[With 1½ million on the dole and 9.4%…]

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With 1½ million on the dole and 9.4% inflation expecter 1 for 1978, French cap italism is undergoing similar problems those of Britain.

Indeed in one key respect the crisis is more acute in France since estimates suggest a balance of payments deficit of 1.2 billion francs for this year.

And the public sector industries are expected to turn in a colossal 27 billion franc deficit.

This has prompted the newly re-elected bourgeois administration to draw up savage austerity measures designed to cut back the deficit to 15 billion francs next year.

Increased taxes

Included in this package are increased taxes on petrol, cigarettes, and alcohol as well as increased income tax.

But taxes on small businesses will be cut, along with cosmetic cuts in taxes on rents and on the incomes of the elderly and disabled.

Main priorities of the slimmed down government spending programme are the armed forces, the police, and unemployment.

Spending on the armed forces will go up by staggering 24 .6%-to Yet more blood was shed last week on to the complex mosaic of Middle East politics with the bombardment of the strongholds account for public spending!

Spending on the unemployed is to go up by 44%, increasing dole money to 40 francs a week by December and pumping more cash into cover-up schemes to conceal the real size of the dole queues.

Bankruptcy

The amount of money allocated to public works will, however, go down in real terms if inflation rises as predicted by 7.9%:

But the response of the unions to these reactionary budget proposals has illusarea of Eastern Beirut which they operated initially as an independent state. (It was a de facto UDI of the sort that might be seen from Rhodesian white fascists or Ulster reactionary French President Giscard trated yet again the bankruptcy of leadership confronting the French working class.

The nearest to a militant statement came from the Stalinist-led CGT which complained that the budget "lacks conviction" and that workers were being made to pay for the crisis.

One sector in which they are being made to pay most severely is in the steel industry, where all the main manufacturing groups are currently running up huge losses.

Chiers-Chatillon, with a workforce of 11,000, made a massive 644 million franc SP leader Mitterand loss in 1977.

Sacilior-Solliac, which is the second largest steel corporation and employs 40,000 workers, lost 2 billion francs in 1977.

Major shareholder

And the biggest of the steel firms, Usinor, with 37,000 workers, also lost a thumping 2 billion francs last year and wants to cut its workforce back to 30,000.

Over 9,000 steel jobs have already been cut back with full agreement from reformist and Stalinist union leaders.

Now the government has intervened in an effort to stave off bankruptcy of these monopolies, taking over 15% of the shares, and getting the nationalised banks and credit companies to take over another 35%.

This will place the government in the position of major shareholder in these private firms, with the task of conducting a massive rationalisation of the 31,000 jobs will be lost in steelmaking between now and 1983 if the collaborationist course of the union leadership is not reversed.

Similar attacks are lining up in the • ship-repair One major employer, Terrin, is closing down, though parts of the group are to be taken over with government assistance.

In a pathetic attempt to avoid a fight against these closures the socialist mayor of Marseille put forward a plan for the city to take over the doomed yards and search for companies to run them.

Marseille workers however, took a more direct route, and went out on strike.

Communist Party leaders have opposed the mayor's plan-but all they had to propose in its place was further discussions in an effort to save jobs.

Union leaders last week attempted to persuade the strikers to return to work in order to create a good impression with the government, customers and potential employers.

Election defeats

But they cannot conceal the fact that • large-scale sackings are coming in the industry with the tacit or even open approval of the union bureaucracy.

In the public sector the austerity programme has led to school closures, longer hours for teachers and pay French workers on the march 2-hour strike and a demonstration to the railway station.

When the police banned the march, even this puny action was called off!

Meanwhile top union leaders spend days on end in meetings with government ministers who offer them no more than further meetings.

Yet while Socialist and Communist party leaders continue to bicker over their split on the Common Programme of their popular frontist 'Union of the Left' the working class continues to show its readiness to fight.

Teachers have been involved in strikes against increases in productivity and demanding more teachers be taken on.

A school in Paris was occupied to prevent its closure and reopened after only two hours of occupation!

And after a two-year factory occupation by 27 workers in defence of jobs they have now been offered alternative work.

Air traffic controllers-though utilising inadequate methods-are still purusing their pay claim, while shipyard workers all over the country have been on strike for three months in their fight on pay and conditions.

In the car industry ! Renault workers recently showed their willingness to 'fight for wages and con'ditions given any kind of organised central leadership.