THE COMMON MARKET
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
With the application of the Common Market beginning with January of this year, the economic policy of European capitalism begins an important turn. The ultimate goal of the operation is political, and aims at the political integration of the Europe of the Six, open also conditionally to Great Britain.
The Common Market completes other European institutions - the European Coal and Steel Community, the Euratom - all oriented toward the unification of capitalist Europe.
The Common Market is above all a customs union which aims at abolishing gradually - over the next 12 to 15 years - all currently existing barriers, to permit free circulation of merchandise, capital, and manpower among the Six. Toward the outer world it would maintain harmonized common tariffs, equal to the average of existing national tariffs.
For the moment, the first steps of the Common Market are modest: a 10% reduction of customs duties ; the transformation of bilateral important quotas into overall quotas, and a 20% increase in their total value (the smallest quota to reach at least 3% of the national production).
This attempt at capitalist unification, however, does not fail to stir up the fundamental antagonisms and contradictions of the system. For the operation to be viable, it is necessary that each of the partners be able to face the competition of the others. This obliged France to take drastic economic and financial measures on the eve of the application of the Common Market : about 550,000 million francs (roughly $ 1,116 million or £ 400 million) of new burdens on the wage-earners and consumers; and a devaluation of the franc by more
The goal of these measures is to lower the production cost of French he deserich pronati marie, westment, siderably strengthening France's ability to compete
Notwithstanding these measures, the French budget deficit, because of the war in Algeria and the burdens resulting from the "Constantine Plan, remains in the neighborhood of 600,000 million francs (roughly $ 1,217 million or £ 435 million), and the reserves in gold and dollars at less than $ 1,000 million (even counting the recent massive aid, from American, German, and even British banks, to bolster up the franc, of some $ 450 de Gaulle-Pinay operation has a chance of succeeding only in case the prices "sacrifice, remain stable, the wage-earners accept the and internal consumption lessens while exports increase - just so many contradictory conditions, difficult to fulfill simultaneously.
If the operation is successful, on the other hand, it is the other partners in the Common Market who will suffer and who, to face up effectively to French competition, will be obliged to devalue in their turn.
Next there is the antagonism between the Common Market and Great Britain, which has triggered off the
13 war of convertibility of European currencies. In opposition to the customs union which the Common Market represents, discriminating against trade with non-European countries, Great Britain sets up the free-trade zone which enables it to have access to the European market without injuring its Commonwealth preference system. Thanks to this system, British industrial products have preferential access to the Commonwealth countries, while Britain in its turn imports from the Commonwealth at very low tariffs some £ 739 million ($ 2,069 million) of agricultural products, £ 102 million ($ 286 million) of manufactured products, and £ 754 million ($ 2,lll million) of raw materials (figures valid for
France, which is afraid of facing simultaneously the competition of Germany and Great Britian, countries possessing industry that is better equipped and above all of lower production costs, is opposed to Great Britain's applying the common European tariff to its trade with the rest of the world, while on the other hand profiting, for both its imports and exports, by its imperial preference system.
It is true that the recent measures taken by France concerning the liberalization of its exchanges with all the countries of the OEE C and the dollar zone, as well as the partial convertibility of European currencies, including the franc, have lessened the gap between the specifically economic positions of France and Great Britain. But disagreement persists on the political content represented by the two orientations: Common Market
France, backed for the moment by Germany and the other partners in the Common Market, is asking that Great Britain pledge itself politically toward European unity by defining its economic policy toward Europe first of all ; while Great Britain wishes still to remain free to establish its tariffs toward the Commonwealth and the rest of the world in any way it wants.
Great Britain basically, for equally political reasons, wants to torpedo the creation of a European politicoeconomic bloc that would include 162 million people, controlling more than a titth of world trade, would become the world's biggest exporting and impor• The prestige of Great Britain as the second power in the capitalist world runs the risk in this case of sutfering a mortal blow. Germany, on the contrary, encouraged by the United States, is driving for Great Britain to associate itself with "Little Europe," since considerations of anti-Soviet policy take precedence over all others - all the more so in that both Germany and the United States have the expectation, in a climate of free competition and curreacy convertibility, of easily dominating the Common Market.
The enterprise of the capitalist unification of Europe represents nevertheless a serious attempt by certain European and American leading circles to face the mortal struggle that is speeding up between capitalism and the workers' states. A certain concentration and a certain economic, military, and political "planning" by
14 world capitalism are imperative requirements in this struggle.
But the antagonistic nature of capitalism still resists the political consciousness of the most clear-sighted leading circles of the capitalist world. In case of an aggravation of the European recession, or of major economic difficulties for any individual country, each one's defensive reflexes will win out over "supernational" good intentions.
The bold economic and financial measures that characterize both the Common Market operation and partial currency convertibility, would prove to be viable only in the perspective of a harmonious expansion of the capitalist economy. In the contrary case, there would be witnessed precipitate withdrawals that would sow the greatest disorder in the barely commenced enterprise of capitalist "planning."
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
Meanwhile, its costs must be borne by the wage-earners of Europe and the world. The trend toward a compression of production costs and of internal conumption the better to face revived competition, give ise to a new oftensive against the living standards oi the European masses already affected by unemployment and inflation.
What is more, the underdeveloped countries look forward with perfectly justified apprehension to the discriminatory competition and dictates of the Common Market toward their own economies, already in ebb.
The wage-earners of Europe must coördinate their struggles for their economic and political demands in order to break out of the capitalist framework of the "unification" of Europe by enlarging it to all Europe on the basis of the Socialist United States of Europe, the only progressive and realistic historical perspective.