Kiskunhalas, Hungary, is yet another victim of the deepening economic crisis. Levi Strauss & Co. will close its factory there in June, laying off over 500 workers. Levi’s claims that it “wasn’t feasible” to keep running the factory, which opened in 1988.
The familiar story evidences the inhumanities of capitalism. As the economies of former socialist countries opened up in the late 1980s and 1990s, capitalists raced to exploit the new markets and their workforces.
Now, amid the devastating economic crisis, the EU capitalist powers first rejected financial assistance for Eastern European countries, later approving only one-third the requested amount. The imperialist chorus that sang praise to Eastern Europe’s new “economic freedom” nearly 20 years ago has changed its tune.
After 20 years as Kiskinhalas’ life source, Levi’s is packing up and leaving. Capitalism measures feasibility by profitability. When profits can no longer be made, what is laid bare is, as Kiskinhalas’ mayor observed, “the inhuman nature in the cold numbers of capitalism.”
