BRITAIN / CZECHOSLOVAKIA councils.
This proposal serves to reinforce once again the status of lesbians and gay men as second class citizens, unfit to raise or
THE Czechoslovak government's plans for the care for children.
It will exacerbate and deepen existing transformation of property relations are divided into four inequalities and prejudice and in particuparts: the "restitution" of state enterprises to their original lar, it will add to the climate of fear and owners, if they can be found; the "small privatization" - intimidation already surrounding lesbian auction of about 100,000 shops and services to Czechoslovak mothers. Is the next step to remove children from existing households where the citizens; the break-up of the collective farms; and the "large"
parents or carers are lesbian and gay?
privatization — or sell off of state enterprises to foreign capital, with a limited coupon scheme for the population.
Thread runs through attacks
Paragraph 16 picks up a thread which
ADAM NOVAK has been running through all of the Tory attacks on the lesbian and gay community in recent years — a clear focus on the issue of lesbians and gay men and children, and on lesbian mothers in particular
— and takes it several steps further.
It coincides with a High Court ruling that a lesbian couple in Newcastle-on-
Tyne may not adopt a two year old boy who had been placed with them by the city council's social services department.
This case has been surrounded by media hysteria from the outset, orchestrated largely by Tory Party Central Office and epitomized by bigoted outpourings from the gutter press.
Unfortunately, as with the vast majority of these attacks on lesbian mothers and lesbian and gay parenting in general, the response from the movements to paragraph 16 has been inadequate.
The issue seems (like the Embryology
Act before it) to fall uncomfortably between the central concerns of the lesbian and gay movement and the central concerns of the women's movement and though lesbian activists in groups such as
Lesbian Action are working to galvanize and mobilize both, neither has really risen to the challenge.
The lesbian and gay movement in particular has prioritized Clause 25
- its general drift away from radicalism over the last period has turned the numerical domination of gay men more and more into a political domination, reflected by the media and by activists.
The women's movement has not provided any counterweight to this; lesbian issues remain on the fringes. The Labour
Party, meanwhile, has expressed its opposition to this proposal only privately. The massive offensive to buttress the nuclear family launched by the Thatcher government has not ceased with her downfall.
It continues on apace, with lesbians and gay men still at the sharp end. It is essential that resistance to this project is built as widely as possible, to prevent the consolidation of the successes it has scored so far, and to defend the lives of lesbians and
* gay men.
N EITHER the large privatization nor the restitution laws were approved at the time the privatization with 16 auctions in Prague on January 2627, 1991. The restitution threatens to re-allocate many small shops and enterprises earmarked for the small privatization. However, nothing is to be allowed to delay the small privatization, which is an important symbol for the government, a proof that the de-statization is actually starting. For this reason, the instruction from the Czech Ministry of National Property and its Privatization has been to put contentious enterprises into the second round of auctions and proceed now with only those enterprises about which there is no dispute!
The official goal of the small privatization is to transfer state property to Czech and Slovak hands. Thus, only citizens are allowed to take part in the first round.? The plan was that enterprises offered for auction would be small enough for citizens to be able to afford them. The small privatization, along with the coupon distribution in the large privatization, was to be the population's share in a deal largely conducted between the bureaucracy and foreign capital. For example, 10% of Slovak petrol pumps will be sold or leased to citizens, 40% sold or leased to foreign companies, and the rest maintained by the present bureaucratic enterprises.3
The privatization of a large number of enterprises generates a large amount of revenue. Where does this money go? In the first place it does not go to the enterprise previously owning the privatized
The only possible benefit to this unit. enterprise is to offload unwanted stocks and equipment by assigning them to the lost unit, and collecting their official value in crowns from a helpless new owner.
The money raised is controlled by the
Ministries for National Property and its
Privatization. These bodies use the money raised first of all to pay themselves. Official statements suggest, at some point in the future, the transfer of a part of the funds to act as a state guarantee on loans to private entrepreneurs.
### Privatization funds bureaucracy
At the moment, however, the money is simply paying the day-to-day expenses of a growing section of the bureaucracy. As emigré economist Milan Zeleny argued the privatization "drains away capital from the entrepreneurial sphere, where it is needed, to the state coffers where it is completely useless, stops being capital and becomes simply a pile of money, good for paying the wages of bureaucrats and politicians, but very bad for enterprise."* It is indeed interesting to note that the Czech privatization always been vehemently against any lease of enterprises to private entrepreneurs, a measure which would have enabled a much wider participation in private enterprises, and the accumulation of small amounts of private capital, but which would, of course, have raised less money
The local bureaucratic/mafia groupings managed to exclude enterprises from the privatization in several ways.
The most attractive food shops in Usti nad Labem, Liberec and Jablonec nad
Nisou were divided from the state enterprise Potraviny and amalgamated into the
Pramen organization (a retail cooperative, hence excluded from the small privatiza-
1. Prague's top restaurant, Moskva, was withdrawn from the first auction two days before the event, when a man turned up claiming to be the long-lost nephew of the 1938 owner. 2. Should an enterprise not be sold for its starting price, and be placed in the second round, however, then foreigners will be allowed to buy. 23
3. Ecoservice no. 22, November 30, 1990.
4. Ceske noviny, January 1, 1991. March 18, 1991 • #202 International Viewpoint
retailers", Ecoservice, February 5, 1991.
15. Rude pravo, January 31, 1991.
CZECHOSLOVAKIA tion), strengthening Pramen's dealing with the formation of a joint venture with the Netherland's foodstuff's firm, Ahold.S
Some enterprises or workplaces unilaterally declared themselves to be state joint-stock companies. Not a movement for workers' self-management, even if supported by workers opposed to private enterprise, this was a legalistic manoeuvre of the managers alone. There is no evidence of workers taking action they saw as defending their enterprises against privatization, such as barring entry to valuers, prospective buyers or new "own-
Many of these "independence" declarations have been ruled by the privatization ministry to be illegitimate. Only the ministry has the right to create state jointstock companies, the legal form into which the bureaucratic enterprise must be transformed before shares in it can be sold. Many enterprises quickly took on apprentices worked could not be included apprentices, since enterprises where in the first round of the privatization process.
Apprentice system collapses
Given the imminent collapse of the apprentice system, enough young people jumped at the chance to train in the relatively One enterprise even applied for exception efficient enterprises concerned.
from the privatization on the grounds that they were intending to transfer the workshops in question to a collective of disenterprises signed agreements, sometimes illegally backdated, leasing an outlet or unit. This is because those leasing an outlet before 30/11/1990 had the right to buy it at its estimated value without auction.
As has been said, the district privatization commissions were under instructions not to become bogged down in struggles with the bureaucracy at this stage. Thus, it didn't take much effort to persuade the untouched for now. This may well prove commissions to leave an enterprise to have been the largest group of exemptions from the first round of privatization.
Many local governments opposed privatization of services under their control, in some cases virtually boycotting the privatization commissions. The mayor of Libere justified this opposition by pointing to the fact that under current legislation, the city is obliged to provide the same services until the end of 1992, even though much of their budget is formed by profits from enterprises under their con-
The main winners at the auctions were not usually present. These winners were certainly groupings in the bureaucracy/ mafia, whose gains are measured in terms of the number of enterprises they managed to exclude from the privatization. 24 Tway of remo has sis ral ourite smaller The mafia now has several months to find International Viewpoint #202 • March 18, 1991 enterprises from the privatization process
As a result of all the district privatization commissions® and ministry have demanded, and will certainly receive, greater powers to overrule and defeat opposition from enterprises and employees to their
The small privatization so far is hardly a victory for the nascent Czech bourgeoisie.
The first 16 enterprises auctioned
Prague brought in some ten times their
This seems both due to their central Prague location, their nature
(including antique and clothing shops)
and their low starting price. Given such prices, it is not surprising that only one enterprise passed into the hands of an independent Czech entrepreneur not acting as an agent of a foreign interest.1°
Some foreign residents operated through
Czechoslovak agents, while some, mainly
Viennese, Czechoslovak birth were able to buy foreign entrepreneurs openly. Ordinary citizens were unable to compete financially.
There is another aspect of the victory of bureaucracy. State enterprises often registered large amounts of unsalable goods and obsolete material under the inventory of units to be auctioned - thus "selling"
this material for its full price!! to the new owners.
Liberals have centred their defence of the government around the necessity to break up the bureaucratic monopoly over retail. It is, however, already clear that private sector interest is in restaurants and city centre shops. In a large majority of auctions of food shops away from the centre of Prague, only one or two bidders take part in the auction. 12
Supermarkets better value
The most plausible reduction in price and increase in service for the working population comes not from the corner grocer, but from the West European supermarket chains. The Czech Commerce Ministry has long been negotiating with the aim of withdrawing some 10% of food shops from the small privatization for sale direct to those Western buyers able to give certain guarantees of autonomy and investment. An open statement by Commerce Minister Stepova to the effect that a move to foreign domination of the retail system is "inevitable sooner of later, and we have just wanted (with our plan) to save the population time and money" provoked governmental concern, but there has been no theoretical challenge to her Given the crisis in the food retail system, many suppliers have started selling a part of their produce direct, from stalls or lorries. Despite the appearance of chaos, this trend may be forcing some retailers to drop their prices. 14 The small privatization was originally conceived, against the opposition of the powerful clique around Civic Forum lead-
Vaclav Klaus, as a protected distribution of national property to an emerging middle-class layer of citizens.
Different variants of this scheme allowed for collectives of employees to have the right to purchase or lease their workplace before it was placed on the market, or for cooperatives of citizens to form with the aim of taking over village services, or other enterprises of their choosing.
However, the growing alignment of the bureaucratic centre with international capital, its desire to create large private capital at the expense of small, and its hostility to any kind of collective ownership, have increased. The small privatization project has been assimilated closer and closer to the large privatization. On an ideological level too, the soft, acceptable option of the small privatization has served to introduce people to the hard reality of the large privatization, in which private individuals will be almost totally excluded. By the time the auctions finally started, the government no longer felt constrained to stress the national nature of the privatization. Refusing to confirm or deny allega tions that in Prague almost no enterprises were being taken over by ordinary citizens, Czech privatization minister Tomas
Jezek said: "I should be unhappy that foreign capital is coming here?"15
The bureaucracy will get its injection of cash from the liquidation of national prop erty. The Czech ministry of privatization, along with Vaclav Klaus's federal finance ministry, will continue to grow in power.
Their tight control of the destatization process will continue to strengthen the legitimacy of their "white communism". There will indeed be some sort of private sector, though so far only in commerce and services. What there will not be is any real introduction of competition and price competition among the shops ordinary people use. The cheapest food will continue to be that you buy off the back of a lor5. Jiri Leschtina, Mlada fronta dnes, January 31, 1991. 6. Interview with Czech privatization minister Tomas Jezek, Mlada fronta dnes, January 31, 1991.
"Navrat k prirozenosti", Mlada fronta 8. These commissions, each of 15-20 members, were minister. According to one report "among them are lawyers, economic workers, entrepreneurs, someone from the town council, town-owned bank". Jini Leschtina, Mlada fronta dres, January 31, enterprises, and someone from a bank or savings 9. Ecoservice, no. 20, January 29, 1991. 10. This claim came from Vlasta Stepova, Czech minister of Commerce and Tourism, quoted in Rude pra 11. Such stocks were not counted as part of the cost of the enterprise in the auction. Instead, the new owners were required to pay separately a non-negotiable price for stocks to the previous bureaucratic "owner" of the 12. Ecoservice, no. 23, February 13, 1991. 13. Zemedelske noviny, January 24, 1991.
*New behaviour of food producers and