THE BRITISH LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE COMMON MARKET that the labour movement never could approve of such a Capital, and for a short period only - of the real ills
Editorial
As the documents adopted by the Vith World Congress of the IVth International correctly predicted, the Tory government has been forced to open negotiations in view of Great Britain's entry into the Common Market. laws of capitalist concentration operate in an implacable way; they don't even respect the venerable Commonwealth! Weakened by a rate of growth which is greatly inferior to that of its continental competitors; suffering from a more pronounced productivity gap compared with them, British imperialism, share of world exports has declined from 13% in 1913 and nearly 11% in 1928 to 10% in 1950 and 7,8% in 1960, has only the choice between entry the Common Market or further decline which will reduce it to a fourth-rate power. It choose necessarily the first solution. Market and Great Britain becomes a fact, a new capitalist power of utmost magnitude will be coming into being. It will strengthen the military ond political cohesion of cap-
Western Europe -economic integration resists the blows of successive recessions and intensified class struggles it will fan. It will above all represent a formidable weight on the world market of raw materials, buying alone more than 50% of the total world's imports of primary products. For that reason alone, the colonial and semi-colonial bourgeoisies of Latin America, Asia, Africa and Oceania fear
They are afraid, not without reason, lest this all-powerful client accentuate even more the inequal character of exchange and trade between imperialist and colonial countries, lest it depress even more the terms of trade at the expense of the colonial and semi-colonial countries. Once again experience confirms that in the framework of capitalism, any tendency to regional economic integration accentuates in fact the tendencies to economic disintegration and growing disequilibrium on a world scale, in the same way as the suppression of competition by monopolies leads to more destructive and wasteful competition monopolies themselves.
In the semi-colonial countries, revolutionary marxists must answer the commercial threat which represents to these countries Britain's entry into the Common Market by advancing transitional slogans like the establishment of a pool of raw materials and the expansion of trade with the workers' states. In Britain they have the special res. ponsibility of uniting the whole working class movement, and above all the left wing of the Labour Party and the Trade-Unions around a correct answer to the problem of the Common Market, an answer which would make possible a larger, more united and more energetic anti-capitalist mobilisation of the British workers.
From this point of view, it would be a disastrous mistake to establish a "united front against entry into the Common Market" with reactionary capitalist tendencies as those of Lord Beaverbrook. It is true that Britain's entry into the Common Market will strengthen capitalism, and move. But it will strengthen capitalism exactly in the same way as capitalist concentration and the emergence of trusts reinforces capitalism, compared with the epoch of a freefor-all among small and medium-sized firms. In the same way as marxists never fight against trusts in the name of a return to capitalist free competition, they cannot fight Britain's entry into the Common Market in the name of "national sovereignity" or, even worse, the defence of "our Commonwealth"
This kind of a struggle against Britain's entry into the Common Market would not only be reactionary and utopian. It would also profoundly demobilize the working class movement. Some tendencies within the Labour Party left today state that entry into the Common Market would liquidate any possibility overthrowing Great-Britain. Now it is a fact that entry will take place. All propaganda which stresses the "tremendous obstacles"
such entry would immediately place on the road towards a socialist Britain will therefore only increase scepticism and pessimism among militant workers, and play right into the hands of the right wing which will state very firmly that within Common Market conditions a fight for a socialist Britain or even for extensive public ownership is "unrealistic"
Equally mistaken would be any passive acceptation or even approval of Britain's entry into the Common Market, in the name of an undigested brand of "internationalism". Revolutionary marxists are not in favour of regional international economic integration anywhere anytime. certainly did not approve of the kind of "economic in. tegration" which, after all, the Nazis also realized in some ways during the first stages of the Second World War in Central, Western and Eastern Europe. They cannot make abstraction of concrete conditions and class forces, which unfortunately means that, in Western Europe to-day, such an integration would strengthen the capitalist class much more than the working class. They cannot close their eyes to the political and military aspects of this integration, directed against the workers' states and the colonial rev.
the same way as they cannoy deny the facts of life, i.e. the fact that the European bourgeoisie has today achieved a degree of inter-penetration and unity of vision and action, while the working class movement has divided and partially demoralised by its treacherous traditional leaderships.
An adequate answer to Britain's entry into the Common Market can only be worked out by revolutionary marxists in taking the concrete economic and social situation of Great-Britain as a starting point. In fact, entry Common Market is part of a general plan of "rationalizing" British economy at the expense of the working class. This is a plan of strengthening the competitive power and force of British capitalism, as well in relation with its foreign competitors as in relation with the workers themselves.
This plan offers a "solution" - in the interests
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL of British society and economy, on the condition that the workers are ready to accept it. M. Selwyn Lloyd's latest budget gives one a first taste of the nature of that plan. The lock-out at Rootes, the closing down of a Wales steel plant, are other indications of things to come. The first task of the British labour movement is therefore that of organising a common and united resistance against this "austerity" plan. This battle must be waged by the united forces of the trade-unions and the Labour Party. British revolutionary marxists must present a common defensive plan of action to the whole labour movement, against the wage freeze and against the attacks on the social services. They must condemn as capitulators all those among the trade union bosses and the Transport House pundits who, pretending that big industrial action would "harm" Labour's chances at the next general election, tend to put a brake, to divide or even to sabotage this common struggle of the workers in defence of their standard of living.
Even if this first defensive battle will be crowned by success — which isn't certain at all - the defence of the British workers' standard of living against the consequences of the Common Market will not be automatically bie insured. Capitalist competition in the framework of the Common Market implies periodic attemps of each capitalist class to better its competitive positions by reducing its workers' wages relatively to those of the competitor countries, or even absolutely, and thereby reducing its costs of production. The workers of a country who have the highest wages within the Common Market are always the most likely to be hit by such an attack. After the French and the Belgian workers, it is now the British workers' turn, then the Western German workers will be hit in their turn.
In the same way as the struggle against the Selwyn Lloyd wage freeze cannot succeed if each sector and each union defends itself separately, in the same way the struggle against the periodie pressure on the wages in the Common Market countries will not be successful if each working class defends itself separately from its fellow work. ers of the neighbouring countries. The working class answer to the capitalist Common Market must be first of all a defensive one: a European cartel of trade-union and workers parties, without exclusion of any important sector of the movement. Revolutionary marxists should campaign for the T.U.C. convening in London a General Congress of European Labour, into which should be invited not only the trade-unions affiliated to the ICFTU (German DGB, Belgian FGTB, Dutch NVV, French CGT-FO Italian CISL
3 itory demands. The Tory plan of entry into the Common Market and the anti-working class offensive is the capitalist answer to the crisis of obsolescence and decline of the British economy. To this capitalist answer, the British labour movement must counterpose its own socialist answer. In order to guarantee a revival and a rapid growth of their country, the British workers must fight for the Labour Party coming into power on a socialist program, and not on the recipe of a few rosy reforms prepared by Gaitskell. They must fight for the nationalisation of all key industries, banks, insurance companies, under workers control: for the elaboration and the application of a general plan of overall economic development, which will guarantee a high and regular rate of expansion of the decisive public sector of the economy; for a severe taxation of high incomes and fortunes, as well as of all luxury goods, which will enable a rapid expansion of outlays for public education, public health, public housing and scientific research; for a municipalisation of all rented houses and flats; for a break with NATO; for a fundamental reorient: ation of Britain's foreign and commercial policy towards the workers' states; for freedom to all colonies. In other words: to the capitalist plan of "rationalising" British economy by entry into the Common Market, the labour movement should counterpose a workers' plan of a socialist Great-Britain.
It is much easier to mobilise the British workers for these precise and positive goals, than to mobilise them in action against Britain's entry into the Common Market. Even if that mobilisation does not succeed to overthrow the Tory government, it will start such a broad wave of. working class struggles that the conquest of power could be envisaged in a next stage. Britain's entry into the Common Market cannot and will not prevent such a mobilisation for a whole transitional period, provided the labour movement is not paralysed and demoralised by inadequate leadership and big defeats.
On the propaganda level the idea of the Socialist United States of Europe, including the countries of Western Europe as well as the Eastern European workers' states, should be counterposed from now to the capitalist Common Market. The more capitalist economic integration of Europe proceeds, the more this idea will have to be transfered from the field of propaganda to the field of action, prepared by a new series of transitional demands which will have to formulated as well within the framework of the Common Market as in a way to break up that framework. But to-day, and during a whole transitional stage, this propaganda task should in no way distract revolution ary marxists from a program of action for the immediate an trade union confederations of France, Belgian and Hol- future, which could lead to struggles of a tremendous scop and. Goal of this Congress should be the elaboration of a Comman of dotent of the inada of Market countries.
But in order to be successful, each defensive struggle to-day inevitably leads to an offensive struggle for transand promise impressive victories: to transform the struggles in defence of the workers' standard of living into i ing of a planned economy and a socialist Britain.