return to the 1930s. They have had to promise this in order to persuade the working class to people reform they will give you revolution."
get results, and talk of the need for socialist revolution appeared romantic nonsense.
ing place. Industrial production is actually at a lower level than it was in 1970. A real smell of the 1930s is in the air.
According to the reformist politicians of the Labour Party, this is just a temporary hitch. According to them, after a few sacrifices things will start to get better again. But as the dole queues lengthen and the shopping baskets get lighter, this looks less likely. More people are prepared to ask whether things are really going to get better under capitalism. Will the sacrifices now being demanded last just for a couple years, followed by a return to the old prosperity, or will the demands for sacrifice be never ending? Will the 5 per cent pay cut demanded by the £6 limit, and the similar cut in living standards coming under the present pay deal, be followed merely by worse attacks?
If what we are living through is just a hiccup in capitalist prosperity, then a few sacrifices might appear justified. If, on the other hand, capitalism has no good times to offer whatsoever, then accepting cuts in living standards doesn't appear such a rational idea. If things are only going to get worse no matter how much is given up, then it would seem logical to think not about sacrifices for capitalism but about how to overthrow it. We therefore have to be very clear on what is at the root of the present crisis; and why, despite temporary ups and downs, there is no chanc whatever that things will get anything but worse unacE capitalisin Profits of death The best way to understand why this is so is to ask why the post-war capitalist boom took place in the first place?
The answer to this is very simple. The temporary period of capitalist boom after the Second World War was created on the basis of the coming to power of Mussolini and Hitler, the mass unemployment of the 1930s, the destruction of the trade union and labour movement in virtually every country in Europe and East Asia by fascism, and the death of 50 million people in the Second World War.
If this fact were widely known and understood, it would lead on its own to a veritable revulsion and revolt against capitalism. What sort of system is it that can gain prosperity only over the greatest moun tain of corpses in human history? For that reason, the myth is carefully maintained that the cause of the Second World War was the fight for democracy, to defeat Hitler, or some similar aim.
The real significance of fascism, unemployment and the war comes out only too clearly, however, in the real figures which the capitalists consider impor- profits and wages.
- In Italy, the coming to power of the fascist dictator Mussolini saw the greatest wage cutting exercise in that country's history. The real wages of the working class were cut by 20 per cent between 1922, the year before the fascists came to power, and 1938, the year before the outbreak of war. Only in 1948, twenty five years after the fascists had seized power, did wages regain their 1922 level.
In Spain, industrial output doubled in the years between 1935, the last year before the outbreak of the civil war won by the fascist Franco, and the late 1950s. But real wages fell by nearly half by the early 1950s, and even by the end of that decade the workers were producing twice as much for no higher wages than 25 years earlier.
- In Germany, the coming to power of Hitler, and his banning of the trade unions and political parties of the working class, was followed by the most gigantic profits boom in history. In the six years from 1932 to 1938 the total of profits made by German capital increased from 8 billion marks to 20 billion marks, and te total or pronts nearly doubted in rela tion to wages. Meanwhile the length of the working week was incrcasea Dy 40 per cent. By 1939 the share of wages in the German economy was still Ever since the Second World War, capitalist politicians have promised that there would never be a accept capitalism again after the experiences of mass unemployment, fascism and war. As Conservative politician Lord Hailsham put it in a debate in Parliament in 1943: "If you don't give the For almost thirty years it appeared that capitalism could indeed 'deliver the goods'; and at least in the major capitalist countries, production and living standards rose and mass unemployment was avoided - although in the 'Third World' capitalism reduced hundreds of millions to starvation and waged terrible wars such as that in Vietnam. Reformist Labour politicians appeared to be able to In the last five or six years, however, strong notes of doubt have begun to creep into this apparently rosy picture. In Britain living standards have dropped sharply in the last two years. Unemployment runs at 1¼ million on official figures, and much higher in real terms, with no prospect of the dole queues coming down below a million again. Slashing cuts in the social services are taklower than at the time of the Great Depression in 1929. - In Japan, the country of the 'economic miracle; the share of wages in the economy was smashed down during the 1930s and the war, and fell even further during the 1950s as the Japanese working class was These rosy figures in the account books of the capitalists reflected the terrible methods of fascism, the extermination of the Jews, and the wholesale slaughter of war. Put in those terms, each of the corpses of the victims of fascism and war. Although later other factors helped the post-war boom this terrible slaughter was the 'achievement' on which post-war capitalism was rebuilt.
But despite the gigantic gains in profits during the period of fascism, unemployment and war, it is one of the characteristics of capitalism that it demands profits and 'sacrifices' of the working class on an ever greater scale. Modern capitalist competition requires investment on a scale which the capitalists of Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and the unemployment politicians of the 1930s could scarcely dream of.
For example, the development costs alone of the Pilkington float glass system, the most advanced in the world, were £10 million. That is small beer, however, compared with real international projects. To re-equip British Leyland costs £1,000 million, Concorde costs £1,000 million, a new computer system costs £500 million to produce, and the American supersonic bomber, the XB1, may cost up to £2,500 mion. rurtermore, te rate at wnien equipmen and products wear out or become obsolescent has vastly increased. In the 1930s, for example, ICI calculated the life of their investments as 20 years. To25 post-war boom years cost approximately 2 million day they have to pay back their money on much more expensive investments in a mere five vears Sacrifices Confronted with the need to make protits on a scale never even envisaged in the past - and under capitalism, all production of goods is regulated by profit - capitalism is forced to launch, as in the 1930s, an ever-increasing series of attacks against the working class. If the last few days have seen more opunsue reports rom oodies nike tne Cbi, it Is for one reason only - declining working class wages and mass unemployment mean that companies are looking forward to a major increase in profits on the basis of defeats of the working class. As always, capitalism can only hope to alleviate its problems even temporarily on the backs of the working class.
But although capitalism has already extracted great sacrifices from the working class it has hardly got started yet. The rate of profit is nowhere near the level achieved in the capitalist heyday after war, mass unemployment and fascism. For example, in the post-war period up to 1956 the rate of profit was calculated by Lloyd's Bank Review as 16 per cent. By 1966. it was down to 11 per cent. By 1972 it was 6 per cent. By 1974, on the figures produced by the Bank of England, it was down to 4 per cent Even allowing for the undoubted manoeuvres car ried out in capitalist accounting, there is no doubt that capitalism now has to look for a massive increase in profits. And how will this be sought? Once again the model which developed in the 1930s is reappearing.
Criminal Massive unemployment is not merely one of the worst crimes against the working class, it is also the most criminal waste of resources in existence. In the 1930s the losses of production in the United States economy alone amounted to £150,000 million. Today, in the smaller British economy; the same pattern is seen. One and a quarter million workers unemployed means a loss of production of well over £3,000 million a year.
Wage cuts were carried out in an open way in the 1920s and 1930s by reducing the amount in the wage packet. Now they are carried out in a more roundabout way by preventing wages from keeping abreast with inflation. But the end result is the same. The 5 per cent fall.in real wages under the £6 limit is just the old wage cutting of the 1930s wearing a more MOCCI TAL Slashing social expenditure was the issue over which the capitalists brought down the Labour Government in 1931 and created the ultra-reactionary Ramsay MacDonald coalition which cut social security payments. Since then the working class has wor the great gains of the welfare state. Now the capitalists are once again attacking housing, the health service, education and all gains of the social services.
As yet, however, the capitalists are only just getting warmed up. Alter these first economic attacks will come the still more vicious political ones. In the 1930s the unions were banned in manv countrie and savagely attacked in others. The Tories were defeated over the Industrial Relations Act, but they will be back for more when they think the situation is more favourable.
In the 1930s, anti-Jewish demagogues such as Hit ler came to the fore for the capitalists - today, as yet on a sinal scale out with the same deadly virus we see the emergence or racist ponticians sucn as Towere in vie torturers such as sinochet ot e116 and Geisel of Brazil we see the real image of capitalism's future. As the fight for profits steps up capitalism will resort to still more terrible weapons. It is for this, not for a new capitalist boom, that the present sacrifices are demanded. The dream of a "liberal' capitalism beloved of the Labour reformists is a utopian dream of the past. The only way forward Is not to sacrilice lot cabitanisin but to work ou what demands can protect the working class and use the capitalist crisis to overthrow this murderous
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JARROW CRUSADE