{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":208,"pdf_page":208,"physical_index":208,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"280ecfef43407b474d5fc5662046c4799091f7200441fbafddf7e34db8067638"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"increasingly strained situation as regards satisfying the public money-backed demand for goods and services . . . The problem of supplying the population with food has worsened . . . The money supply has reached critical dimensions . . . Everything in the economy is in short supply. 64\n\nBy October 1989 there was open talk of \"the crisis in many parts of the economy, the shortages, the unbalanced market, the collapse of old relations before new ones are put in place, an atmosphere of uncertain prospects and scarcities\" .65 Prices were rising, since factories and shops found they could reduce production and simply raise prices, disrupting supplies for the rest of the economy.\n\nThe economic crisis, as in Poland, turned into a political and social crisis. Gorbachev had intended to permit a limited opening (\"glasnost\") of discussion in the ruling party and the media to isolate those in the bureaucracy opposed to his reforms. But people increasingly took advantage of this to give expression to old grievances and their discontent with the deteriorating economic situation. An unprecedented series of mass demonstrations and riots took place in the non-Russian national Soviet republics of Armenia, Kazakhstan, the Baltic states, Georgia, the Ukraine, Byelorussia and Azerbaijan, fusing struggles for national rights with grievances at the social conditions people experienced. So the protests by the Armenian minority in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan \"began as protests against catastrophic mismanagement and miserable economic conditions\" .66 The newspaper Pravda said that in 1986 (even before the crisis deepened) there was 27.6 percent unemployment in Azerbaijan and 18 percent in Armenia.67 In Kazakhstan \"only half the young people had a chance to find a job in 1981-85\" .68 The head of the state-run unions said that across the USSR as a whole 43 million people were living below the poverty line.69 Estimates of the total number of unemployed varied from 3 percent to 6.2 percent (8.4 million people) . Then miners right across the USSR struck in the early summer of 1989 and soon after Abalkin complained, \"A wave of strikes has engulfed the economy\" .70 This was happening as huge mass movements in Eastern Europe-partly in response to their economic crises-were breaking Soviet control on the region and deepening the general sense of political crisis, encouraging further protests in the USSR's non-Russian republics and weakening the capacity of the central state to impose its will.\n\n208\n\nCapitalism in the 20th Century","previous_page":207,"next_page":209}