Of course, the bourgeoisie intends to change this as fast as possible. As soon as an enterprise becomes profitable it is sold. Non-profitable assets on the other hand remain in the hands of the state, which has to maintain them with public funds. Thus profits are privatized while losses are socialized?
Juridically, East Germany is part of a capitalist country, but socially it desperately lacks significant elements of a stable capitalist society — the bourgeoisie and its consolidated political and state power machinery.
Of course, unlike in the other former "socialist" countries, the tasks of a homegrown bourgeoisie could be simply assumed by the existing West German one. Nonetheless difficultics remain. There is no system of political parties, deeply rooted in different layers of the bourgeoisic, pursuing different priorities, in East Germany. Instead the political regime is based to a high degree on pure ideological loyalty, not on direct material interests. Big swings in public opinion are inevitable, and are, in fact, already happening.
The eastern administrative structure is not one on which the bourgeoisie can totally rely. In the past it was the most privileged and most ideologically safe10 guarded bastion of the Stalinist regime. It is true that most of the former Stalinists International Viewpoint #204 • April 15, 1991 have no actual problems in being loyal to their new masters, their old "class ene-
, except for a defiant minority, mies" which is being systematically witchhunted. But their financial positions as well as their uncertain future (the plan is to dismiss 700,000 civil servants this year make them a not wholly reliable tool for the bourgeoisie. Since the latter has not enough money and personnel to renew the whole apparatus with new people, it has to be content with changing the top layers.
But lower down the hierarchy uncertainties remain. When, at the beginning of March, 700 Potsdam police went on a several-day-long warning strike demanding higher wages and better working conditions, they were watched with sympathy by their colleagues throughout the ex-GDR.
Massive public mistrust of police
Building a new secret police is also proving difficult. Only one and a half years after the collapse of the former secret police, the Staatssicherheit (Stasi) - which had been on the verge of launching a bloodbath in Leipzig on October 7, 1989 — memories are still fresh. So far the build-up meets massive (but also passive public mistrust, because people correctly fear that the secret police can only be maintained by former Stasi members. While the exact picture is not of course clear, it seems that only small progress in developing new structures has been made.
The West German bourgeoisie has only sent second rate personnel to manage the newly acquired territories!°. Preparing for last year's East German elections, lots of politicians came from the West to the country's cities, towns and villages, presenting themselves as candidates for political and state management jobs. Happy to obtain people educated in a market economy and supposedly wellconnected with much-needed sources of capital, people were inclined to vote for the western imports.
Thus, the mayors of important cities, such as Dresden, Erfurt and Leipzig, all come from West Germany. But it has become clear that many of the imports 6. At the same time, the lack of an experienced and self-conscious working class may be part of the explanation for why there has been no place for an authoritarian and right wing personality using working class rhetoric like Poland's Lech Walesa. 7. As a public demonstration of their concem, the conservative and social democrat prime ministers of the new states came together on February 12/13 in an "emergency meeting" to discuss how to overcome "the grave financial crisis of the communities."
8. Of the total of 24bn DM, 5bn are supposed to be invested in municipal projects like buildings, schools, hospitals, and so on; 5.5bn for "job-creating measures"; 5.6bn for transport; 2.2bn for housing and so on. Enterprises investing in the ex-GDR will get up to 49% of their investment repaid by the state. 9. In an open letter to Chancellor Kohl, the mayors of are politicians who had falled in the West, often due to political and economic scandals. Such precedents do not encourage confidence in bourgeois-style politics.
Membership of the CDU and FDP (liberals) in East Germany has already dropped sharply. Until now the political parties have found it difficult to attract members. While the CDU and the FDP have relied on the already existing former "socialist" GDR sister parties, with their functionaries, structures and memberships, the Social Democrats have had to build from scratch, since the party was forcibly integrated into the Communist Party in 1945. Today, the SPD claims 60,000 members in East Germany, but this is probably an exaggeration.
Politics the preserve of a small minority
Thus, in East Germany, as in all the other east European countries, political parties and organized political activity are the preserve of small core groups or networks of fulltimers. This is not only true for the bourgeois parties but for the citizens movements and socialist forces. Coming at a time of brutal austerity attacks, this expresses a deep distrust of explicitly ideological-based organisms in general, and, after the collapse of "socialism" and the fresh capitalist disaster, a profound demoralization.
Looking at the political map of East Germany, one finds a bourgeoisie — to some degree still "foreign" - in charge of the country, a bourgeoisie which has conquered via the unification a considerable additional geographic and economic potential. At the same time it has got as a bonus a lot of serious problems, including a population in the process of pauperization whose behaviour is unpredictable.
On the other hand there is a working class, which, after 40 years without selforganization and self-consciousness, does not feel itself to be one.
It is only now, under the immense austerity attacks, that it is taking a few steps in that direction. However, given the bad expcrience of the "socialist" heritage, it remains to be seen how many such steps forward it will go. nine big East German cities wrote that the Treuhand only wanted to give the communities loss-making enterprises such as housing agencies and public transport facilities, but not profitable assets: "whatever makes money goes to the private sector." 10. Of course, there are a handful of exceptions. The most prominent one, Kurt Biedenkopf, was some years ago the general secretary of the West German CDU and enjoyed a reputation as a skilled and intelligent conservative politician. A critic of Chancellor Kohl within the limits of his bourgeois conservatism, he was fired as general secretary and given secondary party jobs. Now, as prime minister of Saxony, he is trying to win back former party posts by giving himself a profile as a defender of East Germans, using this for his inner-party struggle. There are similar examples among the Social Democrats.
COLOMBIA ECUADOR Crumayo Iquitos Chiclayo Marañon cayal ¡BRAZI
Trujillos
Chimbote
PER Callao, • LIMA Huancayo Cuzco SOUTH PERU Arequipa AMERICA' HE Peruvian government decreed a state of emergency on February 10. There is disagreement about the origin of the epidemic. There were two cholera cases on a Chinese ship, the "Happyness Panama" anchored in the port of Chimbote, 400 kms north of Lima. The cholera bacterium only reproduces in the human intestine. Thus drinking water infected with faecal matter is the most frequent source of infection. Where there is no running water in which to wash hands after a bowel motion, there is also a danger of infection through eating.
The poor of Peru's cities take their drinking water from the waters which pass down in innumerable rivulets and canals in the open air. All waste goes into the sea without purification. Thus many cases originate in infected fish and seafood. Western epidemiologists are doubtful that cholera has appeared in Peru all of a sudden; they incline to the belief that it has been developing slowly over the past few years, in undiagnosed stomach infections. On the other hand the World Health Organization rejects this explanation, on the grounds that there have been no reports of cholera in South America for years and they have confidence in the capacity of the Peruvian health authorities to diagnose it. Chain breaks at weakest link
In any case, the chain, as usual, has broken at its weakest link. Peru is one of the most impoverished countries in Latin America and has been in economic crisis, along with the rest of the continent. Peru's descent has, however, been especially vertiginous. Cholera has always gone along with poverty and its reappearance in Peru indicates that this country has reached a new stage on the way down.