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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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102389
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10238900.033
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1990-09-22
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WORLD, Page 50America AbroadPereztroikaBy Strobe Talbott
CARACAS
The ghost of Karl Marx was even unhappier than usual last week.
In Moscow Alan Greenspan, guru of Republican capitalism and
chairman of the Federal Reserve, tutored top Soviet officials in
remedial economics. In Hungary the country's ruling party shed its
Communist label. And in Caracas ranking socialist leaders of the
First and Third Worlds -- President Francois Mitterrand of France,
72, on a tour of Latin America, and President Carlos Andres Perez
of Venezuela, 66 -- agreed on the virtues of the free market.
Mitterrand's conversion came early in his presidency, during
the mid-1980s. His initial attempts to bash the private sector
through a program of nationalization and state planning, coupled
with a wealth tax, drove capital out of the country and cost
workers their jobs. But he learned to make compromises with
conservative politicians and alliances with industrialists to
promote investment and stimulate employment.
Perez's odyssey has been much more dramatic. Not only is he
changing his habits of thinking and governing, but he is trying to
change the way his country develops. Like Mitterrand, Perez has
been a socialist since his youth. He is still vice president, under
Willy Brandt, of the Socialist International. During an earlier
presidential term in the '70s, he nationalized Venezuela's oil
industry, slapped controls on prices and interest rates, mandated
wage boosts, increased regulation of agriculture and made
government-subsidized loans to low-income city dwellers, peasants
and small businessmen. Perez personified the socialist conviction
that the common good can best be bought with public money. But by
the time he left office, Venezuela was suffering from a massive
deficit and high inflation, which were followed by a recession and
crippling foreign debt when the oil boom turned to bust.
During the next ten years, Perez regarded as proteges two young
fellow socialists -- Felipe Gonzalez Marquez, who became Prime
Minister of Spain in 1982, and Alan Garcia Perez, who has been
President of Peru since 1985. Much like his neighbor Mitterrand,
Gonzalez has become an apostle of "market socialism," and he is
virtually assured of re-election when Spaniards go to the polls
later this month. Garcia, by contrast, stuck with policies similar
to those Perez had followed in his own first term. Peru now faces
economic disaster, and Garcia is almost certain to be defeated next
year. After a visit to Lima last year, Perez looked down from his
plane at the horrible slums below, shook his head and said, sadly
and simply, "This doesn't work."
"This" was traditional socialism. Shortly after returning to
office in January, Perez let most interest rates float and ended
almost all price controls. He has now begun privatizing some
state-owned industries. He calls the program el Gran Viraje -- the
Big Shift -- or sometimes, with a smile, Pereztroika.
The pun hints at a serious truth: the counterrevolution
sweeping the Communist world has made possible what Perez calls
the "de-ideologization" of politics in the Third World. That means
Perez, who had to cope with bloody riots sparked by price increases
in February, is at least spared having to worry about some Third
World minion of the Kremlin accusing him of socialist heresy. The
real perestroika makes Perez's version look tame -- and more
promising -- by comparison.