FRENCH CAPITALISTS’ ATTACK

ECONOMIC ‘PRESSURES LIE BEHIND TuE French capitalist class has never been among the strongest in the Western world. It belatedly developed industries which, even despite spectacular exceptions, remain technically backward.

France lacks coal.and iron, and even today nearly half of her. people live by agriculture, in conditions which exclude them as both producers and consumers from many of the benefits of twentieth century civilization.

Protectionism and price-rings have for a century held the prices and costs of French manufactures well above competitive world prices. ;

Cannot maintain independent place French capitalism cannot maintain an independent place, even a modest one, in the world market without the aid of cheap colonial raw materials, without interest on foreign loans and without cheap labour in the factory and on the peasant’s plot.

After Versailles they were too weak to make good their claim to lead Europe. By the 1930s their decline had become pathetically obvious.

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The Resistance and the Liberation raised the hopes of the ; workers and peasants, hopes which the capitalists cannot possibly satisfy, for the old investments are lost, the colonial revolution is advancing and more efficient powers dominate the export markets.

- oy -Yet since 1946 a substantial industrial boom has remarkably boosted national production—by nearly 10 per cent. a year. French. consumption of industrial and consumer goods has risen considerably, and far outstripped what the French capitalists can hope to pay for.

Loans, inflation, arms expenditure Three things have made the boom possible, and each of.

these has, at the same time, prepared for crisis.

-First, very heavy American loans and: aid have paid for the new factory building, which has maintained full employment.

Secondly, inflation, while it systematically undid the people’s efforts to raise their living standards, enriched the industrialists and fed investment. :

Thirdly, the transiently high world prices of French colonial rigorous action will be necessary.’

In 1957 private investment continued to soar, while State spending and mass consumption were checked. But no government which depended on votes in the National Assembly could apply the surgery drastically enough.

‘Credit squeeze’ was ignored The capitalist class would not pay, and the workers and peasants would not give up their demands, however refracted through the parliamentary prism.

The Treasury tried to check the rise in imports and in -inflation by a ‘credit squeeze’. This the banks and industrialists simply ignored. , What could be cut: the Algerian war budget or the consump- ' . _tion of the people? For the capitalists would not agree to cut either their own consumption or their investment. Lo And already the rising cost of living had in 1957 left earnings behind. The authorities expected considerable wage demands this year.

The French capitalists, therefore, have no alternative: to attacking the trade unions and working class. Why does their attack open with political manoeuvres rather than with industrial struggle, as in Britain?

(To be continued)

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