MIM Notes 224   December 15, 2000

Tourist report: white people in Lithuania are exploited

VILNIUS, LITHUANIA -- A tourist spent mid-November in Lithuania, a 
former republic of the Soviet Union. The tour confirmed that 
Lithuania exists in economic conditions at the upper end of what 
would be considered the Third World -- all in a country closer to 
Sweden than Africa.

According to the right-wing Heritage Foundation, Lithuania has a 
minimum wage, but the government never enforces it. For this, the 
Heritage Foundation awards Lithuania positive marks -- a good 
indication of anti-proletarian politics.(1)

If Lithuania did enforce its minimum wage, workers would be 
guaranteed the equivalent of just over $100 a month in a country 
of 3.7 million people, averaging a per capita income of $2200 a 
year. In 1999 the government raised the minimum to $115 a month -- 
about what minimum wage workers in the United $tates benefiting 
from imperialist super-profits make in less than three days.

Because of inflation, the minimum wage has meant less and less to 
the Lithuanian people. "Between 1990 and 1996 the average gross 
monthly wage in Lithuania increased 206 times. Nevertheless, the 
real average net wage in 1996 was only 32.9% of the 1990 average 
and even lower in the private sector," said the Lithuanian Human 
Development Report 1997 of the United Nations. In 1990 the 
Lithuanians formed a country independent of the Soviet Union.(2)

In contrast to $2200 a year, the per capita income of the United 
$tates was over $24,000 a year in 1999, more than 10 times higher 
than in Lithuania. The phony Marxists and labor bureaucrats of the 
imperialist countries say that such a difference is a result of 
the inefficiency of Lithuanian workers, not the exploitation of 
the Lithuanian people by imperialism.

Alone in the world, the MIM and its fraternal allies confront this 
question scientifically. Other organizations including most 
calling themselves communist or even "Maoist" talk about 
overthrowing imperialism without quantifying what that means. They 
accept bourgeois economic canard about the relative efficiency of 
imperialist country workers and their capital -- as if such 
capital were not the plunder of the Third World and as if such 
capital were produced by those imperialist country workers using 
it. Should such phony "Maoists" come to power, they will set up 
the creation of social-imperialism from the beginning, for they 
shall fail to correct super-exploitation, never having measured it 
and having abandoned the labor theory of value long ago, usually 
in the guise of fighting ultra-leftism.

An attempt to find something in Lithuania that is 10 times slower 
or more than in the U$A is a futile enterprise. Throughout the 
economy the tourist reporter found nothing justifying this gap.

The taxi does not run 10 times slower when transporting people. 
The bus is every bit as fast and the cross-country trains may be 
ever so slightly slower than U.$. trains, but certainly not twice 
as slow,. never mind more than 10 times slower. The Lithuanian 
airline is every bit as fast as Western ones. There is nothing in 
the transport sector to justify saying that transport workers are 
more than 10 times as inefficient as Amerikan workers.

Going into a restaurant, the chef does not cook the food and the 
waiter does not bring the food 10 times slower than in the United 
$tates. The tourist in fact found no difference in service. This 
is important, because service workers are over 58 percent of the 
workers in Lithuania, with about 20 percent in agriculture and 20 
percent in industry, a much larger "productive" sector than in the 
United $tates. However, sitting in a shiny and clean atmosphere 
that would rank as upper-middle class in the United $tates, the 
tourist did pay $2.75 for a dinner that would cost $8 or more in 
the United $tates. At this, the phony Marxist is apt to pounce 
saying that the Lithuanian workers are the same as the Amerikan 
petty-bourgeoisie that the phony Marxists call "workers," because 
Lithuanians make less but their prices are also less. MIM has 
debunked this line of reasoning before with reference to global 
price indices. In many Third World countries, price indices are 
actually higher than in the United $tates.

In the case of Lithuania, there is a particular history to 
consider in the question of prices. No doubt since the memory of 
Stalin lingers on, there is some limit to how far the ruling class 
can oppress the workers. Prices for some goods and services, 
especially energy and water remain under government control. In 
other words, a minority of the economy has price fixing. Even so, 
prices are not more than 10 times lower than in the United $tates.

More importantly, the tourist translates prices into U.S. dollars. 
The ruling class of Lithuania has decided to fix the Lithuanian 
currency to the U.S. dollar at 4 litas to a dollar.

$2.75 is not cheap for Lithuanians for dinner anymore than $30 is 
cheap for one persyn's U.$. dinner. $2.75 is cheap for Amerikans 
traveling there because of how the Lithuanian ruling class sees 
itself fitting into the U.$. world order.

On the one hand, fixing the currency to the U.$. dollar means that 
speculators who want to attack the Lithuanian currency have to 
attack the U.$. dollar, something not apt to happen. In this 
world, where the Lithuanian bourgeoisie is the junior partner to 
the Western imperialists, the Lithuanian bourgeoisie has managed 
to eliminate the speculation question.

On the other hand, the rate at which the Lithuanian lita is fixed 
to the dollar is a classic strategy of super-exploitation. The 
exchange rate does not represent a negotiation between Lithuanian 
producers and imperialist country consumers. The government sets 
the rate and allows the imperialists into the country without 
visas and without restrictions on so-called investment.

The following is a list of prices found in the heart of Vilnius 
and its most tourist-oriented area.

*Candy bars, 13 cents and 25 cents 
*Lithuanian Playboy magazine, $1.75 
*Cosmopolitan magazine in Lithuanian, $1.50 
*Other pornography periodicals, 60 cents 
*Pack of Marlboro cigarettes, $1 
*Local brand of cigarettes, less than 50 cents a pack 
*1 liter of multi-fruit juice, at least 50% real fruit, 75 cents 
*200 minute phone card, $7.50 
*10 "Always" feminine pads, $1.38 
*Nose hair clippers, 75 cents *Lipstick, $1 
*Cinnamon raisin bread, over a pound, 50 cents 
*Bottled mineral water, 25 cents

Some items that are imported and left in their foreign forms are 
closer in price to what they are in the imperialist countries:

*Newsweek magazine in English, $4
*Snickers bar, 38 cents *Pepsi, 2 liters, 65 cents
*Plane ticket, round-trip to London, $400 

Some such items would be clearly beyond the reach of the 
Lithuanian workers.

The strategy of the Lithuanian bourgeoisie is to attract Western 
consumer dollars. Clearly, the Western consumer can walk out of 
Lithuania with quite a bundle of merchandise for very little 
money. The old parts of the Soviet Union still buy the plurality 
of Lithuania's goods, but Germany is now in second place.

The fixing of the currency at its artificially low level by the 
Lithuanian ruling class is essentially a way of selling the 
Lithuanian working class to the imperialists cheap -- in one fell 
swoop. It is also a way of selling other Lithuanian resources 
cheap. When we say "super-exploitation" we cannot fail to mention 
the plunder of Lithuania forced on its people by its government 
propped up by the imperialists. Lithuania is not in the worst of 
Third World economic catastrophes by any means, but in Lithuania 
we can certainly speak of a white proletariat -- an exploited 
class of white-skinned people -- an important lesson to those who 
would deny the relevance of imperialism in class analysis.

The imperialist country phony Marxists also take up the 
colonialist reasoning that poor countries are poor because they 
are lazy. In fact, the more Western imperialism has penetrated 
Lithuania, the higher the unemployment rate has become. Under 
Soviet social-imperialism, Lithuania had no unemployment, but in 
1998 it stood at 13.3% according to the United Nations,(3) a tad 
higher than in other European countries with imperialist systems 
and 10 times higher incomes. Lithuanian unemployment level is 
slightly high compared with countries with 10 times higher income, 
but it cannot account for why the Western imperialist countries 
have more than 10 times higher income per capita. Even if 
Lithuanian workers were 10 times more unemployed than in the West, 
thus accounting for the gap in per capita income, the fact would 
be a damnation of capitalist imperialism and not the Lithuanian 
worker. If capitalism cannot find anything for Lithuanian workers 
to do, then the Lithuanian proletariat can organize the economy 
for its own benefit as it was once under Stalin.

Of course, in humyn terms, unemployment in Lithuania is much more 
severe than in Sweden, France or Germany, because Lithuania is not 
raking in the spoils of imperialism, so its welfare system is 
weaker. Tourists will observe beggars in the street, and the most 
disturbing part is that they are almost all older wimmin, disabled 
people and small children.

The plight of the elderly and unemployment cause some people in 
the ex-Soviet Union to hanker for the days of Brezhnev social-
imperialism. MIM would only point out that that system contained 
its own internal bourgeoisie -- the Yeltsins and Gorbachevs -- in 
the party who brought about the current state of affairs. In 
actual fact, going back to Brezhnev is not going back far enough. 
Brezhnev did not crack down on the Yeltsins and he would have had 
to have rehabilitated Stalin to do so. No Soviet leader after 
Khruschev rehabilitated Stalin's image or learned from Mao, and so 
the bourgeoisie in the party got stronger and stronger. Every year 
that Stalin receded in the memory of the Soviet Union, conditions 
for the proletariat in the Soviet Union got worse.

Notes: 
1. http://database.townhall.com/heritage/index/country.cfm?ID=88
2. http://www.un.lt/HDR/1997/chapter3/ch34_.htm
3. http://www.un.lt/HDR/1999/default.htm