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Beating the ration: the ‘Black Market’

Mark Roodhouse

in Black Market Britain: 1939-1955

This chapter discusses the illicit retail markets and their supply networks which contemporaries classed as ‘black market’. This ‘black market’ received more attention than the ‘grey market’ ... More

This chapter discusses the illicit retail markets and their supply networks which contemporaries classed as ‘black market’. This ‘black market’ received more attention than the ‘grey market’ discussed in the previous chapter, despite being less of a problem. Popular and official concern focused on the involvement of serious and organized crime in black marketeering. This ignored the fact that legitimate businesses dominated the traffic in black market goods, with the exception of the trade in stolen and counterfeit goods and coupons.Less

Selling the Negro Housing Market

Preston H. Smith

in Racial Democracy and the Black Metropolis: Housing Policy in Postwar Chicago

This chapter studies the work of black civic leaders and white policy analysts who made the case that a viable black housing market existed in Chicago and other major cities, which could be ... More

This chapter studies the work of black civic leaders and white policy analysts who made the case that a viable black housing market existed in Chicago and other major cities, which could be profitably served by the housing industry. It then looks at home builders’ interests in the black housing market in Chicago, along with black civic elites’ response to the argument that it was blacks’ lack of income and class culture that hinders them from meeting acceptable housing market standards. It also traces the campaign mounted by black federal housing officials to gain the interest of the national real estate trade organizations. This demonstrates the consensus among black policy elites over the key role of private enterprise in pursuing racially democratic housing, and the tension they experienced over open occupancy.Less

Grounds for Discontent?: Coffee from the Black Market to the Kaffeeklatsch in the GDR

Katherine Pence

in Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe

Coffee, a nation-wide addiction in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was chronically hard to come by. From the rationing period after 1945 to an acute crisis and outright protests in 1977, the ... More

Coffee, a nation-wide addiction in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was chronically hard to come by. From the rationing period after 1945 to an acute crisis and outright protests in 1977, the East German populace pressured the socialist state to provide access to real coffee beans, but often had to settle for various ersatz beverages. The black markets and smuggling of beans between East and West became rampant, and East Germans perennially compared their shortages to West Germans’ easier access to beans on the world market. By the end of the 1950s, consumer dissatisfaction added to the growing number of East Germans making their way across to the other side. Even after the the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, Western coffee continued to traverse this barrier in the form of gift packages and smuggled goods, and was prized as a status symbol and a tool for bartering. In examining coffee drinking in the GDR, this essay illuminates the interconnection between the socialist state and society. But coffee drinking was also a private act. In the absence of a Habermasian public sphere in the GDR, the private Kaffeeklatsch became an important site of sociability and free expression that ran counter to the socialist ideal of a mass community of workers. Coffee drinking in the GDR was fraught with difficulties due to its scarcity, but coffee was also a resolute emblem of how East German citizens marked out their own spaces for social connections and even laughter.Less

Lingering Stereotypes and Jewish Displaced Persons

Michael Berkowitz

in The Crime of My Very Existence: Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality

This chapter shows that the stigma of Jews as criminals was one of the most resilient and widespread perceptions among Germans as they confronted the remnant of European Jewry in post-World War II ... More

This chapter shows that the stigma of Jews as criminals was one of the most resilient and widespread perceptions among Germans as they confronted the remnant of European Jewry in post-World War II Europe in what came to be known as the DP, or “displaced-persons” problem. Because racial anti-Semitism was a possibly questionable way to express opinions in postwar Germany, especially in the U.S. zone of occupation toward which most Jewish DPs migrated, Germans' view of Jews as criminals was a major factor in the dynamic between Jews, Germans, and the U.S. Army. The chapter also notes that the presence of a thriving black market certainly abetted the perception of DPs as a “criminal element,” and a number of forces combined to ensure that DPs had few other means, outside of the black market, to survive.Less

The Extraordinary Career of Feketevágó Úr: Wood Theft, Pig Killing, and Entrepreneurship in Communist Hungary, 1948–1956

Karl Brown

in Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe

From 1948 to 1956, the communist regime in Hungary sought to transform the state into a centralized command economy on the Soviet model. It was largely unsuccessful in doing so—especially in the ... More

From 1948 to 1956, the communist regime in Hungary sought to transform the state into a centralized command economy on the Soviet model. It was largely unsuccessful in doing so—especially in the countryside, where peasants deployed the “weapons of the weak” against the state’s relatively poor surveillance and control. Wood theft, which had been practiced by Magyar peasants for centuries, continued in the communist period; pig-killing, previously a major element of peasant life and newly criminalized under the communist regime, was also widely practiced. Using the story of one successful black marketer in illicit meat and wood, Karl Brown demonstrates how most if not all Hungarian peasants were involved in these illicit practices, and how the rural social network transformed into a thriving black market in which even the Roma (or Gypsies) had opportunities for profit. In attempting to centralize the rural economy, the party-state actually encouraged a hyper-capitalist mindset among the peasantry as wood and meat—previously stolen for individual use or shared to strengthen kinship and local bonds—became commodified on the black market. To whatever extent the rise of a consumer economy in the Eastern Bloc enabled the eventual downfall of communism, this process began at the very outset of communist rule.Less

Moral Policemen of the Domestic Economy

Bryce Evans

in Ireland during the Second World War: Farewell to Plato's Cave

The department of Supplies represented the apogee of centralised state intervention in Irish history, coming to control the production, distribution, and pricing of all commodities during this time ... More

The department of Supplies represented the apogee of centralised state intervention in Irish history, coming to control the production, distribution, and pricing of all commodities during this time of crisis. This is the first critical analysis of the department’s successes and failures and its impact upon ordinary people during this period. It details how a comprehensive system of rationing was implemented too late in Ireland, by which time the culture of the black market had achieved hegemony in defiance of the state’s periodic and often contradictory issuing of price control orders. It explores the ‘war’ on the black market declared by Lemass and Leydon and finds that this worthwhile assault in the name of the common good often involved dubious means. Charting the bureaucratic expansion of the state at a time of severe shortages, it concludes that ultimately, the ‘dirty war’ against ‘gombeens’, racketeers and ‘spivs’ came down harshly on small-time crooks and allowed large-scale profiteers to escape punishment. Explores the operation of moral and political economy at the time.Less

Life in the Camp III

Geoffrey Charles Emerson

in Hong Kong Internment, 1942-1945: Life in the Japanese Civilian Camp at Stanley

This chapter discusses the securing of goods or money by illegal means known as the “black market” in Stanley Camp. It notes that trading is considered illegal as it is against the rules of the ... More

This chapter discusses the securing of goods or money by illegal means known as the “black market” in Stanley Camp. It notes that trading is considered illegal as it is against the rules of the Japanese occupying Hong Kong. It observes that there were several facets to the black market: first, there was trading “over the wire” between the guards and internees; secondly, there was trading within the Camp, either from the guards or internee traders. It further observes that the trade was largely one in which the internees sold jewellery, gold, or other possessions for yen and the internees could also buy yen by writing sterling cheques to fellow internees who had yen to dispose of. It notes that these cheques were payable after the end of the war. It further notes that there was a great deal of trading of articles themselves, both among the internees and between the internees and guards.Less

Oligopoly Dynamics and the Triple Religious Markets in China

Fenggang Yang

in The Future of Religious Freedom: Global Challenges

This chapter introduces four types of state-religion relations in human history – religious monopoly, pluralism, oligopoly, and a total ban. It argues that religious oligopoly is the most common ... More

This chapter introduces four types of state-religion relations in human history – religious monopoly, pluralism, oligopoly, and a total ban. It argues that religious oligopoly is the most common practice in the world today and applies that understanding to the situation in China. The chapter illuminates the operation of triple markets in China: a red market of legal (officially permitted and regulated) religions; a black market of illegal religious groups and activities; and a grey market of spiritual organizations and practices of ambiguous legal status. This triple market is dynamic, as some groups, such as the Falun Gong, moved from ambiguous to illegal status, while some illegal underground Christian churches have moved into the gray category. The chapter draws upon these findings to challenge and refine dominant theories about the operation of religious markets.Less

Conditions in Town and Country

Bryce Evans

in Ireland during the Second World War: Farewell to Plato's Cave

This chapter provides the ‘bottom up’ story of material survival during Ireland’s wartime experience. It reveals a comprehensive social geography of price differentiation, black market hotspots, and ... More

This chapter provides the ‘bottom up’ story of material survival during Ireland’s wartime experience. It reveals a comprehensive social geography of price differentiation, black market hotspots, and travel and retail disparities. While recounting stories of hardship has become somewhat hackneyed post-Angela’s Ashes, this chapter employs new oral evidence to convey the harshness of life in Ireland at the time, particularly in her western peripheries where the threat of starvation – one hundred years old – returned once more. Contrasting life in urban and rural contexts, it takes the novel approach of exploring the interaction of ordinary people with the state’s system of supply and distribution and reveals how an alternative system, or ‘moral economy’, operated in defiance of legal and institutional checks intended to ensure equitable distribution and fair price. It provides a case study of the operation of Irish co-operatives at the time and reveals large-scale black market activity across sections of society.Less

Consequences of the Current Policy

in The Global Organ Shortage: Economic Causes, Human Consequences, Policy Responses

This chapter examines the current state of the global organ procurement system and discusses the most direct consequence of the organ shortage: transplant waiting lists. It analyzes waiting list ... More

This chapter examines the current state of the global organ procurement system and discusses the most direct consequence of the organ shortage: transplant waiting lists. It analyzes waiting list dynamics and the situations both in and outside the United States. It examines the secondary effects of the shortage and analyzes the increased reliance on living donors and the rising use of marginal donors. A third “secondary consequence”—the black market for kidneys—which is considered an especially dire effect of waiting lists, is treated at some length. Finally, the chapter reviews the future prospects for the global organ shortage.Less

Tuzex and the Hustler: Living It Up in Czechoslovakia

Paulina Bren

in Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe

Through a discussion of Bony a Klid, a controversial film from the late 1980s in Czechoslovakia, Paulina Bren explores the role of the hustler under socialism. The hustler was closely associated with ... More

Through a discussion of Bony a Klid, a controversial film from the late 1980s in Czechoslovakia, Paulina Bren explores the role of the hustler under socialism. The hustler was closely associated with Tuzex, the hard currency retail chain where goods as varied as Austrian coffee, Sony television sets, foreign and domestic cars, and weekend houses were on offer. Hard currency stores, present throughout the Eastern Bloc but expanding significantly in the 1970s, reoriented value systems and social hierarchies. Central to these changes, certainly in the case of Czechoslovakia, was the hustler—a hard currency gangster, the middle man between ordinary citizens and the state-run Tuzex stores. These hustlers, who bought store vouchers for German marks and American dollars and sold them at profit for Czech crowns, soon morphed into syndicated criminal gangs. With the power and money to live outside of the socialist framework, they were the underground counterpart to the Party elite, and the poster boys of consumer excess. While the hustler was frowned upon by much of the public as criminal and extortionary, at the same time his consumption, for many, represented an attractive ideal. This contradiction impacted both the communist and post-communist era: Bren argues that because of Tuzex and the hustler, corruption and capitalist economic practices had been closely linked in the public’s mind long before the democracy revolutions of 1989 and the post-communist economies.Less

The Third Man

Danilo Mandić

in Gangsters and Other Statesmen: Mafias, Separatists, and Torn States in a Globalized World

This chapter traces host state, separatist movement, and mafia relations in Serbia and Georgia (1989–2012). Kosovo and South Ossetia are the most similar pair of separatist stories in the ex-Yugoslav ... More

This chapter traces host state, separatist movement, and mafia relations in Serbia and Georgia (1989–2012). Kosovo and South Ossetia are the most similar pair of separatist stories in the ex-Yugoslav and ex-Soviet spaces. Their unique mix of wars (foreign and civil), separatist mobilizations (some successful, others less so), and mafia roles (sometimes tearing states, sometimes consolidating them) offers precious lessons on the agency of organized crime. In Serbia and Georgia, war was mafia as much as state business. Borders were made and unmade by smugglers. The black market was not an anomaly; the formal economy was. What separatists achieved depended tremendously on whether organized crime was multiethnic or not, violent or not, strong or not. Different mafia roles gave different results. Though organized crime in both countries began as a rejoicing third, the mafia's role in Kosovo evolved into a divider and conqueror, while in South Ossetia it evolved into a mediator. These differing trajectories account for the greater success of Kosovo's separatist movement.Less

Not an Easy Road: Black Market Ramen and the U.S. Occupation

George Solt

in Untold History of Ramen: How Political Crisis in Japan Spawned a Global Food Craze

Chapter 2 analyzes the food crisis of the period immediately after World War II, when a lack of access to produce from the colonies, a diversion of manpower and resources away from food production, ... More

Chapter 2 analyzes the food crisis of the period immediately after World War II, when a lack of access to produce from the colonies, a diversion of manpower and resources away from food production, Allied bombings, and bad harvests led to widespread scarcity, malnutrition, and death. After the war, when the US military formally occupied Japan (1945–52), rāmen and other foods made from American wheat served an important function in providing emergency sustenance at a time when rice was scarce and there were severe food shortages. The dependence on wheat flour imported from the United States as a substitute staple for rice during and after the Allied Occupation produced a resurgence in the availability of Shina soba, as well as bread and biscuits, which drastically altered the eating habits of those who came of age after the war from those who did before. This chapter also explores the shift away from words tainted with the memory of imperialism and war.Less

Conclusion: a fair trade

Mark Roodhouse

in Black Market Britain: 1939-1955

The conclusion summarizes points made in the previous chapters, and sets out answers to the two primary questions: what was the pattern of evasion, and why did it take that shape? Drawing upon other ... More

The conclusion summarizes points made in the previous chapters, and sets out answers to the two primary questions: what was the pattern of evasion, and why did it take that shape? Drawing upon other national studies, this British experience is set in a wider European and North American context. Implications are drawn out of the argument for understanding the economy in mid-twentieth-century Britain. The underdevelopment of the grey and black markets points to the continued importance of the ethical dimension to economic life in ‘advanced economies’ after the supposed ‘great transition’ from a moral economy to a market economy. It also highlights the continued importance of non-market exchange in the modern economy, and reminds historians not to confuse monetary exchange with market exchange.Less

Keeping It Close to Home: Resourcefulness and Scarcity in Late Socialist and Postsocialist Poland

Małgorzata Mazurek

in Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe

A history of shortages and scarcity in postwar Eastern Europe has usually been narrated in terms of its potential to provoke mass political action or else as individual cultural practices, such as ... More

A history of shortages and scarcity in postwar Eastern Europe has usually been narrated in terms of its potential to provoke mass political action or else as individual cultural practices, such as bribing and petitioning. But in post-1945 Poland, as elsewhere in the Bloc, coping with shortages was most often addressed through tightly-knit social circles. Specifically, consumption in Eastern European was inextricably bound to extended networks of both relatives and close friends. In this chapter, Małgorzata Mazurek focuses on family circles and the ways in which they organized domestic provisions during the late communist period of 1976-1989. To unveil family stories about scarcity, she compares the experiences of two specific families based on oral histories conducted with them thirty years ago by a group of Polish social scientists and then again in 2006 by the author. By juxtaposing the previous interviews with the recent ones, Mazurek analyzes the cultural organization of family and friends (and the consequent networks of exchange and consumption) as an embedded but changing phenomenon. Here, memory seems to confound conventional wisdom about the failure of the communist system to provide, in large part because the system offered a profound flexibility, an opening for consumer strategies that the post-communist period decidedly lacks. A broader conceptualization of the consumer experience thus reveals that shortages could just as easily be associated with the loss of security in the post-communist period as they were with the anecdotal “empty shelves” under communism.Less