Part two The SWP 'defends' Mandel

Dick Roberts, a leading member of the American Socialist Worker's Party has written a series of articles in defence of the economic theories of Ernest Mandel. It is when Roberts comes to justify Ernest Mandel's analysis of the monetary crisis that the theoretical bankruptcy of his group is most plainly seen.

Roberts attempts constantly to deride and misrepresent the analysis of the monetary crisis which has been made by the Socialist Labour League. 'For Marxists, he tells us, 'the central contradiction of imperialism, monopoly capitalism in the 20th century, is the revolt of the forces of production against national boundaries.' Now we certainly don't need loberts, representing a group which long ago deserter the Leninist analysis of imperialism, to tell us this.

For Lenin, this was a general, abstract, statement about the fundamental cause of capitalist crisis in this epoch. In the same way, Marx, in the Preface to his work on capitalist economy ('Critique of Political Economy') made clear that the content of capitalist breakdown was the tendency for the productive forces to come into collision with the socialist relations of capitalist producBut, unlike Roberts, Marx knew also that it was necessary to deal with the forms which this crisis took. For the laws of capitalist economy do not present themselves directly on the surface of society. Quite the contrary! Karl Marx.

The content of any crisis can only be grasped through the specific forms which it takes under historically - determined circumstances.

'Value • .. does not stalk about with a label describing what it is, Marx tells us in 'Capital'. That is why he had to trace out the development of the value form in the opening chapters of 'Capital' from its 'elementary' through its 'expanded' and then its 'general' (money) form, a form which Roberts clearly does not understand.

It is quite ludicrous

BREAKDOWN There won't be much mourning among car workers over the demise of Sir George Harriman, president of the British-Leyland Motor Corporation. On the eve of the 1968 Motor Show he called on the Labour government to assist in the creation of a single trade union for the It is obvious that there is a nationwide breakdown of responsibility and discipline — a form of creeping anarchy' Where anarchy was involved, he said, the government must also be involved, 'for if it is not stopped, we shall be facing not only the devaluation of sterling, but the devaluation of Britain'.

With the breaking of the Poulson, Lonrho, Polwarth and Lambton-Jellicoe scandals, Harriman lived to see the 'breakdown of responsibility and discipline—a form of creeping PAGE