REFORMIST ADDICTED TO KEYNES

'How Quickly is Capitalism Dying?' asks last week's "Tribune' in what it proclaims as 'the first in a unique dialogue between socialist economists on the future of the capitalist system'.

The first contributor, Michael Barratt Brown, does not even agree with the way in which the question is posed. 'I do not see capitalism as an old man dying— Either fast or slowly he opines, as a system of production which is very much alive. DESTRUCTION It is true that he adds that it can no longer contain the forces that has generated and is increasingly turning those forces towards man's destruction'. But if that does not mean that this is an expression crisis and decline which could well be described as a mark of senility, then words have no meaning.

Far from being alive and well, Has Dr Balogh forgotten that capitalism is a system which has long outlived its historical usefulness. It entered, at the time of days of 'full employment' under the First World War, an epoch of wars and revolutions, the epoch that the system is plunging into same time, she which of the prosame time, conditions under letarian revolution.

As befits a revisionist economist, Barratt Brown writes about appeared were very unusual and capitalism without mentioning represented more than a cyclical the labour theory of value phenomenon. Those conditions (which he presumably thinks is were in fact linked with the out-moded), the exploitation of increased power of the working the working class or the class class as a social force, and not struggle. He sees the problems of merely a reflex of 'full employ- capitalism as being essentially technical, and thus leaves aş an Fear of the working class, i.e., open question the possibility that of revolution, led to so-called it can find some way over'full employment policies' being come the ailments which he adopted, very reluctantly, by the admits afflicts it. ruling class after 1945. Dr Balogh He fails to examine capitalism and his friends in the Oxford is a world system, in the epoci Institute of Statistics did not f imperialism where it become La fetter on the development of course of events as they maj he productive forces and can iccurately be described as senil much as can insular Englishman nuca who thinks that British capitalism may be given a new lease of life by laws passed in parliament. THREAT political conditions under which capitalism able to survive two imperialist wars and the world economic depression the 1930s. This would the role of Stalinism and reformSTOOL in betraying the working let inationary drive mer class and creating conditions omve salvaging a system whose con 1945, made madads agreement, as tinuance is a threat to humanity.

What he is saying is that capitalism has not collapsed and results The orear-uo of the he does not believe it will—it Bretton Woods arrangements after all, 'very much alive'.

now visible all over the does not sCC the scope and world and can be seen in un- venton one sak and up et nature of the employment statistics in every vention the state and by Like many others, Balogh is called Keynesian policies of the concerned with finding a recipe past 25 years. for saving capitalism, once again He is' unwilling to admit that with the help of a right-wing these policies are now no longer able to overcome the contradic.

He proposes tax reform, an tions of capitalism (a phrase he extension pubtenership, carefully avoids using).

Barratt Brown's reformist workers' participation in assumptions prevent him from decision-making and profits'. All making scientific analysis of good 'left' stuff, but all to be capitalism. He writes like a pett done within the framework of bourgeois, and essentially British reformist who is trying to avoid Thing kind ofer oge working accepting any responsibility for nothing offer The working overthrowing capitalism class. And, modest as it is, when If future contributions to this Balogh was advising Harold 'Tribune' series succeed in mainWilson in the last Labour gov- taining will ernment, it was not even prove, rate, one attempted. Dr Balogh, who the bankruptcy of these reformis received a life peerage for his economists, themselves surprised efforts, should indulge in a little which they had become adited into crisis by the self-criticism and even begin to teach himself some political during the boom Friend Marker an open diplomatic rupture be-