GLOBALISATION AND THE NEO-LIBERAL OFFENSIVE/19Trade unions say the minimum required every month is actually
higher than the official figure. They say S42 (168,000 roubles) per
month are required to 'reproduce the labour force'.
In January 1995, teachers made on average S54 (216,900
roubles) per month, and workers in heavy industry S95 (3 78,600
roubles). Workers with dependants barely manage to 'reproduce the
labour force'.
The business paper Moscow Times estimates the cost of a basic
basket of goods for the nouveaux riches at S625 (2.5 million roubles)
per month. It calculates the cost of a higher-quality basket of goods
to be S2.000 (8 million roubles); this is enough to live comfortably
'without excess'. Yet even this amount of money is not enough to rent
an apartment in central Moscow, where rents vary between S1,000
and S2.000 per month. Nor is it enough to dine in the city's chic
restaurants and fancy nightclubs (our thanks to Le Monde
Diplomatique journalist Jean-Marie Chauvier for these figures).
Plunged into poverty by IMF-led structural adjustment, many
republics of the former Soviet Bloc are now classified as developing
countries by the World Bank, along with 'low' and 'middle-income'
Third World countries (see World Bank annual reports since 1993).
The republics of Central Asia now stand shoulder-to-shoulder with
Syria, Jordan and Tunisia. This change in classification is not merely
the result of a change in the way revenue statistics are handled.
Rather, it reflects the post-Cold War situation, in which market-
oriented reforms aim at the 'Third-Worldisation' of Eastern Europe
and the former USSR and at concentrating wealth and well-being in
a small number of 'developed' market economies.
In the Highly Industrialised Capitalist Countries
There has been an undeniable decline in wages for the majority of
people in these countries, too. US figures are quite striking in this
respect. While household income rose across the board between
1950 and 1978, this tendency was radically rolled back between
1978 and 1993. The great majority of Americans have seen their
wages decline, while the wealthiest social strata continue to
accumulate new wealth (see Table 1.1).
Under the Reagan administration, the wealthiest families (1 per
cent of all households) saw their average annual income rise by
nearly 50 per cent. According to the 18 April 1995 edition of the