ECM 2012, Contribution of the Unified Communist Party of Georgia [En.]

Speech of Nato Beridze,

the representative of UCP of Georgia

Dear comrades,

there are held the regular parliamentary elections in Georgia today. The Unified Communist Party couldn't take part in elections owing to its actual illegal status. The party symbolics is forbidden, and the communism is officially equated to fascism. But we are sure that as a result of elections there will occur such changes in the country that we will have an opportunity to work more freely.

Nine years ago the present powers of Georgia came to government with social slogans. The victory over corruption and restoration of social justice were the main slogans of party that ruled until today. But as a result of the promised reforms, Georgia received the opposite – a marginal aggravation of social problems, sharp increase in the unemployment, obvious stratification of society into very rich and very poor, the improved and strengthened repressive apparatus and folding of the signs of bourgeois democracy.

The western capitalism gives out Georgia for successful neoliberal experiment, deems the country as an example for imitation, having proclaimed it "the Democracy Beacon." But what actually occurred against the background of the proclaimed social slogans?

Actually there were realized the so called “neoliberal reforms.”

«Neoliberal reforms» that were carried out in an uncompromising and a specially aggressive way in Georgia, came to the logic end. Privatization of all spheres of economy and social infrastructure is complete. All plants and factories, which functioned at the very least, have found themselves in private hands. All power supply systems, the hydroelectric power stations, almost all city services including systems of electricity transmissions, natural gas and water supply, are privatized. Natural resources, the woods, seaports are privatized.

The process of total privatization implied simultaneous concentration and capital centralization in hands of several leading figures of the ruling clan. All main flows of the income are monopolized. All the import and export is monopolized. They became especially important, effective sources of fast enrichment of a local oligarchical clan. Enrichment by means of a monopoly of the right on the appointment of the prices for the imported goods is accompanied by elimination of internal production, the whole fields of industries and rural agriculture. Besides, it occurs in full accordance with the desires of International Monetary Fund.

Ultra-quick and fantastic enrichment of scanty minority is accompanied with a sharp fall-down of the standards of living for the vast majority.

Neoliberal reform destroyed all social guarantees of workers. Objects of healthcare found themselves in private hands. Education of a good quality can be received only for the large sums of money and only in private educational institutions. The labor legislation in reference to labor forces is one of the most discriminative systems all over the world.

In Georgia today there maintain their proper functioning only the establishments of health care, education, power supply, establishments of the central and local management, and the banking system. Banks don't credit the real production sphere. Being engaged in usury, they became the powerful lever of suffocation of so-called "small business" and the accelerator of aforementioned centralization and monopolization. Well-paid army and police faultlessly protect the established internal order. That is, there only function those systems which are absolutely necessary for the life support of any society. The state keeps only the function of service of the emerged private-capitalist neoliberal system is left only.

At the same time, unlike all or nearly all post-socialist states, at the lower level the bribery is destroyed, bureaucratic barriers are maximally cleaned when obtaining different references and documents. Gangsterism and theft, flourishing in the beginning of the 90-ies of the last century, are conquered. But this aspect of restoration of capitalism is presented as a national achievement, though the establishment of order in this area was also caused by the needs of the capital as a whole. The capital needs minimization of problems at a lower level without a damage of principal interests of the ruling elite.

In a word, there is created some kind of a classical system of neoliberal capitalism in Georgia - dictatorship of neoliberalism and paradise for all oligarchical elite.

But any dictatorship needs a certain order, means and methods of self-preservation.

Against accruing social contradictions excessive expansion of the rights of the Georgian police doesn't cause surprises. Police function of political prosecution is especially strong.

In prisons there are created intolerable conditions when it is possible to beat with impunity to death, to suppress morally, to eliminate physically or to destroy by an illness any opponent objectionable the present powers who has found himself/herself in prison. Even the European Parliament, traditionally loyal to the authorities of Georgia notes an abnormal situation in prisons of Georgia, urging to correct a situation. It is characteristic that in 9 years of neoliberal dictatorship the number of prisoners from 6 000 people in 2003 grew to 25 thousand people in 2012, that is, four times! The judicial system passed to frankly cynical, impudent and unprecedented practice of imprisonment of the persons objectionable for the authorities. Today in Georgia nobody is insured from such punishment. Number of verdicts of not guilty in Georgia is record-breakingly low: 0.084 (an average value across Europe amounting to 0.2, that is 20 %).

One political party rules the country calling itself United National Movement. It supervises exclusively all the spheres of public life. Anticommunism, antisovietism, the anti-Russian hysteria and social demagogy are raised to the rank of the state ideology. The ruling powers conduct the interests of the most reactionary representatives of the international capital – the American imperialism. There are evident all principal signs of fascism. In Georgia there is created approximately the same system of capitalist dictatorship, as it was created in Chile by Pinochet.

But the neoliberal capitalist system starts to devour itself. The policy of total privatization of economy and social system accompanied by the absolutely destructive foreign politics drove the country to full economic crash.

The population manages to make ends meet only at the expense of emigrants working abroad. The unemployment rate makes 67 % (according to official figures, 15 %).

• The living wage (minimum of subsistence per month) in 2012, according to official figures, makes approximately: for an able-bodied man, 90 US dollars; for the families consisting of 4 members, 165 US dollars;
• The average salary of practitioner doctors makes about 200, and that of the teachers, 170 US dollars. In general, by the most optimistic calculations, the salary in Georgia is received by 33-35 % of the active population.
• The minimal pension makes 50 US dollars; in the country there are 826.8 thousand pensioners; to each pensioner there correspond 0.75 employed people, whereas the optimum value for this ratio would be 3.
• According to Social Service Agency of Georgia, which is an official establishment, in the united database of poor families (needing the aid) there are registered 1 623 233 persons (514,102 families). It is half of the population actually residing in Georgia, according to our data; and if we rely upon the official data regarding the number of population in Georgia, then, at least, it will make more than one third of the resident population;

It is evident the deep social crisis that pours out into the political crisis at any favorable possibilities.

Need of a turn to the left even if solely within private-capitalist system became so obvious that bourgeois parties of frankly right sense start to shout about it. Without such turn the system will fail under its own weight as exhausted and paralyzed to death. Therefore, folding of neoliberal madness became an urgent need for the dominating clans, too.

There has occurred a split in ruling oligarchical elite. There was created the powerful bourgeois opposition, ready to soften policy of neoliberalism and to pursue more moderate foreign policy.

As well as 9 years ago, social slogans are again popular among the bourgeois parties, but regarding the plan of implementation of these slogans again we encounter empty statements of sufficiency of the reforms without cardinal changes in the property relations. The left-wing parties of reformist sense also keep to the purely outward capitalist reforms.

As to Unified Communist Party of Georgia, we are compelled to work practically in underground conditions, without access to Mass media, in the conditions of persecutions and prosecutions. Position of the party was aggravated every year since 2003. This is connected with accruing crisis of the present system which more and more necessitates repressive methods of self-affirmation. Yet, neoliberal capitalism devours itself right in our sight and we are sure that political changes, which shall facilitate our fight for the socialist future of Georgia, are at hand.

Thank you for attention!