ABSTRACT
The roving bandit needs to keep the state weak in order to flourish. The concept of the roving and stationary bandit is derived from the work of Mancur Olson on interest groups. The roving bandits during the period 1992–1996 pursued short-term interests which consisted of maximising their theft and robbery of state assets. Chubais, realising that the state was the largest property owner of all, moved to the United Energy Systems of Russia, the power monopoly. The new capitalists, the oligarchs, were taught, in their Marxist-Leninist classes, that capitalists become rich by theft, coercion, murder and corruption of the state. In many successful capitalist countries high levels of corruption fuelled rapid economic growth during the early and middle stages of capitalist expansion. Karl Marx’s economic theory is derived from studying companies in the mid-nineteenth century. For a democracy to function in the long term there have to be independent institutions which can mediate conflicts among the power-sharing elites.
