Gonzalez, Spain • public spending • planning agreements • public and cooperative enterprise The project includes models for joint reflation of the main economies These have been developed economists Cambridge, Bremen, Modena and Madrid. show that it is possible to create 10 to 20 million new iobs over the next ten vears the European economies pursue policies of "better-my-neighbour' refla. tion rather than the present trend of 'beggar-my-neighbour' deflation.
The economic arguments are essentially simple. One country's imports are another country's exports. Thus if each country cuts domestic reduce import demand and improve its balance of payments it will deepen the vicious circle of deflation in international production and trade.
Inversely, if the main European and OECD economies increased spending and import demand they would thereby increase employment, income and international trade. The vicious circle of slump would be reversed and the conditions for a virtuous circle of recovery established.
Restructuring and Redistribution However — tor reasons ditterent from those claimed by monetarists -cannot simply spend our way out of the CrISIS Even high cumulative reflation will not of itself the 1990's. Therefore the European Recovery Project stresses that reflation must be accompanied by policies tor restructuring and redistribution.
Restructuring cannot be conceived simply as rationalisation since through technical progress this could or would increase unemplovment. Nor can rellation be conceived only in Keynesian terms of increasing demand. policies be pursued redistribution which is: • structural — between firms and secLUIS • social between different social groups and classes • spatial between countries and regions Restructuring of investment between public and private sectors, and of employment between industry and services is both feasible and necessary to gain a balanced recovery. tion of income and expenditure between firms industries, groups and classes and regions and areas of the European economy will facilitate recovery.
Joint Planning Agreements When 140 companies now account for one third of the output of the EEC companies, joint policies for accountability of multinational firms are in-.
Papandreou, Greece
creasingly agreements or economic Greece, OECD.
by Paris, ana the They including Finland, 'spending to complementary to joint recovery of the South.
ject has the EEC but also for EFTA, UN Economic we simply for sustained to the wider world economy.
unemployment by Ing Wlal the promoted Western Europe.
Also, Wine Both with pean recovery, US and OECD countries. should and socialist of international institutions. the Scandinaviar parties and unions.
social for both and Society.
socialist foreign policy.
• OUT OF. CRISIS:
European Recovery, Spokesman feasible. Planning Agreed Development Plans on the lines of Labour's alternative economic strategy either have been or are being adopted in France, Spain and other countries, have a key role to play in joint accountability of multinationals extension of Joint recovery implies progressive action by countries in and out of the sweach, Norway, Austria, Spain and Portugal as well as the EEC countries, and that Britain outside the EEC can act with both member and non-member governRecovery does not exclusively depend on major institutional reforms of the IMF or other international agencies and OPEC countries have a vested interest in supporting governments pursuing recovery programmes since this would increase the price of oil.
The wuropean recovery project is the global reforms demanded bv the Brandt Commission but focusses on the recovery of the North as the precondition for effective Thus the European Recovery Proimplications 1101 only for OECD, Commission Europe and other UN agencies as well as for the IMF and World Bank. In effect the project is European rather than Community Europe, projects a dialogue which also extends membership or non-membership or the , does focus European Communities, simply stresscrisis affects coloni western Europe as a whole and that policies to get out of the crisis should be together by member ana non-member countries of the EEC in stressing that Europe need not depend on the United States and the rest of OECD its case for Eurooffers the prospect of major jobs and income creation in the be clear because rather than despite the new austerity measures in France, this new recovery project nas wide support in the labour movement Western curode. Il aerves nrom a process convergence in thinking and policy in the main parties and institutions of the It also has sufficient support for an on-going process of widened pressure and impact in a range Originally sponsored by the French Minister for Research and Industry, the project had major commitment for follow up from Andreas Papandreou in Greece, from the Spanish Socialist Party PSOE and from representatives of Lauce framework provides a means by which the potential for transforming the crisis can be promoted by EEC and non EEC It can make real our claim that we would leave the EEC to join a wider Europe based on an international AES Economic an Alternative Strategy and an Alternative Economy turn, we should not miss its potential for progress towards a A Project for is published by Russell House, Gamble Street, Nottingham NG7 4ET.
300260220H 1801404 1780 ource: N.D. Kone tieft "Long Waves In Ec AFTER three years of deep recession the view of the likely economic developments of the few years.
turned up An economic analyses of situation mentator rinancial idea powerless change, long wave (25 N.D.
dratieff, in 1920s...
dratieff looks plausible dratieff cycle.' the best established of all its features — even Brittan admits it. The short term business cycle has been observed since the very beginning of capitalism. It had roughly a seven year up and down duration prior to the Second World War and has since shortened to roughly five.
Thus for example, to take only the last twenty five years, 1967, 1972, 1975, and 1981 were the bottom years of recessions and 1960, 1964, 1969; 1973, and 1979 were the peak years of booms. The short term economic recoverv we are now enter. ing into in 1983 is therefore no surprise or great hope for the future -indeed it is somewhat overdue nomic Life." Reprinted in Lloyds Bank Reviaw.July 1978 But British and that these short found 'long waves' of development.
next studied by tion, declining twenty five quarter. starting in Britain, the first capitalist country, warus.
Interval
surprising in there was a remain 1945-75, 1849-73 etc.
ness. He writes, limes.
World War...
recurs had more Wing development KonKUrODe Kontoday the world.
minism', E.P.
duct of capitalist development. Long Second 1958, 1963, reaching.
anne recoveries tional Business 'anaemic' '90 makes the much more serious, and explains the 'anaemic' character of the recovery, is cycles superimposed on much more proContrary to what Samuel Brittan claims these long periods of developKondratieff and others, are not an 'artificial' construclimited to the 1930s and the 1980s, but a clear pattern of development inherent in the nature of the capitalist system itself. The roughly year expanding, then declining cycles can be clearly seen major from 1700 onSamuel Brittan downturn 1896-1914 boom from typical ding the Upturn of-capitalist mentioned was downturn Assam. late 1970s and early 1980s are right on schedule. They are not 'abnormal', or the result of a new force called 'exterThompson has claimed, but a perfectly lawful probable precedent, Thus during a long economic development. upswing, such as from the end of the recovery War to 1975, cyclical slumps are brief and shallow expansions long ánd far sperity. • In a long downswing, such as we are at present in. the depressions are progressively longer and deeper . USt InternaWeek's term, What would turn the situation 1900 around for capitalism and launch a period of expansion? Brittan already gives the answer. The most mechanism of capitalist recovery is war. Taking the First and Second World Wars together, and ad.
intervening conflicts, the twenty five year post-war capitalist boom was purchased at the cost of approximately 100 million dead - and even then it should be remembered it never extended its benefits to hun. dreds of millions in the semi-colonial But now the 25 years is up and capitalism requires another similar bloodletting for a new upturn. , This would not be irrational in capitalisi terms, but creates a new increase in exploitation and redivision of the world market. The reduction of real wages during the 1979-82 slump, the tens of millions of unemployed in the ad. vanced capitalist countries, the wars in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Middle East, horrors such as Nigeria, and the famine in Ethiopis are only the tiniest beginnings of what capitalism would require this time around for a new upturn.
Whether capitalist accumulation could be relaunched after a nuclear which is one of the most prohistorical of unlikely.
Despite Samuel Brittan's protesta. tions capitalism does have a logical After the 'anaemic ' will come a new downturn in the 1980s which will make Thatcherism look like days of halcyon proPerhaps as Samuel Brittan gets & considerably larger salary for writing nis column tuan t oo mine ne woud like to make a large bet on it. Socialst Action would find it useful to have some spare money for what is going to Socialist Action 15 April 1983
ACTION Socialist Socialist Action 15 April 1983
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world capitalist economies are turning upwards again. JOHN ROSS looks at one
Kondratieff's Diagram England