Purges in Peking

Scan page 1

Last week's price figures showed that the decline in the rate of inflation over the past year has now quite definitely been reversed.

PRICES UP

Instead, the government now expects prices to rise by 15% over the next year. Even this figure must be a minimum, since it depends on the Common Market continuing to pay an effective £1 million-a-day subsidy on the price of British food imports - a payment which is likely soon to be dropped with the devaluation of the Green Pound.

So even before tax is deducted from it, the 42% increase in wages allowable between now and next But th on loans complete August must mean, on these figures, a cut in real wages of over 10%!

But this news on prices is just one indication that the arguments peddled by Labour and trade union leaders over the last two years are completely false.

Last week it became clear that the whole economic "strategy" attempted by Healey is unworkable. To prevent a collapse of the pound, a historically unprecedented 15% interest rate has been imposed.

LOANS

Is interest rate to private i v undermine: - payable dustry Healey's aim of stimulating more capitalist investment. It makes nonsense of the line that spending cuts and redundancies in the public sector would be compensated by more investment and jobs in private But not only this. Figures issued last week showed also that the cuts already imposed on public spending still have not been enough to meet Healey's target.

SOCIAL SERVICES

And combined with the rise in the interest rate and inflation, this will mean that even less public spending will be available for the social services.

This means that even before the conditions which will be imposed by the International Monetary Fund (in exchange for the latest loans to back sterling) make themselves felt, there will need to be an almost immediate further round of spending cuts.

More cuts will of course cause redundancies and increase unemployment. And another lie is nailed by the revelation that, although Labour Ministers claim each month that unemployment has "reached its peak" , the Financial Times now quotes Treasury sources as forecasting unemployment next year rising to 1,800,000.

Of course a key reason why the Labour government's packages of pro-capitalist policies have failed to work is because none of them are capable of resolving the everdeepening crisis of the system itself both in Britain and internationally.

Healey's "strategy" has depended all along on a sustained boom in the world economy, leading to "export-led growth'.

That boom is already evaporating before even being noticed. The latest economic figures show that already expansion is faltering in the United States, West Germany and Japan, MEASURES In Western Europe, four governments within the space of last week (Italy, France, Spain and Britain) took measures which not only attack wages but are intended to drive up unemployment.

In making the working class carry the full burden of the crisis, capitalist economies are moving not towards boom, but towards intensified slump and trade war.

As confirmation of this trend, world prices of industrial raw materials (especially metals) have. begun to fall rapidly, indicating Cont'd Back Page, Col. 4.

No commentator - n matter how "well-informed about palace intrigues an Party cliques - can accuratel assess the events now unfo ding in Peking if he starts or from the surface appearanc of a 'left' versus 'right' wir struggle. Only an analysis the politics of Chinese Stali ism can furnish any real ke to understanding.

Stalinism, from its origins un today, has been marked by ti most extreme and opportunist zi zags, by political intrigues an manoeuvres. Its policies and lear ing figures are set up and ove thrown in sealed corridors, cut o from the masses of the worker state.

PATTERN

Last week's "overturn" China. - like the thunderbc disgracing of Liu Shao-chi at ti beginning of the Cultural Revo ution, the death of Lin Piao 1971 and the orchestrate removal of Teng Hsiao-ping earli this year - conform exactly 1 this pattern.

Like Stalin's and his successor own purges and "reshuffles" eve the minor incidents recur - la week the Chinese official pre agency had "run out" of phot graphs of the funeral ceremonie for Mao three weeks ago - photi graphs in which, of course, Mao widow and her "accomplices Teng i siao-pin figure prominently.

The purge of the "left-wingers which opened ten days aga immediately following elevation of "stand-in" premie Hua Kuo-feng to the place vacatel by Mao's death at the head of thi Cont'd Back Page, Col. 1.

Scan page 2

flege Z SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 20th October 1976 LONEL DEUIS

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

UNION TONES WAGES