[The press has been celebrating the rebirth of…]

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The press has been celebrating the rebirth of the Salesman. They have uncovered in the unlikely guise of a GEC computer salesman, a fable for our'times, a story of virtue rewarded.

Rewarded to the value of £100,000-since this is the sum he picked up in commission last year.

After several days when the press did not quite know how to handle this superstar of the computer market it eventuaily decided that he was a paragon of the virtues of capitalism-a pinnacle that could be reached by all of us-if only we weren't so lazy, protected by the welfare state, etc.

The Daily Telegraph explained the principles of the market to its readers.

"When a salesman earns €100,000 a year, the operative word is earns. There is no room for doubt. The order books are the firm's order books.

"His commission is paid only after the ink is dry on the deal, and wheels begin to turn ...

"How lucky we should consider ourselves that such a star performer was not among the elite tempted away by better opportunities and less tax in other countries.

"A generation back someone would surely have called him the Stakhanovite of salesmen, when high production, at least in theory, was the in-thing in the Soviet Union ...

"While not only does the unknown salesman earn, as distinct from merely drawing, his hundred thousand, hundreds of thousands of workers, managers and others in the nationalised and subsidised sectors draw wages and salaries but actually earn nothing at all; indeed: they earn minus quantities, since the nation is made poorer by the existence of these parasitic growths, who live by milking the profits of successful firms."

Of course, such an absurd economics lesson is not left at an abstract level Telegraph.

The particular m oral drawn is that the micro-ch ip industry should be returned completely to private industry.

The Daily Mail meanwhile pointed out that our computer Stakhanov had' peaked too early.

If he had earned his £100,000 this year instead of last, the tax reductions in Chancellor. Howe's • budget would have ensured that take-home pay doubled from £400 to £800 a week-providing him with a real incentive.

The Daily Express however believes that the era where we can all earn our pile of loot has already dawned. What do rising prices matter when you are living under the Conservatives?

A centre page feature entitled 'Maggie's 100 Days' printed a wide spectrum of views-ranging from a Tory housewife to a Tory business. man to a Tory teacher.

The housewife was surely the ideal domestic companion to Super Salesman.

"Sue Spice isn't concerned overmuch about price increases" the Express confided. "Experience has taught her that they can be no more than a minor irritant.

"To be honest l've never really worried about inflation" she says. "All I know is that our living standards have gone up steadily despite soaring prices.. I tend to put them to the back of my mind. After all, we can't do anything about them ...

"If you ask me if unemployment is worrying, I'd say it isn't. I look after Number One. That's what is important to me."

If only now the press could arrange for a marriage between Super Salesman and Super Shopper, they could surely begin to breed a new strain of Tory, one capable of responding to incentives and totally impervious to the effects of inflation, exploitation, unemployment and all the other incidental crises of capitalism that plague us lesser mortals.

The TUC economic committee is predicting that Tory policies will prompt a major financial crisis in private industry during the coming winter unless Thatcher changes course.

They point to the devastating impact of the "strong pound" , high interest rates and a restricted money supply on small and medium sized companies.

They could be driven to the wall, alongside major problems for large firms with heavy investment programmes, warns But this prospect comes as no surprise to Thatcher. Indeed Tory strategy for regenerating British capitalism depends upon a ruthless rationalisation in As Thatcher's pathetic struggles to get off the ground, there is renewed evidence of the galloping rate at which inflation is eroding wage packets.

While the Tories' mythical "average family" on its £140 per week may feel better off, real workers are feeling the brunt of a price explosion.

The July Retail Price Index seems certain to show a full 4 point increase to over 15% as a result of Thatcher's thumping VAT increases.

An inflation rate of at least 17½% by November seems which the least profitable sectors are consigned to the junkyard, the public sector slashed, and unemployment is driven up to 2 million and over.

The CBI, too, is conscious of the fact that a number of its member companies face a bleak future of bankruptcy and closures in the next periodbut insists that the policy is necessary to restore profitability.

• CBI leaders argue that the threat to the viability of companies means that workers' wage demands should be restricted. This reactionary argument has long been peddled by TUC leaders within the workers' movement.

But in reality the prospect of long term massive unemployment and economic devastation can only be averted by the certain.

But the prices of British manufactured goods are surging ahead even faster, with a 2.2% increase during July alone.

Though half of this rise (which is equivalent to an annual rise of 27%) is attributed to the increase in oil prices, it does not yet include the VAT increases.

And while the popular press is busily trying to palm off the blame for rising prices onto the wage increases won by workers during the last pay round, the Financial Times admits that:

"it must also reflect a bunching of rises following the end of price controls as companies have sought to improve or maintain their profit margins." ner defeat of the Tories, the overthrow of their system of exploitation, and its replacement with a planned socialist economy.

Dinner

For all their bleating and whining, nobody on the TUC economic committee is likely to propose this course of action at the forthcoming regular TUC/ CBI dinner later this month.

For workers, the answer plain. Wage demands must be formulated in such a way as to make good the losses caused by inflation this year, and to protect living standards agai ast future price increases.

Cost of living

This means fighting for every pay settlement to include a cost of living clause providing regular automatic increases in line with a working class cost of living index worked out by elected local committees of trade unionists, housewives and sympathetic experts.

----- pull-quotes -----

confidence trick, the "Stan- dard of Living Index"