USSR still in grip of capitalist market

The National Coal Board have not found a successful method of combating the large quantities of dust associated with power loading and cutting.

Before the full effects of the mechanisation drive can be known, the latest figures show that already one in 12 miners examined has some degree of pneumonicosis with over 5 per cent suffering from the disease in some advanced form.

Labour

Increased mechanisation has also brought serious problems for young miners.

This is true in both • the declining areas and the relatively prosperous areas such as the Midlands and Yorkshire. Mechanisation has brought with it an older labour force.

In the years 1958-62 while total labour employed in the Tis presual of fell in time Soviet Union and East European countries because it still retains a dominant position in the world market.

Stalin's theory that there are two separate world markets has been quietly forgotten by Soviet theorists.

When an article appeared under Khrushchev's name setting out the Soviet position on international economic relations in last September's 'World Marxist Review' there was no mention of it and the policy laid down was based on different conceptions.

In this field, as in all others, the bureaucracy has to formulate its needs in Marxist terms and justify them as being in the interests of the working class.

ANALYSE

It is by analysing the needs, not by examining the texts, that the real situation can be estimated.

Soviet leaders have shown they are more than anxious to increase trade with the capitalist countries. Politicians and businessmen bent on trade are frequent visitors to Moscow. Russian trade missions are meanwhile busy round the world.

A stock Soviet proposal is for an international trade conference with the capitalist states to set up a permanent trade organisation.

Soviet representatives at United Nations commissions tirelessly put forward such suggestions and also the proposal for joint aid to underdeveloped countries.

How badly does the Soviet Union need trade with the capitalist countries?

Judged by bare statistics, trade with foreign countries is not important —the vast size and varied resources of the USSR account for this.

TRADE

In fact foreign trade only accounts for about 3 per cent of total output against 25 per cent for Britain and 14 per cent for France.

Comprised in this small percentage, however, are commodities of great economic importance.

Moreover, the rapid growth of the Soviet economy has been accompanied by a big increase in the volume of foreign trade, though its weight in the economy has remained about the same. This places the USSR in sixth place as a world trading nation.

Soviet trade has to be conducted on the basis of bilateral bargains with foreign governments extending over a term of years. This need flows from the existence of a planned economy.

But political hostility from some governments restricts trade. In particular the USA maintains a list of prohibited exports to Russia and East Europe and tries on her allies.

An important instance last year came with the embargo on the export of large-diameter steel pipes from West Germany and Japan.

These pipes, required for the construction of pipe lines, were held to be strategic goods. It was obvious that the Americans hoped by preventing their export to hold back the development of the Soviet economy.

Whatever they say to the contrary, it seems evident that Soviet leaders are worried by such actions.

Appeals are made to the self-interest of Western capitalists in order to try to break through American trade restrictions.

Irade plays a prominent part in the "peaceful co-existence' propaganda.

RELATIONS

The bureaucracy seeks normal economic relations and expanding trade with the capitalist countries in order to facilitate its tasks at home.

It cannot carry the heavy burden of investment still needed to 'catch up'—especially with the technologically more advanced industries-and satisfy the demand for more and better consumer goods without severe strains at home.

The development of trade becomes a substitute for that appeal to the world working class which the Soviet leaders are unable to make.

What this means, in short, is that the Soviet Union has not broken out of the grip of the capitalist world market; encirclement still persists.

The existence of the Peoples' Democracies scarcely changes this pioture. It only means more problems. Under Stalin little effort was made to coordinate the economies of the East European countries; instead, each was encouraged to build up its national economy on the same lines as the Soviet Union.

CO-ORDINATION

The Council for Economic Mutual Assistance, sometimes known as COMECON, showed little signs of life until after the events of 1956.

Even today, despite Khrushchev's talk about the socialist international division of labour', co-ordination falls far short of the possibilities. It was only last year, for example, that an international bank was set up for the area as a whole.

Because the East European countries are small and tend to be specialised, they have much more need than the Soviet Union both for imports and exports.

In particular they need raw materials which, in important cases, can only come, under present conditions, from the Soviet Union.

Since 1956 the governments of these countries have been more sensitive to questions of price relationships between what they buy from, and what they sell to, the Soviet Union. Closer co-operation between the eight members of COMECON is impeded by mutual suspicion.

Co-ordination of plans on an area-wide basis is still far from being a reality and the biggest advantages so far have gone to the Soviet Union.

The announced aim of Khrushchev, to build the socialist world economy as a single entity' is still far from achievement.

It is admitted that planning on a COMECON scale is in its infancy. Member countries still depend upon the capitalist world market and cannot solve their problems in isolation from it.

DENOUNCE

Khrushchev proposes favourable terms for such trade while denouncing regional economic groupings like the Common Market.

He takes as his beginning a situation in which, for a protracted period, the 'socialist camp' and the capitalist world will exist side-by-side.

'Socialism' in a number of countries, even when grouped together in a body ake COMECON, is no less reactionary than the Stalinist policy of 'socialism in one country from which it stems.

Guerrilla Warfare March 4 WORKERS of the Florida East Coast Railway Company Three