Anarchist Goulash

The Reality of the Nightmare
Barricade Collective

Privatization and unemployment

„At first the workers of Ózd were told that they could retain their workplaces, then they were told that only certain parts of the factory would be closed and the privatization would create new workplaces and they would be trained for a new profession in order to come up to the new technological demands, and so on, every day a new lie. For these people, for Hungarians as well as for other East-European millions, the turn from one-party dictatorship to democracy means simply, that now more politicians lie than before” – wrote the spring issue of the democratic newspaper „Reportage”. And the illusions of the working class collapsed… The „fantastic trip” from the one-party-democracy passed over to its direct continuation, where it’s not just one party which interferes in your life, but the totality of the bourgeois forces, which are today not less unable to solve their crises as earlier. Every rubbish and dirt settles on us, we will die earlier, we are sent to their wars – which are directed against us, we suffer from their floods, their dog-days, we freeze to death, we die of hunger: this is their vale of tears…

This writing wants not merely to describe a process, but wants to encourage everybody to organize ourselves jointly in order to burn up the world of capital, we, the ordinary, oppressed proletarians. Otherwise, we are nothing else then data, numbers and information in the statistical almanacs of the bourgeoisie.

The transition in Hungary is the process of the capitalist re-organization, which aimed at the reinforcement of the accumulation of capital. The party-state collapsed, and modern capitalism appeared. The goal of privatization is the acceleration of the movement of commodities and capital, the perfection of competitive spirit. The total bourgeois (state) property – which was created by the working class but which was expropriated by the masters of capital – contained 1860 enterprises (the total value of which was equal to 2600 billion forints), and the value of the firms, privatized until the end of the ’90s, were equal to cca. 2000 billion forints. In 1986, a „bankruptcy law” was established, and those enterprises, which showed deficit, were artifically „pumped” with capital (Láng Machine Factory, Ganz-Mávag, the mines in Tatabánya etc.). Already at the end of the Kádár-epoch the property of the enterprises Tungsram, Ganz Electric Current, Ganz Railroad Vehicle Factory, Ózd Metallurgical Works, Hungária Insurance Company etc. went into the hands of „foreign capitalists”. A lot of people naifly thought that with the „compensation law” the past owners – who were „deprived of their private property” by the bolshevik state – will be recouped – it did not happen. In spite of this, once again the old-new ambitious bourgeois locusts and their satellites could step on the way of the further capital increase. Privatization slowed down, the „foreign” bourgeois hyenas stayed away for a little time, unemployment increased, in 1991, for example, it became two times bigger and reached 7 per cent, and the initial enthusiasm of the working class turned into disappointment. This area was also transformed from the mortuary of bolshevik democracy into the prison camp of liberal democracy.

Continued...