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WORLD

INTERNATIONAL FOCUS Tom Morris

Revolution
and literacy

A small item in the press an-
nounced that the UN desig-
nated Sept. 8 as World Liter-
acy Day and that 1990 may be
declared International Liter-
acy Year by the UN.

It went on to quote our Sec-
retary of State David Crombie:
“Canada will actively support
this initiative and continue to
assume a leadership (sic) role
on the international scene.”’

All well and good.

Then, we are told, four-
million Canadians are illiter-
ate; 20 per cent of all Cana-
dians over 15 years have less
than a grade nine education
and are functionally illiterate

Because people are primary in
Cuba, illiteracy was all but

* wiped out in one decade. The

Canadian government, with 4
million illiterate’ people, will
hold a symposium ...

and that in some areas of To-
ronto the illiteracy rate is 40
per cent.

What an indictment for a
rich country like ours! And
Crombie, the minister in
charge of literacy, postures on
the world stage and tells the
press he will sponsor a national
symposium on literacy next
year. Marvelous. A sym-
posium instead of a Royal
Commission. Anything rather
than action to eliminate illiter-
acy which in Canada should
have vanished decades ago.

Cuba comes to mind here.
When the — Revolution
triumphed in 1959 Cuba’s illit-
eracy rate was 27.5 per cent
(about average for Latin
America today). By 1966,
through a tremendous effort,
only three per cent of Cubans
remained illiterate. Today the
figure is almost zero.

A poor, blockaded, boycot-
ted, attacked country over-
came illiteracy in less than one
decade. Nicaragua is doing the
same today under the harshest
attacks.

And Crombie presides over
4 million illiterate Canadians
and will hold a symposium in

Imperialism
and poverty

“Up to now there has been a
surprising degree of public toler-
ance in the face of unemployment,
reduction of social services and

“the drop in real incomes of the

The human casualties ...

population’’, says the latest re-
port of the Inter-American
Development Bank which,
along with institutions like the
World Bank and others eco-
nomically rapes the so-called
Third World, reducing many to
pauper status and condemning
millions to death, malnutrition,
disease and illiteracy.

Consider some figures the
report gives: Annual income
for all of Latin America aver-
ages $2,140. Haiti is at the bot-
tom with an appalling $342.

Brazil alone has a foreign
debt of $111-billion!

Mexico’s working people
saw consumer prices jump 106
per cent in 1986 while their in-
comes fell below the 1980
figure. That country’s foreign
debt is $100-billion.

Countries like Peru, Brazil,
Columbia have agtually in-
creased production while still
falling further behind due to
both the foreign debt and in-
flation.

Small wonder several states
have suspended interest pay-
ments on their crushing debts.
Small wonder Fidel Castro
suggests these states have
been plundered enough by
international banking thieves
and transnationals and should
consider refusing to pay these
impossible debts.

Bank reports, of course,

deal in dry figures and per-

centages. They speak of de-
clines and averages, of invest-
ment climates and earnings.
Tape worms and malnourished
babies are absent. Human
casualties, the price of profit,
don’t tarnish the pages of bank
reports. Bloated profits, not
bloated bellies for the bankers
and investers. The pin-stripped
killers get their facts and
figures in sanitized wrapping.
But the “surprising public
tolerance’’ Inter-American
marvels at will one day surely
become a regional social up-
heaval and national re-
surgence. Even the Pope won’t
be able to convince poor Mexi-
can peasants to display eternal
patience and unbridled faith.
The bankers, transnationals,
the church hierarchy, the
military barbarians and their
juntas will write quite another
scenario for Inter-American.

Unravelling

Contragate

WASHINGTON (PDW) — It
dependent counsel Lawrencé
Walsh has won important cout
victories in Switzerland and here
bringing closer the probable
indictment of Oliver North and
secret team contractors, Gene
Richard Secord (Ret.) and Albert
Hakim.

Switzerland’s highest court oF
dered Swiss banks to release re
cords that may help unravel the
financial routes for secret funding
of the arms pipeline to the com
tras.

Grenada

crisis mounts
ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada —
With its popularity at a three-yea
low, the coalition government 0
Prime Minister Herbert Blaizé
hammered together following tht
1983 U.S. invasion, is lurchini
from crisis to crisis. Un
employment is soaring and tht
economy failing despite earlie
U.S. promises of massive ec0
nomic aid. Having achieved it
goal of reinstalling a pro-U:S. re
gime, Washington has now all bu
abandoned Grenada to its fate
Last week Blaize announced th
lay off 1,800 of the country’s 7,00

civil servants.

No action

on acid rain

WASHINGTON — _ Thé
Reagan administration has, onc
more, said ‘‘no”’ to any proposal
to combat acid rain.

The legislative proposal to ta)
large factories and power plant
that cause pollution, was tumet
down by the Reagan administra
tion, which said such action

were ‘‘premature.”’

First wave of

perestroika

MOSCOW — This is the time of radical
readjustment for the Soviet economy. In
every ministry, manager’s office, and
workplace the new Law on Socialist
Enterprise — shaped early last summer
at the Soviet Communist Party Central
Committee plenum and Supreme Soviet
session — is being studied, discussed,
and the first steps toward implementa-
tion are being taken. The law will come
into effect for the whole Soviet
economny on January 1, 1988.

It is, in Mikhail Gorbachev’s words,
the ‘‘first wave’’ of perestroika, the rev-
olutionary restructuring of Soviet socie-
ty. ‘‘This wave,” he says, ‘‘is sending
ripples through stagnant waters.”’

The new law lays down the basis for a
fundamental shift in Soviet economic
methods away from what is called
‘“‘administrative’’ forms and toward
““economic’’ forms of management.

A Better Life

What this means, in a nutshell, is that
the vast, cumbersome machinery of
top-down supervision and control over
every detail of production, exchange and
distribution, which has characterized the
Soviet economy since the 1930s is to be
dismantled. It will be replaced by a new
system of workers’ control, which will
rely upon autonomy, democracy, ini-

8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 16, 1987

Fred Weir |

tiative, socialist competition and
self-financing as its mainsprings. The
goals are a richer material and spiritual
life for the Soviet people, greater labour
productivity and _ technological
dynamism, and the development of the
socialist system to bring it closer to Le-

’ nin’s vision of a cooperative society.

The most sweeping changes mandated
by the new law will be felt in the primary
unit of the Soviet economy, the enter-
prise. Anenterprise is an industry, a state
or collective farm, or other economic
concern; for discussion purposes, let’s
say it’s roughly analogous to a cor-
poration in the capitalist world. All of the
people who work in an enterprise, is
every capacity including management,
make up its work collective.

In the past, all enterprises functioned
in a rigid chain of command, with orders
coming down from state ministries,
planning commissions and party of-
ficials. Authorities took a hand in over-

PG AE OS CRS Ae nS Oe Oe eS

seeing even the smallest detail of opera-
tion. Enterprises were told what to pro-
duce, in what quantities, how to do it,
and what the prices of their products
would be. In any case, they turned over
all of their income to the state, and re-
ceived back funds to cover wages,
operating expenses and social benefits.
Under such conditions it was virtually

- impossible to know whether a particular

enterprise was operating at a profit or a
loss, and no one had any reason to care.

Centralism or Bureaucracy?

Such a concentration of control-
from-above may have had a valid point
back in the 1930s, when the priority was
to industrialize a vast and under-
developed land in a short space of time
and under near-emergency conditions.
But the Soviet economy, which now
produces some 28 million separate pro-
ducts, has long since grown far too com-

plex and sophisticated to be run from a ©

central ‘‘control panel.”

In previous practice, noted premier
Nikolai Ryzhkov to the recent supreme
Soviet session, “‘the principle of cen-
tralism in economic management was
absolutized and hypertrophied. It irre-
sistably slid towards bureaucratism and
departmentalism. There was rigid con-
trol over the activity of enterprises, and
the rights of local bodies were limited.
Strong administrative pressures had
inadmissably downgraded the role of the
enterprise.

‘*What was basically wrong about this
system of management is that it did not
take into account the increasing role of
social factors, did not allow production
growth and social development to be
blended into a single whole. At the centre

of administrative interests lay produc

- tion, whereas human beings with thei

needs, and aspirations found themselve
somewhere in the background.”’ °

Perestroika aims to stand this situatiot
on its feet. Under the new law, centra
bodies will concern themselves mainl!
with mapping long-term economi
strategy. Five-year plans will continue t
define overall directions for th
economy, but annual plan targets an‘
daily interference in the affairs of enter
prises will be dispensed with.

Not a Dirty Word

The Russian word hozrashot expresse
the new reality for enterprises. It mean
‘*self-financing,’’ and its import is tha
enterprises will not handle their ow!
financial affairs with neither help no
intervention from the state. They wil
make a fixed contribution to the state —
and under special circumstances may b
eligible for state assistance — but wil
pay out of their own revenues for operat
ing expenses, wages, benefits and capita
renewal. It follows that more efficien
enterprises will have larger wage an
benefit funds. As economist Nikola
Smelyov has put it, “‘profit is not a dirt;
word, it merely expresses how well, o
how badly you work.”’

Intead of receiving production quote
from the state, enterprises will no
increasingly compete with each other fo
state contracts. They will also be allowe«
to sell their output directly to wholesal
concerns, or to other enterprises, an‘
will be entirely responsible for fulfillin
such contracts.

The internal political life of the wor
collectives has been the focus of man
key changes. This is because, ultimately