International space rescue discussed

Giant THE FAROUK monarchy fell in 1952, as a delayed action effect of the failure of the feudal regime to cope with Israel in the war between Zionism and the Arab states in 1948. Nasser's financial ink with imperialism This war resulted in the partition of Palestine by the Jnited Nations, the dispossession and expulsion from their land of some one million Palestinians and the creation of Israel as an exclusive racial state.

Although the Egyptian government was monarchic and feudal, the war was a 'just war' on Egypt's side. Egypt was a semi-colony of mainly British imperialism.

For all practical purposes, although nominally independent since 1922, Egypt was more like a British colony because of the British occupation and ownership of the Suez Canal.

The struggle against Israel was also a struggle against British domination and, as such, part of the anti-imperialist struggle.

On Israel's side the war was wholly 'unjust' and revolutionary defeatism the only policy to adopt inside Israel and the war-machine.

It was during the 1948 war that the Free Officers, in which Nasser was a main figure, beNASSER gan to organize the coup which ousted Farouk in 1952, and replaced the feudal regime with a military national bourgeois government.

Its first act, the payment of compensation to the Suez Canal Company, re-established the old financial links between the ruling circles of Egypt and imperialism.

The acceptance by Nasser of US 'aid' (investment) to the tune of over £E1,000m further deepened the dependence of the Egyptian national bourgeoisie upon imperialism.

This financial tie-up with imperialism at once ruled out any real solution to the burning, agrarian problem.

The old feudal lords had been inextricably connected with monopoly finance capital abroad ever since the building The rationale of the plans is It is even possible to envis. that because of the colossal age emergency robot 'lifeboats' expense involved in a single which could be sent up to manned spaceflight neither intercept astronauts in diffiCLASS STRUGGLES IN of the Canal by Ferdinand de Lesseps in the 1860s.

The national bourgeoisie arose largely out of this feudal class and the compensation paid, plus loans from the US, W Germany, Italy, etc., re-established the links with foreign capital. The same capital which had dominated agriculture in the interests cotton production for the imperialist manufacturers.

Renewed

The renewed links with imperialism thus struck at the roots of any agrarian reform programme.

In the year of the antimonarchy coup by the Free Officers a land reform law was passed. Its extremely limited nature was shown by the fact that it restricted land holdings to 200 feddans (about 200 acres).

This preserved most of the old feudal. estates, because a 200-feddan farm was worth over £100,000 and represented considerable value.

Moreover, those who had land removed were compensated and this imposed a further drain on the peasants who had to pay for the compensation with their taxes.

In theory the redistributed land was parcelled out in two to five feddan lots to landless peasants, but in practice this lead to illicit land-speculation which the government had to declare a further "problem".

This speculation was the result of the law, which did not distribute the land free to the peasants, but made it purchaseable. The peasants could not afford to buy even the bare minimum, two-feddan farms.

Mono-culture

Moreover, the peasants who did get land were drawn into the mono-culture of cottonthe one-crop primary industry of Egypt when it was a direct colony of Britain.

So the essential semi-colonial nature of Egypt —as a primary producer of cotton for imperialism—was preserved by the first land law of the Nasser regime The peasants producing cotton were paid a small fraction of the world market price and this constituted the means of their super-exploitation.

This had the added advantage to the imperialists that they were not responsible for the upkeep of their labour In 1952 there remained two million fellahin families with less than one feddan of land, country would be likely to havę a 'back-up' craft available on the launching pad ready for take-off while manned flight is actually in progress.

But in some cases, Soviet off while a US ship was in craft might be ready for takedifficulties, or vice versa.

Under these circumstances, the astronauts' slim chances of recovery might be improved by a rescue shot. i.e. less than half of what was needed for physical survival. Seventy-two per cent of all land proprietors owned only 15 per cent of the cultivable land and 1.5 million families were entirely landless.

This was the condition of landlessness, total and relative, among 60 per cent of the Egyptian rural population.

At the other pole of rural society stood some 300 great landowners who owned 600,000 feddan, an average of 2,000 feddan each, including 178,000 feddan in the hands of the Farouk family alone.

Only the latter were at first redistributed by the 1952 law and the destruction of the remaining big holdings led to such speculation that it became a scandal.

FAROUK

Instead of land redistribution the regime resorted to rent reform. The effect of this may be judged from the fact that five years after the 1952 law the majority of tenant peasants were paying out 50 per cent of their receipts from production in rent alone—i.e. half their starvation income.

Among the poor peasants were the farm workers and in 1952 their yearly wage was, on average, not much above €32.

The per capita annual income was what it had been in 1900, at the height of the British 'devilizing influence' on Egyptian agriculture.

Such was the problem created by British rule for Nasser, and which his class was unable to solve. culties. made once as they a own.

flights played mining While the US took terrible used on the Apollo flight. moon, the Soviet Union seems The forces generated by its to have been more cautious rapia acceleration, of course, and, in the long run, quite as would have been fatal for any successful. human cargo. But it achieved A comparison of the Apollo at a fraction of the expense manned programme with and with none of the dinger. Standardized docking devices top the list 'The Apollo flight it starkly clear that tronauts are in trouble, virtually on their dangers of manned have undoubtedly a major part in deterthe direction of the lunar and planetary expiurauon programme, risks to get a man on the Automation leads to tele-control WIDE extension of automation in industry must lead to increased computer monitoring and control of production, according to the head of GEC-Elliot Automation writing in the current issue of Computer Weekly.

He states that new, cheaper computer techniques will mean for the first time that thousands of manufacturers, many of them quite small, will be able to benefit from on-line automaHowever, this can only be effective if the computer systems are directly linked to plant.

He comments:

In most industrial automation schemes, data transmission and telemetry systems are vital, and over the next decade closer and more effective relationships will develop between computer and communications specialists.' Monitoring Telemetry is the system by which monitoring, or operation of production, is conducted from a control centre via telephone cables.

The article gives an example of the Heinz soup-blending plant at Kitt Green, where a complete materials-handling scheme for five production lines is now under computer Another example in the same issue of 'Computer Weekly' is a W German Grundig plant where quality control of television and radio set manufacture is conducted by a Honeywell 316 computer directly connected to instrumentation on the production line.

Mechanization

In the early days of mechanization, automation and flowline production methods, capitalism fought to incorporate workers into the speed-up processes by developing timeand-motion systems.

As far as the employers were concerned, a worker could not be allowed to take Soviet robot flights is now possible after the safe return of the first Soviet moon samples, drilled out on the satellite's surface by remote control.

The space craft which carried out this sample collection —Luna 16—was far smaller than the US Apollo moonship which preceded it. And, in space terms, smaller means less expensive.

Every additional pound in weight requires more sophistication in the rocketry, more fuel, and adds thousands of pounds to the bill for the flight.

TWO TONS AT AULA "Soviet News'-which published details of the Soviet flight last week-says the craft weighed only two tons compared with the seven-ton American craft which landed on the moon. Its launching rocket was perhaps only an eighth the size of the Saturn rocket which put Apollo on the moon.

The Soviet craft left the moon's surface directly for earth, without going into Lunar orbit, as the Apollo did. This did away with any necessity for the complicated Rate of lanal. in orbit round the moon comparable results to Apollo minutes to feed a machine which carried out its operation in seconds.

Now, with the development of computers, the employers say that workers, as part of the productive process, simply cannot be allowed to work in their own way when equipment costing thousands of pounds an hour to run is in use.

Incorporated

Workers who cannot be eliminated by automation must be entirely incorporated into the computer-controlled process.

Just as with work study, the 'experts' will claim that there is no process where such a system cannot be adopted.

For example, the use of permanent radio contact systems between managements and drivers in all manner of vehicles, dockers on the container berths and building workers on the sites, is the first step in exerting an iron control over every man's Processed Eventually these systems could be directly linked to a computer so that the information the worker gives can be directly processed and working instructions issued.

In factories control is far more direct.

This is certainly the case with tele-control where automatic sensors on the machines are linked directly to a computer which registers aspect of the machines, every the machinists' working operations.

In this situation it is important to understand that telecontrol is not some isolated experiment by an individual employer.

Controlled

Faced with a severe crisis of falling profits, enormous cost of capital equipment and the build up of a trade war, the employers in every case must see to it that not only automation but also the worker is computer controlled.

The remarks by the head of GEC-Elliot Automation almost certainly indicate that attempts are about to be made to spread the tele-control system on a large scale, particularly in the engineering industry.