Must be “international capital” behind the threats. Snigger.

Years ago I was walking down a Moscow street with an American businessman after a frustrating meeting with a group of Russians. The American had already lived in Russia for several years and spoke the language well. As we were talking about the meeting, he told me: “It’s so ingrained for people here to work around the system that too many times they cannot see that the quickest way to get from point A to point B is often a straight line.”

(It’s not an exact quote, but that’s the gist of it. I laughed at his words and later in the day I wrote them down. I have them in box of papers somewhere.)

Adding to what Newman wrote: Despite whatever skills the Russian labour force may or may not have, there is not a great Russian work ethic.

You’ll find exceptions to this, of course, but the masses are generally not people who believe in working hard to make a living. Part of Russian culture seems to be finding an angle or an out or a loop-hole.

I keep hearing that Russia has a skilled labour force. Does anyone with any experience managing a Russian labour force say this, or is it just navel-gazing academics and political hopefuls?

In my experience, having worked on the largest project ever attempted in Russia, I’d generalise that 10% of Russians are brilliant workers, 30% are okay, 60% are bloody useless, quality control and safety are imports as foreign as Toyotas and Louis Vuitton handbags, and huge swathes of the Russian labour force actually engaged in labour instead of manning beauracracies are from Central Asia or China.

Translation: how dare horrible foreigners do the job that only Americans should be allowed to do, and paid a premium for doing!!

There is not a single state, however democratic, which has no loopholes or reservations in its constitution guaranteeing the bourgeoisie the possibility of dispatching troops against the workers, of proclaiming martial law, and so forth, in case of a “violation of public order,” and actually in case the exploited class “violates” its position of slavery and tries to behave in a non-slavish manner. Kautsky shamelessly embellishes bourgeois democracy and omits to mention, for instance, how the most democratic and republican bourgeoisie in America or Switzerland deal with workers on strike.

Alas dear Kautsky, remembered only as a whipping boy. One of my students once wrote about Mr. Renegade Kautsky, as though pejorative were his first name.