Oil Crisis Heralds

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Since the capitalist market's Arabia have felt unable to demand for oil has increased by proceed at once with their around 4% during the last year, tentative offer of increasing oil this means in effect a drastic supplies to the West by 500,000 and manima thamenlves tan nnenly with IS The chronic, insoluble crisis of world capitalisma crisis that has already given rise to two world wars, the horrors of fascism, and the Depression of the 1930s, and which currently brings unemployment, poverty, repression, disease and starvation to countless millions of workers and their families across the globe-has new devełopments in store.

The growing shortage of oil supplies, and the 50% increase in crude oil prices in the first six months of this year now threaten workers with the consequences of:

*a runaway rise in inflation on a world scale, dwarfing the already upward trend in prices;

*a recession in manufacturing industry, bringing wholesale sackings;

*a growth of openly cut-throat competition between rival national groups of capitalists, leading to trade war and the threat of further escalation;

*an even more ruthless spate of attacks on the jobs, living standards and working conditions of workers in the advanced capitalist countries;

*further economic devastation, repression and misery for the millions in the underdeveloped economies of. Latin America, Africa and Asia.

•The Tories and the Labour leaders, who share a common support for British imperialism and the crisis-ridden capitalist system, will of course argue that this crisis is none of their making, but 'brought about from outside' by Arab oil producers.

But the fact is that the entire capitalist world economic system rests on the oppression and exploitation of the colonial and ex-colonial countries as a source of cheap labour and raw materials for the highly profitable manufacturing industry of Western capitalism.

Lynch-pin

Foremost among these raw materiais is, of course, oil, which has emerged as the lynch pin of capitalist production.

Yet the anarchy of the international monetary system and the falling competitiveness and profitability of US capitalism compared with its European and Japanese rivals have brought a plunge in the value of the dollars paid out in exchange for oil supplies.

At the same time the growing resistance of the working class throughout the world to the attacks on their rights waged by international capital has reached its peak in the massive WI and CC bi oi st sheavals that ousted the itcher Shah from the crucial I-state of Iran.

The ripple-effects of this ushing defeat for one of the orld's most self-contident and ithless tyrannies are still being It throughout dictatorships id despotisms of the Middle ast.

And the loss of Iran as a lajor strategic bulwark_tor nperialism in the Middle East, upled with the 2 million arrels a day cutback in Iranian il production, has struck a lattering blow to the economic nd political stability ot capitalUnlike the 19734 oil crisis, hen supplies were eventually ully restored, following a fourold increase in crude oil prices, ne new balance of forces in ran means that oil supplies rust inevitably remain cut back or the forseeable future. curtailment of supplies.

recognising inis, ana seeing an opportunity to recoup revenues which they hope will help to stabilise their reactionary feudal and nationalist regimes against popular resistance, the Arab oil producers have moved in to increase their prices.

Zionists Through such policies they also hope to head off opposition at home by posing as active opponents of the US-backed "peace" between the Egyptian bourgeoisie and the land-grabbing Zionist state of Israel.

Indeed such is the anti-imperialist mass pressure that even the feudal rulers of Saudi Abadan oil installation, Iran barrels a day for fear of allying ineristives lou upery imperialism.

But as the crisis, created by imperialism, Creates mounting panic amongst motorists, soaring fuel prices and shortages, each national section capitalists is beginning to join in a mad scramble to corner the available supplies.

Last week Carter's US administration decided to introduce a so per barrel sunsiay un -1.. - - heides on supplies of imported heating. oil —in a bid to corner a share of the market.

Enraged French, German and EEC officials have responded with a chorus of protest and demands for a special session of the 20-nation International Energy Agency.

Diesel pump in Germany INFLATIONENERGY CRUNCH But no amount of taik of a "planned" solution can disguise the fact that capitalist competition and the drive for profit must inevitably lead to such dog-eat-dog measures.

As long as rival groups of capitalists are left to squabble among themselves and to attempt to force their opponents to carry the brunt of the crisis, the real loser in every instance must be the working class in every country of the world.

Speed-up

Galloping inflation will gnaw at inadequate pay packets: frantic speed-up and 'rationalisation' policies by the employers will slash jobs by the thousand: and these attacks will be accompanied by an onslaught on hard won trade union rights and working conditions.

Certain sections of the capitalist class-driven to desperation by the threat to their profits may well begin to contemplate the prospect of outright war to secure supplies of oil, to eliminate capitalist rivals, or even for the reconquest of the deformed and degenerated workers' states whose relative economic strength rests on their nationalised property relations and planned economies.

To fight back in these conditions of crisis, the working class must be equipped with a programme of transitional demands which, in offering an answer to today's material problems, point unmistakeably to the necessity for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a planned, socialist economy under workers, management.

The Labour leadershipwhether left' or right-offers workers no such programme.

Nor do the Stalinists of the Communist Parties, whose compromises with their "own" capitalist class are coupled to their talk of a "peaceful road to socialism" , through parliamentary reform.

Transitional demands The Workers Socialist League, as a Trotskyist party, fights consistently for action on the following transitional and anti-imperialist demands:

*Defend living standards! Wage increases must be protected against inflation through cost-of-living clauses giving automatic rises in line with a trade union cost-of living index.

*Defend all jobs! Occupy to stop redundancies! Demand work sharing between the whole existing workforce without loss of pay.

*Fight for mass action to bring down the job-cutting Tory government of employers and bankers!

*Open the books of the oil monopolies, along with the major industrial firms, the banks and the insurance companies to elected trade union committees! This will prove the case for their nationalisation without compensation, under workers' management.

*No to import controls! Create new jobs through a crash programme of public works for nationalised industry under workers' management.

*Immediate withdrawal of British troops from Ireland and all overseas outposts! Down with slave-labour raw material contracts with ex-colonial countries. Renegotiate trade deals on equal terms!

*Down with the reactionary SadatBegin "peace" in the Middle East! Full support to the Palestinian war of liberation! Build Trotskyist parties in Iran and every Middle East nation to spearhead the independent struggles of the Arab. masses!

*Reconstruct the Trotskyist Fourth International as the World Party of Socialist Revolution, with sections in every country!

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