Mergers herald new iobs threat

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Big business merger activity rose to a peak in the last quarter of 1979. The total value of companies acquired between October and the end of the year was £752 million -giving an annual total of £1656 million.

This marks a sharp upturn in process of concentrating capital on the part of the ruling class. The previous peak had been in 1972, when companies valued at €2532m changed hands in the last gasps of Heath's lame duck' policy for rationalising British capitalism.

Under Labour this fell to a low of f291m in 1975 as tears about the ability of the Wilson administration to control the working class haunted tho boardrooms of big business. From 1976 on. however, under the class-collaborationist Social Contract there was a steady upturn.

Mad rush

Now, with Thatcher driving to smash trade union rights and to break up the welfare state. the rush to prepare for world recessic and intensified class wartare, has become a charge.

Already, in the first two months of 1980 deals and mergers have been. announced worth £800m.

The 31 largest acquisitions announced in 1979 costing over €10m cach amounted to two-thirds of total expenditure.

This, of course flies in the face of the limp Tory claim that the basis of their attacks on the welfare state was to encourage investment in productive Concentrate capital In reality the Bi itish bourgeoisie haș continus •d to hold back on investment in plant preferring to utilise its capital to climinate or swallow up competitors and concentrate in fewer hands the existing body of industrial capital.

This drive to merger and monopolies provides the background to the wholesale attacks on jobs.

Less employed

A consequence of centralization is that as the mass of capital in a single hand grows, fewer and fewer• workers are employed by it.

Unprofitable sections of capital are closed down through a process of asset stripping in order to protect the profitability of other sections of capital and reduce the pressure of competition on a diminishing mass of now wealth.

This independent role of capital as a social power, standing opposed to the actual development of the productive forces as i whole and to the social interests of the working class lies now at the very centre of thererisis of capitalism.

Wealth

It can only be resolved by the socialising of the means of production under the control and management of the working class itselt as the only source of wealth in society.

The alternative is misery, degradation and. the collapse into fascist barbarism. For capitalism the death knell has sounded too long.