LES HOW MU RIPPED O A UNION We'll strike for

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DOLAND'S strikers refused to be intimidated yester.

day by the detention of prominent dissidents in Tarsaw the previous night. Far from checking the t-in stoppages which have brought the nation to the rink of chaos, the security crackdown had the sent out to fascists in other parts of the country.

Labour MP for Nuneaton, Leslie • Huckfield-who supports legal bans as a solution to fascist marches-has written to the Chief Constable of the West Midlands Police demanding an explanation.

About 2,000 police turned up in Nuneaton to protect the march and succeeded in keeping at bay those anti-fascists who managed to get past police checks to try and stop it.

Police roadblocks outside Leamington-where the antifascists had gathered-and outside Nuneaton, suggest a carefully planned police operation for which they had received adequate notice of the fascists' real plans.

Huckfield said: "I don't believe they were all touring round in coaches waiting to find out where it would take place"

The net result of the ban ha has been to prevent labour movement marches in five towns while permitting the fascists to march-a fact now being ignored by lefts and the Anti-Nazi League who called for the ban. By DAVID SHEARS in Bonn opposite effect.

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About six workers out of every hundred in the main capitalist countries are unemployed.

That adds up to more than 20 million workers without jobs in all the countries which are members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD):

It is not only the staggering size of this figure which illustrates the profound and deepening problems of the capitalist economies, but also the frightening speed with which the figure has grown and continues to grow with no prospects of any respite.

The figures in Table 1 show that the average rate of unemployment is now double what it was during the closing years of the post-war capitalist boom in the OECD countries as a whole.

In some of the countries in that list, unemployment has grown much faster than in others.

Underestimate

In France it has tripled, Germany quadrupled and Spain increased by six times the last decade.

Everywhere that rate of increase is getting faster day by day.

And the faster the number grows, the more the official figures underestimate the true numbers involved.

One major reason for this underestimation is that as unemployment grows, married women and others who are not entitled to. receive unemployment benefit do not bother to register as unemployed.

They don't therefore appear in the official statistics, though they are no less unemployed for that.

Even according to the offirial statistine the AFrN ectimates that all, unemployment igures snowu be mcitawu vy 30% to take account of this one fact.

But especially in some of the OECD countries which have had the lowest unemployment figures, there is another very important reason for understatement.

That is the existence of millions of immigrant worrkers on temporary contracts from countries such as Yugoslavia, Turkey, Portugal, Spain and Algeria.

"Guest workers"

In countries like France and West Germany, the growth of unemployment very often falls most heavily initially on these. "guest workers"

Instead of signing on at unemployment exchanges and so appearing in the official unemployment figures, they are put on the first train back to their own country to swell the unerployment figures there.

This is one of the reasons why the increase in registered unemployment has been SO particularly rapid in countries like Spain and Portugal.

Another reason why the unemployment figures understate the depth of the problems of capitalism is the existence of increasing millions of workers on short time, which amounts to a disguised form of unemployment.

Last month in Britain for example, the official figures Thatcher showed about 4% of workers on short time, bringing the total unemployed and on short time to over 10%:

Finally the unemployment figures understate the problem because as most of the OECD countries have in the last few years taken measures, such as increasing the school leaving age, in the absence of which the unemployment figures would be even higher. -Even when all these allowances are made, the figures in Table 1 are still only broad averages.

Regional levels

And a single average figure for national unemployment can be a very bad guide to the exact form which unemployment is taking and the social and political effects which it has.

differences in the regional levels of unemployment. In Table 2 for instance, the British national unemployment figure of a bit more than 5% is broken down into different regions.

The South East, in spite of the rapid increase in unemployment even in that region, still has an overall unemployment rate only a little over half the national average, whereas in Northern Ireland the figure is around 12%-double the British national average. Of course even that figure is an average and to that extent potentially misleading.

In Northern Ireland there are towns and areas where the unemployment figure is much more than 12%-in exceptionable cases rising to about 50%.

Evidence suggests that the highest rates are in the Catholic areas.

Obviously the political implications of unemployment which is unequally distributed in this way, are very different from the political implications of having the same national average level in all towns and districts.

Women

The jobless situation in Northern Ireland illustrates a principle which applies in different ways throughout the capitalist world-that it is the sections of the population which are most socially disadvantaged and discriminated against who suffer disproportionately also from unemployment.

This applies universally in the case of women. Here is one case where the current evolution of the capitalist economies are very different from what was often predicted by Marx in te nineteenth century.

Joseph Marx saw the capitalists' pursuit of profitability leading increasingly with the mechanisation of production tasks to the employment of women and children-at lower wage levelsat the expense of adult male workers.

That indeed is what happened in many periods nineteenth century capitalist development.

Today, however, as the economic crisis of capitalism leads to more mass unemployment it is women and youth everywhere who are either thrown out of work first, or never have the opportunity to get a job in the first place.

The effect of the growth of women's unemployment is not only to reduce the incomes and standard of living of them and their families, if they are members of families, but also it is to force women out of productive social employment back into the isolation and dependance of the home and the family.

This leads individually to all kinds of demoralisation and personal oppression and collectively, as the historical evidence of the 1930s proves, it can be the breeding ground of reactionary political ideologies.

Another section of the ДУри LILYN JAMY ILL MI CA - 11., Laid i ma disproportionate way by the present growth of mass unemployment is the oppressed racial minorities.

Youth

Probably the clearest case this is that of the USA.

While the average level of unemployment in the USA as a whole is 6% (about the international capitalist average), the rate among urban blacks in cities like Miami or Detroit is vastly greater than this.

Specific surveys have on many occasions shown figures in excess of 25%.

Breaking down the average even further, the levels of unemployment among black urban youth in the USA (and indeed also in Britain) are commonly well in excess of 50%.

Facts such as these must have a great deal to do with the explanation of recent events like the black uprisings in Miami.

Those events reflect not only the exceptionally oppressed economic condition of racial minorities but also they illustrate a feature of the new mass unemployment which is even more universal than that-namely the position of youth.

The universal nature of the economic oppression of youth in the present capitalist crisis is shown by the fact that young people take to the streets spontaneously to protest against their position and against capitalist police repression not only in Miami and in Bristol and in Soweto and Capetown, but also in the areas where the capitalists thought that they had created the very paradise of the free market economy -in Zurich in Switzerland.

Summary

Because the problem of youth unemployment in the advanced capitalist countries has become so acute in the last few years, the OECD economists have collected a large amount of special statistics about it.

There is a summary of their results in Tables 3 and 4. If these are compared with the figures in Table 1 (the national rates of unemployment for all workers) it is easy to see that almost everywhere the rate of youth unemployment (age 1524) is at least twice as high as the national average.

It is also easy to see from Table 3 that the problem. of youth unemployment is growing even faster than unemployment in general.

And in countries such as Italy and Spain, the level of youth unemployment is now so high that it constitutes a major social crisis by itself.

As always it is possible to break down these figures even further to show the way in which even among youth, unemployment has a disproportionate effect on some groups.

The difference between male and female unemployment is one of the most striking.

Table 4 shows that in every country for which figures are available, teenage women are worse hit than men.

In France, for instance, 14 out of every hundred teenage men were unemployed; for women the figure is a staggering 42 in every 100.

To summarise all the complex statistics, it could be said that for each worker in the mam capitalist countries, there is today about a one-in-sixteen chance that he or she is unemployed.

Zero

But for a female youth, a member of a racial minority, living in an economically backward or deprived area, the chances of getting a job of any kind have in the last few years been reduced to almost zero.

The new mass unemployment, I argued in last week's Socialist Press, is the necessary result of the efforts by the capitalist class to recreate, at the expense of the working class, the conditions in which profitable capitalist accumulation is once again possible!

But that does not mean that the creation of mass unemployment is a simple or straightforward route for the capitalist Wednesday we nor Mat Unemnloved march erosses Westmi class from crisis to renewed profitability.

In fact, the growth of unemployment both expresses and leads to important contradictions in the working of the capitalist economy.

Marx pointed out that the appropriation of surplus value by the capitalist class-the process by which they made profits, the lifeblood of their survival-was a unity of. two different processes. These are the production and realisation of surplus value.

Surplus value is produced in the factory by workers making commodities containing more value than the commodities (or money equivalent) which they receive in wages.

But 'that surplus value remains potential until it is made real (realised) by being sold at the pre-supposed price on the market.

Only then has the capitalist retrieved the money with which s/he started out a production cycle and the additional profit which represents her/his realised surplus value.

Many different and complex conditions have to be met for this surplus value to be produced and realised in the capitalist economy.

Marx's work, unlike that of previous political economists, showed how the conditions which were necessary for

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of the slump UNEMPLOYMENT RATES FO WHIP OF UNEMPLOYMENT OF YOUTH AGED 15-17 ENT Part two of a three part series producing surplus value, increas It is so far still the special increasingly explicit pláns of that Thatcher was not elected ing the exploitation of their feature of the Thatcher govern- herself and leading ministers to explicitly in order to create labour force which may also ment that it maintains a ruth- introduce some scheme of mass unemployment and it is a help their competitive situation, lessness towards the vulnerable forced labour for the unem- source of some political embarat the same time sworsens the sections of its own class which reduce unemployment benefit rassment to Tory ministers that conditions for the realisation of other weaker capitalist govern- and social security payments to When these schemes were the vell has had to be thrown that surplus value by reducing ments have not been able to something even closer to real first publicly discussed a few the level of demand in the starvation levels than they are at weeks ago one of her ministers, But no matter what they But even if this cannibalistic Lord Gowrie, in his anxiety to say there is no chance at all that frame of mind is maintained, make schemes of forced labour the Tory government will realisation of surplus value) (between the production and policy contradictions in relation Thatcher still faces some major increase benefit levels in line with inflațion is a first step by accident tripped over an sound more socially palatable, introduce schemes designed to reduce unemployment as a shows up in relation to state to public expenditure and This, however, can only The five enterprise zones All capitalist governments, In the first place the policy intensify the other-political- which have recently been especially the British Tories, are of cutting public spending on contradiction which is created He noted how ridiculous it announced, in which capitalists at present making an effort to services does not necessarily cut by Thather's mass unemploy- seemed that there were so many will be able to operate with an reduce the level of government obviously unfulfilled social absence of restriction and spending and so the huge size of That is the danger that the needs while nearly. 2 million control which would have been finding is that much of the deliberate creation of mass the envy even of their early Their objective is to drive amount which has been cut unemployment and the driving No doubt ministers have nineteenth century ancestors, down the real standard of living from the social services, is down of the living standards of been advised in future to steer are in fact a significant part of of the working class and thereby having to be paid out under the unemployed to starvation clear of such unintentional the Tory government plan to remove some of the burdens existing legislation to the levels will provoke a political recreate the conditions of (the finance of the social rapidly growing number of reaction which will threaten the Lord Gowrie's pathetic life, profitability by driving down services) which are at present a life not only of Thatcher's like that of other Tory the living standard of workers drain on the surplus value avail- Each increase in unemploy- government but of the whole ministers, has been devoted to and robbing them of their able to the capitalists to appro- ment involves more government capitalist system which it is the: preservation of a system spending on unemployment her overwhelming aim to rescue. which is incapable of using the But the universal horror over Also the public spending benefit and social security, on A further part of Thatcher's human resources available to it the level of mass unemployment ployment, is intended to contri- cuts, by creating more unem- bute to the policy of dividing the administration of the service and a cut in the government revenue from direct and indirect plan to make the unemployed as dead a weight as possible around .the neck of the to fulfill social needs, since ism is the creation of profits. their sole function for capital- tion in the guise of measures to permits Thatcher to present these plans for greater exploitathe working class and weaken employed working class are the Nonetheless the fact remains its bargaining strength in wages extremely unwilling to admit this policy haadict, is that cut these figures in public, its economic experts recognise that in public spending reduce the every increase of 100,000 at the level of demand for the goods present time in the level of and services produced by capit- unemployment worsens the alists and so create big problems public sector deficit by £500 for sections of the capitalist class itself, especially those That means that of the directly dependent on state present government deficit of spending (e.g. large sections of about £8½ billion a year forethe construction industry) and cast for 1980-81, £5 billion many of these sections of capit- results from the increase in al are being driven into bank- unemployment which has taken In all capitalist states this Of course the Thatcher contradiction creates both con- government would still prefer to flicts between different sections pay money to the unemployed, of the capitalist class, between who can serve as a drag to those who expect indirectly to labour's bargaining strength in gain and those who directly lose the labour market, rather than iter Bridge, London in 1933 from the public expenditure spend the same amount of money on employing workers to surplus value to be produced These conflicts, along with produce useful social services. were not the same as those fear of the working class, are necessary for it to be realised. at the root of the hesitation, contradiction for the Tories, In fact, sometimes the con- uncertainty, confusion and "U- both from the point of view of ditions for one were in direct turns" which characterise the fulfilling their public spending contradiction to the conditions policies of so many capitalist plans and also from insuring that mass unemployment has This contradiction was very central to Marx's explanation of UNEMPLOYMENT IN CAPITALIST COUNTRIES capitalist crises and it is just as relevant in helping to explain the economic crisis that exists today and the dilemas of the capitalist class in dealing with it.

As capitalists attempt to recreate better conditions for the production of surplus value they drive "surplus"? workers out of the production process This may help their existing employers to obtain a higher REGIONAL UNEMPLOYMENT IN BRITAIN (May 1980) ¡level of productivity from the Even when the unemployment results from the closure of bankrupt firms, this may be beneficial to the productivity of other firms because competition in the market is reduced.

But at the same time an unemployed worker is a worker without wages and hence the growth of unemployment is at the same time a decline in the demand for many products which the capitalists produce or fosted upon by cap tales Corby families campaign unsuccessfully against closure market The same contradiction expenditure.

government deficits. priate for themselves.

struggles. ruptcy. ' cuts.

for the other. governments.

JAPAN WEST GEF Beneficial BRITAIN ITALY SPAIN Total OECD into unemployment:

remaining workers.

Great Britain South-East East Anglia South-West West Midlands East Midlands Yorkshire and North-West North Wales Northern assist some of them match.

unemployment.

public spending at all.

What Thatcher is now unemployed. taxes.

Although the government is million.

place since 1973.

Nonetheless, this is a real PITALIST COUNTRIES Average % 1964-73 1980 10.9 1980 11.8 Table 2

Fran

Italy UK the maximum weakening effect on the ing strength of labour.

the present time.

along that road.

UNITED JAPAN WEST GERMANY BRITAIN ITALY SPAIN Thatcher needs in a hurry to The government's refusal to ment policies. 197( possible bargainSAVE STEEL! SAVE CORBY-R

Table

Males 1979 Table ployed. important truth.

Ridiculous people were unemployed.

truths. ; PEL 1960 10.0 1970 GED 198( 11.2 13.3 11.9 24.6 22.8 males ofi so quickly.

primary objective. historic democratic gains.

alleviate unemployment.

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VIC ADERT nif

SI PPCPT

LAMDEN 'S 1g0 su Wednesday 27 August

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The first thing that the national averages conceal is