were established to investment trusts. everybody riches could come in no time.
newspaper.
stock market. new dawn and refused to intervene.
change rate; D parity = 100 1974 1975 1976 invest in other investment trusts which in turn invested in other The advocale of one trust ought to be rich and promised that for £200 dollars initial investment The inventor of this scheme was John J Kaskob one of the leading industrialists in the country. In 1928 he was appointed to the national committe of the Democratic party. Commented "today the worldly-wise candidate of one of the great political parties chooses one of the outstanding operators in the That was not just an indication of the link-up between politics and big business, the business leaders themselves became folk heroes, with their pictures appearing on the front cover of Time magazine. The system seemed to be so much an answer to everyone's prayer that the capitalist authority. rederal Reserye Bank permilted the money to be lent out and lent out, the politicians hailed the 1977 1978 the boom went the greater the fail would be. In that sense the precise events which triggered off •black Thursday' hadn't been that Thursday it would have been some other Thursday. The problem was the stem; a system whose god was profit and t vhich everything else was secondary which could have been invested in new plant and machinery found its way to the stock market. The lack of control over the stock market. banking institutions and the industrial giants meant in the final analysis it was sustained by nothing but confidence in that American capitalism described thus by the bourgeois economist JK Galbraith:
'The fact was that the American enterprise in the twenties had opened its hospitable arms to an exceptional number of swindlers, imposters and frauds'.
And such is the nature of the system, for Galbraith has argued that the number one cause of the crash of 1929 was:
'The bad distribution of income. In 1929 the rich were indubitably rich...five per cent of the population received one-third of ail personal income...The highly unequal income distribution meant that the economy was dependent on a high level of investment or a high level of luxury consumer spending or both. The rich cannot buy great quantities of bread. If they are to dispose of what they receiye it must be on luxuries or by way of investment in new plants and new projects.
But instead in the late '20s the rich simply used their money to chase other money; and in the end the money dried up.
The consequence was the depression which followed. At the start of 1929 the United States was portrayed as the greatest advertisement for free-enterprise capitalism, by the end of the year il was wel on the indictment of capitalism. 1979 Money CALC providing system itself. '20s has been promoters, grafters, very rich expense people bankers, individuals, profits. Fancy way to becoming the greatest have themselves at producing 1929 ployed breadline.
this country, and housing.
body.
characterised ment, WE ALL know that capitalism the misery and deprivation that people suffer la terr dally uves. Capitalism operates not on the basis of people they need; on the contrary, it doesn't care about needs.
Its only motivation is profit more capital to invest to make more capital to invest to make more capital:
It's not even about making a small group of people very, and giving them everything that they need at the of everyone else. •Capitalism does have the effect •or creating such & group of things the bosses, the landlords, the speculators, and the superstars.
But capitalism isn't loyal to pay groups of individuals. It is loyal to one thing alone, and that is more One of the worst things that capitalism does is put millions is an people altogether, so that they don't the means support ali. And they certainly can't buy the fancy commodies tude capitalism l tempt the If there's another slump of proportions then even people wit be unemand living on the There won't be their holidays abroad, or even in should Cornwall, for most people in We won't see more and working with cars, washing machines comfortable council Instead there will be less of everything • for everyThe capitalist crisis is crisis of overproduction and is declining income, increasing unemploy.
the appearance desperate poverty (and eyen famine).
Of course, famines have always happened. But the difference about pre-capitalist crises is that they arose out of scarcity. Capitalism is particularly horrific precisely because this is not the case; poverty arises because production has grown excessively.
The equipment is there to can live well, but they cannot be sold. We don't have money to buy them. The money is there for investment, but the profits are not big enought to tempt investors.
Ihere is enouch of mosi for everybody, but capitalism won't allow us to just share it all out. We have to for it. But capitalism doesn't give us enough money to pay for it either, because that cuts into profits too sharply.
So what kind of answers can socialists offer to the crisis?
We start from the interests of the poor and the oppressed so the first thing that is required immediate in wages, and ployment pay. Circulate This will also ensure that more money circulates in the economy, leading to greater commodity sales and hence an increase in economic activity.
Secondiy, rather than allow people to languish on the dole, productiye capacity public works. This means reversing the cuts and embarking crash programme of public works, in health, education, housing and so on, under workers' control.
Tp help share out resources more equitably we should call for the reduction of prices of essential commodities, coupled with releasing extra resources forinvestment by radical taxing of the rich and cutting defence expenditure.
Other elements which pose a workers' solution to the crisis, include the sliding scale wages and social expenditure, ensure that standard of living at least keeps pace with inflation and rising prices.
•We need a state monopoly of foreign trade coupled with workers control of industry ana tne arecaon br wyesmel so that it is in the interests of the working class. Sense These demands all point in the direction of a workers solution to the crisis, which means breaking _ or ine upturn, boom. crisis, and depression cycle once and for all.
It means clearly turning our backs on the bosses' solutions to their crisis - • solutions which have taken the form of fascism outright war for foreign fields of investment, and which always take the form of imposing austerity and declining working class.
However, these demands simply point in the right direction. If the working class take over and run things itself, then we could go a great dea further. With five-year plans and an integrated approach to tue wubie economy; baseu. Ul need and usefulness rather than protits, eventually could all enjoy the full fruits of our labour.
could produce even more than the capitalists do; we could do it more effeciently and we could share out the produce out equitably among those who need it And we wouldn't stagger crisis to another Instead of anarchy in control, society would De. run on lat basis of what makes sense. And that's called socialism. Socialist Challenge 1 November 1979 Page 9
HUA GUOFENG visited Britain this week as