Profits and poverty: two opposing

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"THE REASON why the majority of the population of the world endure poverty, hard labour, cultural deprivation and in hundreds of millions of cases chronic hunger, disease and premature death, is not that the earth is short of productive resources. Nor is it that the forces of production (the knowledge, skills and material means of production like machines) have not yet been developed enough to meet human needs. Th reason is the exploitative way in which the world's production takes place and the staggeringly unequal way in which the IF you want to know about what has been going on in the world economy, then this is the book for you. Bob Sutcliffe condenses his wide ranging but intensive knowledge of the world economy into a short and readable three chapters. While his analysis would not always be accepted by all socialists he is usually scrupulous about pointing out where his own views are different from those of others.

If you want to know what to do about them it is not much use. The last two chapters of the book are devoted, like the Ministry of Circumlocation in Dicken's Little Dorritt to how not to do it. Chapter 4 tells us how Thatcher and Reagan are failing to do it. Chapter 5 tells us how advocates of the Alternative Economic Strategy will fail to do it.

In the last three sections of Chapter 5 when' he starts to tell the reader how he might go forward, the focus remains negative. We read that what we need is an anti-capitalist alliance against militarism, racism, sexism, oppression of gays, lesbians etc. He tells us little about what is to unite Tom Ramsborough is a supporter and advocate of the Alternative Economic Strategy. He takes issue with Bob Sutcliffe's criticisms of the AES.

this alliance apart from its largely imperceived common enemy.

Most of this review will be devoted to an appraisal of the criticism of the Alternative Economic Strategy. But there is one point in the descriptive chapters which will be confusing to British readers.

When describing the collapse of production and employment in the 1980s, Bob fails to point out the uniqueness of the British experience: Output has hardly fallen in any industrial country since 1979 except the UK where it has fallen 5% in spite of a rise in North Sea Oil production.

Similarly the number of jobs has increased in most industrial countries. It has fallen slightly (about 1%) in Germany and France (before Mitterrand). In Britain one in fourteen jobs has disappeared since 1979. It important that these facts are clearly understood by those who would combat the Thatcherite myth that it is the world recession which is responsible for economic collapse in this country.

To some extent Bob adopts this perspective in order to play down the role of Government policy in the crisis. In terms of his argument this is unnecessary.

As he argues clearly one of the ways in which the profitability crisis affects output is through inducing Governments to adopt restrictive policies. Given that the profitability crisis in the UK has particularly taken the form of a fall in the rate of exploitation, one would expect state reaction to be severe.

The early parts of Chapter 5 are devoted to criticisms of the AES. It is castigated as nationalIstic, retormist, not socialist, insensitive to the needs of women, centralist, hostile OI negligent to the third world. In addition it contains many detailed criticisms.

Some of the points are useful alliance needs a coherent economic programme. He implies that it may look a bit like the AES. His main point is that an economic programme is not enough by itself. Few advocates of the AES would disagree.

It seems that it would be more in keeping with the book's programme of a non-sectarian alliance if it were to adopt a position of critical support for the AES rather than his currently negative stance.

I must also correct some of his erroneous criticism of the AES. The most serious is the charge of nationalism.

The AES is neither a plan for exporting unemployment, nor is it a plan which can only be successfully adopted by one country at a time. Import controls by themselves - as adopted by the US for example - do export unemployment. But adopted as part of a general strategy to expand output and imports at the same time will increase employment both in the original country and in the countries with which it trades.

If every industrial country adopted an AES, this would achieve the i improvement in employment more easily. It would also, incidentally achieve great benefits for third world countries.

He incidentally conflates together import controls and exchange controls. Controls on the exchange of money are a fairly general capitalist practice. world's products are distributed" Britain is almost uníque abandoned them.

The accusation of centralism in the advocacy of planning in the AES is possibly relevant to some versions of the AES. Recent developments, and in particular the integration of planning and industrial democracy in Labour Party policy have moved beyond this stage. This may not be the intention of those framing the policy, but this integration could develop as a political dynamic of its own in creating demands for greater measures of workers' control.

Recent versions of the AES have shown a much greater response to feminist criticism also versions of nearly all left strategies are open to a similar change.

The acceptance of Thatcherite arguments on the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement are surprising. Even the most devoted monetarists have failed to show any evidence of a link between Government borrowing or public spending and inflation.

Many of the points the book makes on nationalisation, the shorter working week, and price controls, are important, and should be taken seriously by advocates of these elements of the AES.

It would be sad if by his generally hostile tone Bob prevented believers in the AES from taking him seriously and believers in him from taking the AES seriously.

All IN crisply-written pages, Bob Sutcliffe describes a world of hunger and of plenty, of grinding misery and of lavish waste.

This inequality continued, and indeed got worse, in 20 years of boom in the '50s and '60s - a period when wealth and new inventions increased faster than ever before in world history.

That boom also greatly increased the international integration of capitalist economies. World trade grew by 8.6 per cent per year between 1950 and 1970, and of that trade something between 25 and 40 per cent is 'transfers' between different branches of the giant multinationals which increasingly dominate capitalism.

Trading in foreign

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WE WANT NO LIVING WAGE CUTS