(The following article appeared in the July 9 issue of La Gauche, weekly journal of the Ligue Révolutionnaire
Travailleurs des
¡ Revolutionary
Workers League), Belgian section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
*.
The British bourgeoisie has finally decided to enter the Common Market, hoping in that way - if not to solveat least to ameliorate the chronic crisis with which it has beer faced for over a decade.
The Decline of British Imperialism
The economic structure of Great Britain is the result of a long period of British domination of the world market. Imports of foodstuffs and raw materials were paid for by income from capital invested abroad and by the "invisible exports" produced by the merchant marine, insurance companies, and the British banks, which dominated their respective sectors.
The decline of British imperialism, which began with the first world war and was accelerated by the second, upset this traditional economic structure. The proportion of British exports in world commerce has been steadily shrinking, so that Britain today is in fourth position, trailing the United States, West Germany, and Japan.
The world position of Britain's merchant marine, banks and insurance companies has been considerably weakened. Income from capital invested abroad represents a far smaller share of British imports than before the second world war. All these factors have brought about the decline of the pound sterling and Great Britain's permanent balance-of-payments crisis.
The severe losses suffered by imperialism throughout the world in the past twenty-five years have substantially increased the importance of the imperialist countries themselves as markets for industrial products. Technological competition and technologi- July 26,1971
cal superprofits today play a major role compared to the former "game preserves" in the colonies and colonial superprofits. In this connection, British capital is severely handicapped relative to its principal competitors -the United States, West Germany, Japan, Italy, France. Its industry is less modernized. Its rate of growth has been slower. Its technological lag threatens to become more pronounced.
For an entire period the British bourgeoisie thought it could hang on to its "Commonwealth" and its "special relations" with the United States to get itself out of the hole. Ten years later it had to recognize that it was mistaken. American imperialism has been buying out enterprises in Great Britain at an accelerating rate. It has increased its penetration of Canada, Australia, South Africa, India. The Common Market countries have contested British ascendancy in countries like Nigeria, Tanzania, and Kenya. The colonial "game preserves" have evaporated. All that British imperialism was left with was a more and more pronounced debilitation, not only in comparison with the United States and Japan, but even in comparison with the Six. The bankruptcy of Rolls Royce acquires real symbolic significance!
The Turn Toward the Common Market and the Gaullist Veto
The British capitalists then applied the golden rule that governs gang warfare: "If you can't lick 'em, join 'em." By entering the Common Market they hope to enjoy a greatly enlarged outlet, which would assure them a higher growth rate.
In several areas (electronics, aeronautic construction, synthetic fibers, the garment industry, the petroleum industry, the food industry), they are still ahead of their continental competitors, whether in technology, the size of their most powerful firms, or both. Among the 200 most powerful European firms, forty-nine are British
(more than the German and French firms together).
Other industries (steel, electrical construction, probably automobiles, too) may not stand up well under the stepped-up competition. All in all, however, the British bourgeoisie hopes that as a result of entering the European Economic Community, its positions on the European market, and thence on the world market, will be stronger.
The following consideration is even more important. International competition leads to a more and more intense international concentration of capital. In face of the "multinational" American giants, with subsidiaries in practically every capitalist country, "multinational" companies controlled by European capital from several
(such countries as Agfa-Gevaert,
FIAT-Citroën, Dunlop-Pirelli, Hoesch- Hoogovens Ijmuiden, Empain-Schneider) are being established. This concentration in the industrial sphere is strongly reinforced by mutual cooperation agreements and interlocking between big European banks and financial groups.
As the example of the Dunlop-Pirelli merger demonstrates, British capital is constrained to participate in this merger movement, under penalty of being crushed between the American giants and the European giants. But if Great Britain remains outside the Common Market, British capitalists entering the "European" game will have no way to exert pressure on, and no avenue of direct political control over, the superstructure that is being erected little by little on this new economic base. By entering the Common Market, the British bourgeoisie is trying to develop its political instruments to meet the needs of its most powerful monopolies.
During the mid-Sixties, the decisive circles of the British bourgeoisie had already made a turn in this direction. If Great Britain was not able to join the Common Market at that time, it was due essentially to resistance on the part of the Gaullist wing of French big capital.
The reasons for this resistance were complex. Two factors, nevertheless, played the principal role. French industry, which had not as yet achieved equilibrium with West German industry, feared entering the lists with a second competitor, superior on every count. De Gaulle, desirous of building a European army and government independent of the United States, feared that the maritime and Atlantic orientation of British imperialism would upset that plan.
The French Bourgeoisie Changes Its Orientation
Nevertheless, the French bourgeoisie had to realize, and very quickly, that in blocking Great Britain's entry into the Common Market, it was engaging in a profitless venture - one that benefited its major competitor. After May 1968 (the month of the student-worker uprising in France], after de Gaulle's removal, it was Bonn and not Paris that became the uncontested leader of the Europe of the Six. Enjoying industrial predominance, having the most stable and desirable currency - the deutsche mark-at its disposal, coddled by Washington as its privileged ally, West German capital alone profited from the imbalance of political and economic forces that Great Britain's exclusion had caused within the Common Market.
Pompidou's change in orientation - the reason for his victory in the last presidential elections-stems from that.
Today the head man of the moderate Gaullists is keeping the promises made in 1969 to the entire French bourgeoisie. The difficulties on the path to Britain's entry into the Common Market have been removed.
Thus the Europe of the Six becomes the Europe of the Ten (Ireland, Denmark, and Norway, economic satellites of Great Britain, are also joining the European Economic Community). Inside this Europe of the Ten, a Franco-British entente cordiale, discreetly supported by Italy, will be the counterweight to West Germany's too pronounced supremacy.
Pompidou's choice is all the more logical in that the British bourgeoisie, still attached to its independence in numerous areas, will support (inside 704
the EEC) the reservations that French big capital has concerning new steps toward "supranational" integration (common European currency, common industrial policy, common public-works policy, etc.), to which the West German bourgeoisie, as well as the bourgeoisie of the Benelux countries, is more favorable.
The Tories Want the Workers to Foot the Bill
There remains but one obstacle in the way of the Europe of the Ten: the trade-union militancy of the British working class.
In order to participate in the Common Market with a real opportunity for success, British big capital must, at any cost, reverse the tendency toward a falling rate of profit, which has been manifest in this country for almost a decade. To this end, it has to increase the rate of exploitation of the working class. It has to reduce working-class resistance to such an increase by reducing trade-union power and militancy at the work places.
The antistrike and antitrade-union law that the Conservative government pushed through the British Parliament represents one jaw of the pincers that is supposed to crack the militancy of the English workers (who, along with the Italian workers, are the most militant in Europe). The other jaw of the pincers is a deliberately prolonged recession that has produced 800,000 unemployed (the highest number since 1940!) and unemployment rates of 8 to 10 percent of the unskilled workers in working-class bastions such as Glasgow and other cities of Scotland and Wales.
In this connection, the status of Britso capabo ish capitalism on the eve of its entry into the Common Market is rather similar to that of French capitalism just before the Common Market was inaugurated in 1958. Both were suffering pronounced structural deficiencies. Both had to "render harmless" an overly turbulent working class, so that these deficiencies could be removed at the expense of the masses. Thanks to Gaullism, French big capital achieved its aim. Mr. Heath is trying to imitate Charles de Gaulle's exploits. But the political and social relationship of forces is much more unfavorable for British capitalism in 1971 than it was for French capitalism in 1958.
The conservative policies of the Tories, added to the effects of recession and unemployment, have caused a fa" in the government's popularity tha might take the form of a landslide. Thus the Tories have to act fast, because they don't know if they have ten years ahead of them, as did de Gaulle. Their tactic of resorting to drastic remedies, which seems clumsy at a distance, derives from this necessity. It also takes into consideration the "moderating" role of the tradeunion and Labour party bureaucracy.
The Reformist Brake
It was the Wilson team that cleared the path for Great Britain's entry into the Common Market and for the "modernization" of British capitalism at the expense of the workers. It was the Wilson team that got all the reactionary measures of the Heath cabinet under way - from the anti-immigration legislation to the antitrade-union legislation, by way of the "incomes policy" and increased unemployment. Heath enlarged on what Wilson had started. Moreover, Heath could only have come to power because Wilson's profoundly antiworking-class policy bad disgusted millions of Labour voters and had kept them away from the polls.
Today it is essential, for the relative stability (more and more relative, too!) of British capitalism, that Labour's return to power does not mean wiping out all the Tory "counterreforms." With the help of the tradeunion apparatus, Wilson is busily taking care of that.
He has succeeded in stifling the spontaneous tendency of the British workers to oppose the antiunion legislation by means of a political general strike. He is making no preparations for purely and simply deleting this legislation. He merely promises to eliminate its most "repugnant" aspects. Today he is maneuvering in the same way-to prevent the Labour party from declaring its opposition to the Common Market to the extent that it would take the country out of it if Labour were returned to power. Statements of principle are not too bothersome (they might even attract some votes in the elections, should the occasion arise). But above all must nothing be changed in what the Tories accomplished in these areas.
The most important factor, however, is dependent neither on legislation nor on international treaties. It depends on "the dynamic of the cluss struggle. If the working class is victorious in resisting the two-pronged assault of unemployment and antistrike legislation, if it preserves its fighting potential intact, it will make ever y effort to compensate-through sulstantial wage raises -for every rise in prices (especially prices of food products) that would result from be onging to the Common Market. Joining the Common Market, far from reducing "economic" class struggles, would thus exacerbate them.
The naive confidence of this same working class in the efficacy of parliamentary reforms ard the electoral process would receive a second heal-
CP Refuses to Join Defense of Civil Liberties CP Refuses to Join Defense of Civil Liberties thy shock, on the heels of the shock inflicted on it by its experience with the Wilson governments. In this way, its political radicalization would be reinforced. Increased recourse to organizing strike committees and growing understanding of the necessity to struggle for workers' control and workers' councils would thus gradually emerge.
The social crisis would thus little by little evolve toward a revolutionary outcome. The efforts of big capital to make the British bourgeoisie participate in the construction of "its" capitalist Europe would in that case end with the intensified participation of the British working class in the struggle for "our" Europe - the red Europe of the workers, a socialist Europe.
carpet. Minister Marcellin (secretary of the interior], who has proved a bit too quick to react, may find himself on the carpet with them. During the trial we will do all in our power to mark out clearly the path that will take him there."
The campaign in defense of civil liberties has been marred by the sectarian actions of the Communist party.
On July 8, the CP withdrew from a press conference convened by the League for Human Rights on the grounds that the Ligue Communiste and Lutte Ouvrière had been invited. The CP claimed that the terms of unity had been violated by that invitation. It further explained that it refused to be associated with groups "whose activity makes a game out of the government's attacks on civil liberties and ernment's attacks on civil liberties and the demands of the workers."