RUMANIA MOVES FOR MONETARY PACT

The adhesion of Rumania to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank is an important milestone in the economic relations between the East European Stalinists and im. perialism.

The Rumanian application has been welcomed by all the big capitalist countries which dominate the Bank and the Fund. Rumania is thus certain of joining Yugoslavia in IMF membership ... with all that this implies.

The Stalinist leaders of other East European countries, notably Poland and Hungary. are reported to be considering similar action, though they have so far been restrained by the Soviet Union.

By contrast with these two countries Rumania has tended to follow a more 'independent' course over the last few years, though it remains a member of the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), the Soviet-dominated trade bloc. STATUS Rumania's leader Nicolae Ceausescu has tried to keep his distance from th e Soviet Union by maintainin ; cordial relations with China and by leaning towards the Common Market, with which enjoys preferential trading status.

This allows the bureaucracy to free itself to some extent from the impositions of the Soviet Stalinists • who have always subordinated the East European states to their bureaucratic requirements.

In the past this has created big problems for the East European economies, where certain industries have been developed disproportionately to provide for Soviet requirements while others have been artificially held back.

Ceausescu and his fellowbureaucrats, like their counterparts all over Eastern Europe, subscribe to the basic Stalinist thesis that 'socialism' can be built within the confines of a single country.

In reality this is a reactionary Utopia: cut off from the centres of industrial development in the metropolitan capitalist countries, the states of Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, cannot overcome the inherited backwardness of both industry and agriculture without the working class in the west taking power.

The 'theory' of socialism in a single country has become a cover for the pursuit of its own interests by a bureaucratic clique, which has usurped control of the workers' state apparatus and disfranchised the working class of political power.

Acting in their own bureaucratic interests, the Stalinists constantly endanger the gains of the working class and their counter-revolutionary policies threaten the very existence of the workers' states as such.

Rumania's lack of a developed industrial base is compounded by the mismanagement of the bureaucracy, which is unable to call into play the workers' independent capacity for struggle.

So in order to secure the illusion of a greater degree of independence from Moscow, the Rumanian Stalinists are forced to make major concessions to the imperialists. Joining the World Bank and the IMF is one of these.

The Bank and the Fund were founded at the Bretton Woods international monetary conference of 1944. The Soviet Union did not take part. The IMF was set up to regulate the capitalist monetary system established at that conference on the basis of the dollar's link with gold. CONVERTIBLE Member-countries contributed money to a central treasury to assist countries with balance-of-payments difficulties and at the same time they agreed to abide by IMF rules in trading and exchange These rules include as a prime requirement that countries' currencies must be made convertible one with another and that the membercountries must try as far as possible to maintain their currencies within established parity limits.

This meant that in order, for example, to rectify balanceof-payments deficits, IMF members were expected to curb consumption at home in order to reduce imports and bring their currencies in line, by such measures as wagefreezing, increased taxation or credit squeeze.

The primary purpose these rules was to maintain supremacy of the dollar as symbol of US imperialism over the capitalist world and Top: Modern petro-chemical plant, though most industry lags behind the West. Above: Ceausescu to open up all the memberstates to the penetration of imperialist trade and capital.

In the so-called developing countries this was : backed up by the activity of the World Bank which became one of the main agencies for inflicting 'aid' on the colonies and semi-colonies of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The Bank, currently headed Vietnam aide of ex-President Johnson, channels investment under various disguises from the metropolitan countries into the underdeveloped countries, which, since World War II have acquired a crippling burden of debts.

The Rumanian Stalinists hope to acquire 'aid' in the form of low-interest loans from the Bank-the burden of interest payments to be borne by the Rumanian working class. CONTINUED TOMORROW

Press, Wednesday September 27, 1972