulroney will move heaven and earth to avoid any such thing. Letters 4 PalS-0 Pos Ax Ec Rk. COA Raia A De iE: mo DEST Re? Tork AT JON PUN A Oe {ook te MaGaNsTs te rv = Dat ee SA en Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON Business & Circulation Manager — MIKE PRONIUK Graphics — ANGELA KENYON A price to be paid for decentralization I. Tuomi, Toronto, writes: The recon- struction and reorganization of the Soviet economy is not unique in the socialist world. Hungary is an obvious example where efficiency and decentralization has been emphasized and materially rewarded. After returning for a visit after a 15 year absence, I can say the results have not been that encouraging. In Hungary we are now seeing a polarization of incomes, a decrease in social services and increased social problems. Interestingly, Cuba, which had been experimenting with decentralization for quite some time, is now reconsidering this approach and is tightening up centralized planning and direction of its economy. The difficulty with rewarding efficiency is that it must be recognized that some workers are just not as productive as others — the young, older workers, women. The Tribune’s Moscow correspondent recently reported (Individual Labor — unleashing creativity, Fred Weir, Pacific Tribune, Feb. 18, 1987) on some examples of reorganization in Estonia. Members of a fast food co-operative were able to increase their wages from 90 to 200 roubles a month, but this was done mainly by extending the work day to 10-12 hours. Is this socialism’s goal — to lengthen working time? Also, what happens to those co-operative members who are unwilling or unable (because of children, let’s say) to work those extended hours — will their wages fall behind? In the same article your correspondent cites a couple who are opening up their own beauty salon. One of the reasons the woman welcomes the move is she will now be able to bring her children to work with her. Evidently the state shop where she was formerly employed didn’t think child- ren belonged in the workplace. I tend to agree with the state. But this brings up a question: what happens to the level of social services when people are encouraged to make their own arrange- ments? Will these services decline as the pressure is taken off the state to provide them? In Hungary, for example, the state has relied on private initiative to provide hous- ing. Incentives — loans, building mate- rial, time off work — are given to people who want to build their own homes. But what happens to those people (the elderly, the single mothers) who do not have build- ing skills? Answer: there is a housing crisis in Hungary. If the Soviet Union is able to achieve its stated goals, it will have far reaching rami- fications for botn them and the rest of the world. The earth’s survival depends on a strong socialist world. -But we here should not lose our critical capabilities and laud unquestioningly a process which is not without contradictions. Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street Vancouver, B.C. V5K 125 Phone (604) 251-1186 ISSN 0030-896X Subscription Rate: Canada — $16 one year; $10 six months Foreign — $25 one year; Second class mail registration number 1560 Problems examined Dr. Alan Z. Weiss, Montreal, writes: To my mind, Fred Weir’s reporting from the Soviet Union represents some of the high- est level journalism I have read in the Tribune. His writing captures the intellec- tual turmoil and spirit of a society trying to grapple with the many problems that beset It. This style is much more interesting and “positive” propaganda than the old style **Soviet-Union—as-paradise-on-earth” image. Presenting really-existing socialism as a completely-formed, uncomplicated, problemless phenomenon is not only bad propaganda because it’s untrue, because it’s boring, because it presents people as the objects rather than the subjects of his- tory for whom all substantive tasks have already been completed, but also because it’s insulting to the millions of Soviet citi- zens who go to work every day facing real problems and trying their damndest to overcome them. It’s the energy of social change that is being captured in Weir's reporting. As to centraliation vs. decentralization and levels of inequality, I-would only say each sociialist state has to deal with this issue in their own way and according to their own conditions. No socialist state is at the communist stage of development. Given the motivation problems associated with a full-employment economy, all socialist states have to find positive incen- tives to get people to work harder in order to improve overall living standards. I, too, have visited Hungary, but I found it a very prosperous, highly- developed socialist state with a wide range of quality consumer goods available to the average citizen. Hungary has two espe- cially impressive accomplishments: 1. They have abolished travel restrictions, which, as the Hungarian consul in Mont- real reported to me, has practically elimi- nated defectors and increased satisfaction overall; and 2. They have taken Western consumer goods out of the dollar shops and put them into normal stores, thereby reducing the fetishization of western goods. As for the USSR, however, I agree with A. James McAdams, who writing in the Fall 1986 issue of Foreign Affairs said: “There can be little doubt that if Moscow is to refashion its own economy under Gorbachev, the Soviets are likely to turn to the centralized GDR model, and not, as so many Westerners believe, to the Hun- garian reform experiments.” — ee 4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 6, 1987