[lbo-talk] RE: Soviet nomenklatura privileges

[Michael Pugliese]

http://hi.rutgers.edu/szelenyi60/rona-tas.html
Path-Dependence and Capital Theory: Sociology of the Post-Communist 
Economic Transformation
Ákos Róna-Tas
University of California, San Diego
> ...Members of the nomenklatura used public enterprises for their private 
> profit. They took advantage of the highly segregated markets of the late 
> socialist economy and profited from brokering between segments. They 
> mediated between domestic and foreign markets by exploiting the weakness 
> and rigidity of socialist foreign trade. They acted as middlemen between 
> isolated segments of the domestic market, selling state companies capital 
> goods, such as computer equipment, available on the consumer market. In 
> production, they spun off certain functions of state enterprises and 
> created private companies. 24 These private companies took know-how, 
> clients and even equipment from the state enterprises. In other cases, 
> state enterprises were leased to nomenklatura members at favorable terms. 
> The Communist Party and trade unions also grabbed property as 
> organizations. 25 In most cases, private capital accumulation was 
> facilitated by shifting costs to state enterprises and the state budget. 
> The big winners of political capitalism were the nomenklatura, the old 
> Communist leadership.

Staniszkis gave a detailed picture of the conversion of political to 
economic capital in the early years of the post-Communist transformation. 
What is less clear in her account is the extent to which political 
capitalism is a temporary phase that will pass once new property relations 
are established. In Poland, just as in most countries in East and Central 
Europe, the first incoming non-Communist political leadership made an 
effort to put a stop to these practices by establishing some central agency 
responsible for privatization.