Capitalist antagonisms sharpen Common Market talks

Motor workers from the Pirelli factory ONCE AGAIN the Common Market countries are beginning the lengthy process of cut-throat bargaining over Britain's application for entry into the European Economic Community (EEC).

The foreign ministers of the Six are attempting to prepare a report by February 1970 on the possibility of their making a joint stand on Wilson's request.

The implications and forces making for Britain's entry stem, above all, from the deepening crisis of world capitalism.

The application is being made at a time when relations between nation states are being continually disrupted and, more especially, when the antagonism between the US and Europe is becoming ever sharper.

Just as in the period following 1929, the Us Is seeking to resolve its own problems at the expense of Europe.

Nixon is pursuing a deflationary policy through the restriction of the US domestic money supply.

To circumvent this the US corporations have drawn heavily on the Euro-dollar market which in turn has caused starvation of capital and record interest rates in Europe.

Simultaneously with the growing conflict with the Us, the deep-going movement of the working class has upset all the calculations of European capital and has already exploded many of the agreements reached in the EEC.

The strength and combativity of the working class within the individual EEC countries strictly limits the room for manoeuvre of each ruling class.

The analysis of these changing relations between nation states is an integral part of the struggle for Marxism.

It is necessary to combat all reformist illusions that some new capitalist equilibrium could be established by the re-aligning of nations in such an organization as the Common Market.

The reality is quite the opposite.

The historical weakening of European capital is the driving force for closer economic integration.

Economic decline

As Tom Kemp wrote in the The wars of the 20th century. he revolutions in Russia anc eastern Europe, the challenge of the working class and the decline of Europe not least in relation to the US have convinced important secthe bourgeoisie that it could not survive without ide ANTWERPSE automobielarbi zin solidais met hun colf mę l van GENK Antwerp vehicle builders strike in solidarity with their brothers at Genk in 1968.

Richard Johnson, Jill Bennett, Terri Stevel Is and Wilfrid Brambell about Rembrandt's life. 30.40 News Summary Weather. closer European union' be convinced of this need is one thing. To carry it through is quite another, as even bourgeois commentators have long been forced to admit.

Twelve years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, virtually no integration has been achieved - in economic policy, monetary systems, banking, the social services and company law.

The negotiations are beginning to smell slightly.

The EEC's whole history is of the hardest bargaining for short-term national interests.

A brief outline of the crisis of the common agriculture policy shows that there can be no question of the EEC being able to overcome the straitjacket of the nation state.

In August the common price policy had to be suspended for two years.

For after the franc devaluation the French government was unable to readjust agricultural as the EEC require prices because of the enormous working-class resistance to any further rise in the cost of living.

Every time a European currency changes in value, the intricate bargaining over EEC farm prices has to be begun again from scratch.

The West German Farmers' Association, partially realizing the basis of the problem, called for the abandoning of common farm prices until a European currency had been established.

But the world monetary crisis has made such ideas Utopian.

Underlying the difficulties of establishing common prices is the root of the crisis: overproduction.

EEC vice - president Dr Sicco Mansholt estimates that to overcome it five million workers and peasants would have to leave the land by 1980 FRANCE and 12 million acres be unfarmed As a 'Financial Times' article (May 15) put it:

'Surpluses are rising fast, and the cost of disposing of them or even storing them [now nearly 3,000 million dollars a year] is well beyond the capacity of the Common Agricultural Fund to pay.

'The alternative to Mansholt would certainly be the disintegration of the Common Agricultural Policy into a series of national arrangements under which each member country would be forced to bear the responsibility for both the high cost of food on the home market, plus the subsidies needed to deal with the surpluses.' Big defeats To implement Mansholt's plan big defeats would have to be inflicted on sections of the working class and small tarmers.

The second "alternative'-a return to economic nationalism—also poses similar attacks.

This crisis in agriculture alone indicates that the EEC— essentially a customs union— cannot solve its problems except by the smashing of the working class.

It cannot overcome the contradiction which lies in the conflict of the developing productive forces with capitalist mode of production and its political expression in the nation state.

This conflict can only be resolved by the working class taking power and establishing the United Socialist States of Europe.

The chaotic development of the container transport industry poses this very clearly.

As long as these techniques Farmers battle with the police in recent clashes in the South over the lowering of government subsidies.

are under the control of private ownership, their introduction brings unemployment and vicious speed-up.

Already two container shipping consortiums for the Europe - Australia run have been formed this yearScanaustral and Australia Container Service.

Each has sufficient capacity to carry the whole cargo trade on that route!

The life-and-death struggle between monopolies of this type poses the working class, led by the revolutionary party, with the task of taking the power in the coming period or being crushed.

The EEC's customs union facilitates the employers' attempts to play one section of European workers off against another in such struggles.

Following the threat by Overseas Containers Ltd to transfer its Tilbury container terminal to the continent, Dutch and Belgian dockers' union leaders announced that their members would resist any permanent transfer.

The decision was absolutely correct, but on its own completely inadequate.

This move, and others like it in the car industry, are being used to foster illusions that the working class through militant trade unionism-can contain and control the sharpening contradictions of capitalism.

This acts as a dangerous diversion from revolutionary Finally, it should be noted that Wilson's application for entry is being seen by the EEC as a way of resolving some of its own problems.

The EEC is looking to this country to absorb its surpluses of farm produce at prices determined by the EEC itself.

Either the guaranteed EEC farm prices would have to be paid, which in many cases are nearly double those on the world market, or levies would have to be paid on the much cheaper food imports from the Commonwealth to bring the import prices up to the EEC level.

To give just one example, Britain consumes over 400,000 tons of imported butter at an average wholesale price of £300 per ton as against the corresponding EEC price of £700.

The extra cost to the working class for butter alone works out to over £190 million.

The significance of these calculations lies, of course, not in their details, but in • the political implications.

For any government-Labour or Tory-to attempt to impose this colossal burden on the working class would, on its own, considerably deepen the. class struggle in Britain.

If the negotiations over Britain's entry go on for a long time, it is because the British ruling class hesitates before taking on this task. GESTETNER, the office equipment monopoly which manufactures duplicators, is now in the process of implementing a new productivity deal in its Tottenham factory.