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CounterPunch
December
18, 2002
Of Caviar and Capitalism
By Russell Mokhiber
and Robert Weissman
Are capitalism and caviar incompatible? Is the
system that prides itself on the creation and veneration of wealth
unable to to maintain a sustainable market for one of the great
trappings of wealth?
Well, at the very least, the tragic story
of the global caviar industry gives pause. It stands as a parable
illustrating the pitfalls of the market fundamentalist ideology
that has dominated global economic policy-making for two decades.
The story of the industry is recounted
in a new book by Inga Saffron, a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter
and former Moscow correspondent for the paper, Caviar: The Strange
History and Uncertain Future of the World's Most Coveted Delicacy
(New York: Broadway Books).
For most of the twentieth century, the
world caviar market was supplied  primarily by the Soviet Union.
Caviar -- the salted eggs of sturgeon or paddlefish -- is a creation
of Russian culture. Although sturgeon once populated many of
the world's great seas and rivers in large numbers, most of the
world's supply after World War I came from the Caspian Sea and
the Black Sea.
After coming to power, Saffron says,
"the Soviets realized they could make a lot of money if
they controlled the caviar market."
They exported the product to Western
markets to earn hard currency, but limited supply to increase
prices.
"I don't want to say that they had
a great environmental record, because they didn't," Saffron
says. "But they did act as a brake on fishing because they
limited caviar exports."
Even when the Soviets embarked on their
disastrous dam-building schemes, which blocked sturgeon from
swimming upstream to spawn, they developed an extensive hatchery
system that maintained the sturgeon population.
Communism, it turned out, was pretty
good for caviar.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, so did
the protections and support system for caviar.
In the chaos following the fall of the
Soviet Union, factories across the country stopped doing business
as government money for operating expenses evaporated. Funding
to maintain the hatcheries similarly disappeared, and the hatchery
system fell apart. Overall, Saffron says, the hatchery system
became much less efficient, and was able to put back many fewer
fish than it had before.
Even worse, perhaps, was the rampant
poaching that occurred after the fall of the USSR.
"Many of the people who had been
thrown out of work began to fish illegally," according to
Saffron. "They began to poach for sturgeon and make caviar
in their kitchens, because that is the only way they could make
money. It was the one resource in Southern Russia."
The old Soviet limits on fishing "were
ignored, and people just fished all the time," she says.
Enforcement agencies were weak and ineffectual.
Many were bought off or intimidated by the criminal gangs that
gained control over much of the industry.
Today, the sturgeon in the Russian and
Kazakhstan portions of the Caspian are in steep decline, and
Saffron has little hope that they will be saved. International
controls on caviar imports are coming too little, too late, and
in any case cannot stop the internal traffic in the delicacy.
The collapse of the sturgeon in the Russian
and Kazakhstan portions of the Caspian is history repeating itself.
Rampant overfishing led to the rapid destruction of sturgeon
populations in Germany, France, the Eastern United States and
the U.S. Great Lakes, all in a matter of decades in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Today, the counterexample to the laissez-faire
caviar failure is Iran. Like the Soviet Union once did, Iran
maintains strong limits on fish catch in its portion of the Caspian
and operates a sophisticated and effective hatchery system.
Countries relying only on price signals
to regulate the industry have witnessed a short cycle of boom
and bust.
Countries that have succeeded in maintaining
a viable caviar industry over time have made long-term investments
in infrastructure and put in place systems to ensure sustainable
management of limited resources.
Those are key elements for effective
economic management and a livable world.
Markets alone will not deliver them.
Russell Mokhiber
is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter.
Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational
Monitor, and co-director of Essential Action. They are
co-authors of Corporate
Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy
(Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999.)
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