The sinister motives of the Healyites are well known and the proof is pretty well in.
But notice how they take a different tack to Mr Chamberlain a nobody hailing from nowhere...
Particularly this quote:
"The Common Market is the last-ditch stand of European capitalism against the social revolution."
TO MARKET TO MARKET TO BUY A FAT…
By a Special Correspondent
Workers’ Press, Tuesday, May 30, 1972
Monopoly capitalism is the real inspiration behind the Common Market, not the noble ideals of liberal Europeans. The spirit and the letter of the Treaty of Rome and the philosophy which has guided the work of the Commission and the Council of Ministers in the last 15 years are dominated by the interests of big business.
If the EEC had not offered opportunities for the ruling circles of the six countries to vastly increase their fortunes, the troublesome process of trying to ‘harmonize’ the six different nations little by little would never have been started.
The ‘harmonization’ is necessary partly to facilitate the growth of West European monopolies strong enough to challenge the best US and Japanese corporations and partly to act as a propaganda smokescreen to try and deceive the middle and working classes with ideas of a ‘new European community’ to get them to go along with the project.
HARMONY
The Six — Germany, France. Italy, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg — can never harmonize under capitalism into one nation, which is the dream of the pro-marketeer idealists, because competitive rivalry between the different finance-capital groups within the EEC will develop into bitter national hostility as soon as the difficulties of the world economic crisis really begin to bite.
As it is, little enough progress has been made towards ‘harmonization’ despite the undoubted success the Common Market countries have had in improving their trading position in the world. The EEC is still essentially what it was when it started—a customs union plus a common fund for aiding one industry: farming.
There are even doubts as to whether dismantling the tariffs between the Six was really the cause of their economic growth in the 1960s, since some grew even faster before they joined the EEC and other countries, like Japan, have grown much faster outside of any customs union.
But anyway, the Germans were happy to get their chance of political rehabilitation plus some trading advantages in return for a permanent subsidy to backward French agriculture, and the ‘European’ myth began to grow. Now Britain’s rulers have been conned into bankrolling inefficient peasant farming in return for the ‘opportunity’ to take on European industry in open competition without tariff protection.
Some UK monopolies will survive, either through merging with EEC companies or through shifting production into Europe. But many will crash, and even smaller firms will be ruined. Because of growing recession and sharper competition, the rate of bankruptcies will exceed even that of the recent Rolls-Royce, UCS, Vehicle and General period.
The ruling circles in the EEC believe that the present 15 West European car-producers, for example, will have to reduce to about five big monopolies in order to survive against the Japanese. There are too many steel companies as well. More shipyards will also have to close, and already the competition from Japan is so fierce that a cartel has been formed between all West European yards, including Britain’s, to limit further Japanese shipping sales.
Officially, the Rome Treaty aims to remove all obstacles, whether outside or inside the Market, which prevent the” free flow of goods, and the Commission in Brussels is dutifully ‘investigating’ the shipbuilding cartel in case it is an interference with free trade. But in practice the EEC will make sure its own industries are protected.
What is supposed to happen, if an EEC industry begins to decline, is that governmental investment aid can be injected to raise efficiency. What in fact is happening, in shipbuilding for example, is that straight production subsidies are being provided. This is against the Market’s philosophy, but is being justified on the grounds of ‘unfair’ Japanese competition.
Another distortion of competition which the Six have turned a blind eye to is the restrictive agreement between the major European and US steel producers, which the Americans have bullied the others into accepting.
It was as part of this monopolistic double-dealing that the Tories agreed to cut from 44 million tons capacity to 33 million tons Britain’s nationalized steel industry’s plans for expansion up to 1980. Once inside the EEC, further ‘rationalization’ seems inevitable.
But however much the ‘free-trade’ Common Market connives at this horse-trading, these international profiteers must eventually fall out with each other, partly because of the uneven development of capitalism which gives them different bargaining strengths and different ambitions, and partly because of the social pressures from below as in Britain, for example, when the going gets too rough for dockers, or miners, or shipbuilders, to tolerate any further contraction of their industries.
It is to get round such obstacles to the survival of monopoly capitalism that the Tory government has introduced its National Industrial Relations Court. Inside the EEC, there will be attempts to ‘harmonize’ the most successful methods from each country of disciplining the working class and to lend such methods the aura of ‘European’ status.
Consultative works’ councils, on the German model, which turn trade unionists into company-union men, are a certain starter. There are even plans for EEC-wide wage agreements, which would all be legally binding and would be designed to eliminate piecemeal militancy among European workers by banking on the hoped-for conservative majority to keep the rest in line. Such a system of European wage rates would also protect the established monopolies from .any potential low-wage area rivals.
This encouragement of monopolistic development, because of its alleged efficiency, will bear particularly hard on Britain with its ‘declining’ industries. Since they are not making the grade with the best. Since they are not making the grade with the best in Europe, then they should be put out of business, the Six believe. All industrial subsidies, in theory, are incompatible with the EEC’s guiding principles, and the whole range of Britain’s different financial aids to industry will be severely vetted during the first six months after entry.
Already it is certain that a lot of foreign investment, mainly American, which used to come to Britain and which has been the only safety valve in some areas such as Scotland where US electronics firms have replaced decaying older industries, will no longer come here. The EEC has established for its ‘central regions’ a limit of 20 per cent total for the various capital incentives used to draw in foreign firms. How much of Britain will fall outside of this ‘central regions’ designation and qualify for special assistance rates is not yet decided but it is likely to be much less than the 40 per cent at present qualifying for regional aid.
It was to avoid any charge by the Six of ‘interfering with competition’ that the Tory
government, despite much opposition, changed Britain’s investment allowance system from direct grants, regionally varied, to all-over free depreciation. In the eyes of the Rome Treaty, the former count as illicit aid to industry whereas the latter is merely part of Britain’s taxation system.
True, the eventual aim of the EEC is ‘harmonization’ of business taxes too, but with the normal speed of Common Market decision-making, that is still some way off.
MIGRATION
The end result of all this is bound to be bad for the UK’s ‘grey areas’. The phenomenon of the drift to the South East in Britain, which the unplanned evolution of the capitalist economy would have caused to grow even faster if it had not been deliberately checked, will now be deliberately encouraged — and on a European-wide scale. It means not just a likely movement of the steel industry to the South East, for example, to be nearer the European markets, but a movement of some industries out of Britain altogether and into the heartland of West Europe.
It is a repetition on a nationwide scale of that of driving workers into the overcrowded towns during the industrial revolution because that was where the work was.
Already over 2 million European workers have had to migrate to Germany to find jobs. The Department of Employment in London is already preparing plans to encourage people made redundant in the hard-hit areas of Scotland, Wales and the North of England, to go and look for work in Dusseldorf, Dortmund and Essen.
On top of this, the reformist measures adopted in post-war Britain of nationalizing ailing industries will be officially frowned upon once inside the EEC set-up. The threat to take away the gains already made will grow and it will become very difficult to relieve other threatened industries by similar measures in the future.
The Common Market does allow some aid to declining industries, but the national governments bear the cost and there are strict limits to what is permitted. There is a plan to eventually work out a Common Industrial Policy as a counterpart to the Common Agricultural Policy, but getting new measures adopted by the EEC governmental structure is such a painfully slow process, due to all the obstructionism, that it can be ignored for the present.
The immediate prospect is that the overwhelming proportion of the EEC budget— more than 90 per cent at present — will continue to be spent subsidizing inefficient agriculture. The French peasantry will remain an important factor in France and a right-wing government cannot remain in power without their support. The only way other inefficient or declining industries could be aided by the Community is through a huge increase in the budget. And unless there is anything in it for them, the French are unlikely to agree.
The unanimity principle still rules the Common Market governmental structure. If one country on the Council of Ministers dislikes a proposal, it cannot get through. The qualified majority rule only applies to small issues. The result is inertia. Things happen so slowly in the EEC that the best way to describe it is to say that all progress has come to a complete stop and then itemize the few exceptions.
High-technology research provides an example. In 1967, the Council of Ministers decided to overcome the technology gap between Europe and the USA by co-operating on research. A committee of experts was set up which spent the first year arguing about which fields to commence with and whether they should start at all without Britain’s participation.
Eventually, in 1969, a report went back to the Council, which then set up another committee of experts to appraise the report. Several more months passed before the report was adopted, but then another long wrangle began about which non-EEC countries should be invited to co-operate in implementing the report. Eventually 19 countries joined in the discussions. More time passed until finally on November 20, 1971, an agreement was signed.
And what emerged? The 19 nations agreed to put up between them a grand total of £8m to cover seven fields of research and to be spread over five years. This sum would have kept the five-year Concorde project going for just three weeks! And even this limited programme has not started yet because it still has to be ratified by the individual parliaments.
Just as much difficulty has been encountered in trying to harmonize regulations covering road and rail transport between the Six. One argument that has gone on for years and is still unresolved is how much petrol in a motor vehicle’s tank as it crosses a frontier should be subject to taxation at the rate applicable in the country it is entering, the point being that if a truck is allowed to fill up in a low-tax country and then ply, its trade in a higher-tax country, it is causing unfair competition to the trucks of the country it has entered.
Suggestions under discussion propose that the contents of any lorry’s petrol tank be measured at the border and a certain number of litres be allowed in tax free with extra duty to be paid on the rest
Progress has been slowest on harmonizing railway fares and regulations. Trying to shake together four privately-owned and two state-owned systems has proved beyond the EEC’s powers. They cannot agree which social costs should legitimately be borne by government subsidy and which should be discontinued as unfair interference with competition.
OBSTACLE
Other transport arrangements are less amusing. The EEC has just reached a compromise agreement after years of argument to allow 40-ton truck juggernauts onto all Common Market roads and to raise the permitted axle load to 11 tons. This will mean appreciably nosier and heavier lorries in Britain than at present. Many roads will be unable to take them.
The main obstacles to quicker progress in adapting new measures in the EEC is nationalism. It particularly hinders high-technology cooperation and fair competition in public purchasing. It is far easier for the Germans to sell an electric power station to Spain than to France. Where public-works contracts are won by ‘foreign’ firms, the agreement often requires that 75 per cent of parts and materials should be supplied locally.
American-style pork-barrel politics are influential here. An MP would be very unpopular if he allowed his national parliament to approve a lucrative public-works contract in his region going to a foreign firm rather than a local one.
The career civil servants who run the Commission in Brussels are deeply cynical about the lack of progress in building a real European community. They believe that procedures are now so badly clogged that they cannot continue in the same way much longer. They are placing a lot of hope on Britain’s entry to get things moving again, particularly on a Common Industrial Policy and reform of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, which is still a mere cipher.
The EEC has no democratic control mechanism, and its officials readily admit it. But the French have boycotted the EEC before when they have not got their own way, and they will do so again.
Generally speaking, nothing will happen inside the Common Market that does not suit the most powerful ruling circles within each country. If it does not help monopoly capitalism, then it will not take place.
COMPLAINT
For the present, however, the main battle is still with the outside world and the Common Market countries have their collective face turned against the United States and increasingly against Japan. The spread of generalized EEC preferences — to Spain, Portugal, Turkey and Greece — has infuriated the Americans, particularly, as well as the other General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade powers, against whom the trading preferences are given. But a showdown will have to wait till after the US presidential elections in November.
The list of American complaints against the Common Agricultural Policy is now enormous, almost as long, the Commission says acidly, as the EEC’s list of complaints against US trade restrictions.
Similar complaints are made against high Japanese tariffs and limited import quotas, but in the negotiations for a treaty with Japan, it is the Common Market countries who are somewhat nervously insisting on escape clauses, against the Japanese wishes, which allow imports to be cut off in a crisis.
The EEC countries are also trying to get a general agreement with Japan on ‘orderly marketing’, in other words to get the Japanese to ease up on their colossal export drive. The proposals have not been well received in the East. The Six are fearful that with the restrictions now being imposed by America on imports from Japan, the Japanese will redirect their trade offensive to Europe.
The ball-bearing industry, for example, is already coming under enormous pressure. The European ‘community’ is beginning to creak at the joints.
Meanwhile, American corporations continue to add to their already colossal investments in Europe and continue to exact £400m a year net profits by way of tribute. It conveniently covers their trade deficit with Europe of £400m a year. But the EEC’s exasperation at being off-loaded with billions of US dollars of dubious exchange value is mounting.
Any collapse of the US economy will deal a severe blow to the Common Market.
The Common Market is the last-ditch stand of European capitalism against the social revolution. If it is allowed to continue in being it can lead only to the establishment of fascism throughout the whole of western Europe. Consequently the struggle for the building of revolutionary parties under the banner of the Fourth International to establish the Socialist United States of Europe through the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism is the urgent task of the hour.