Comecon-the benefits of a nationalised

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Fascist youth. Shortly after this picket IvI' youth attacled a nearby gay pub Profit of doom Most of the bureaucratically ruled workers' states of Eastern Europe have in the last week issued figures about their economic performance during the last year.

Without detailed analysis we cannot fully judge these figures.

But the overall impression they give of the Eastern European economies is one of continued growth of production far in excess of the European capitalist countries.

The superiority of socialised over capitalist property relations badgered, blacklisted and bamboozled all and sundry in a frenzied effort to make their discredited and unworkable pay policy stick"

Where does that come from? A left MP about to vote for the government? The Morning Star two days before the end of another unsuccessful fund appeal?

Not quite. The quote plus much more in the same vein comes from last Wednesday's Daily Express, part of a unanimous howl of protest from the Tory press about the government blacklist.

So united was the response that the unwritten rule by which popular papers ignore each other was suspended.

The Sun's lead story 'Method of Mussolini' was quoted with approval by the Express.

The Daily Mail devoted the whole centre page to 'This sinister Pandora's box of power... ' examining the range of government's powers mail and phone-tapping) as if they had suddenly been invented.

For three years the press continues to be shown by these growth rates and by the fact that, in sharp contrast to the chronic mass unemployment of Western Europe, the Eastern European economies continue to provide work for the whole population.

Long term problems But also, after the pattern of the last few years, growth rates have slowed down and in some cases failed to keep up with planned rates.

Beneath the surface there are also signs of new long-term problems and contradictions have supported all shackles on the working class-regardless of constitutional niceties.

What has been at question for them has not been the method of the coalition or the bullying of the TUC but the profitability of the capitalists.

The present outcry is not a change of heart-nor is it hypocrisy.

The Tory Press-in support of the CBI and the dominant section of the Tory Partyhas reacted not on the constitutional grounds stated, but on the capitalist grounds left unstated: attacks on the working class which are delivered via the employers are bound to cause casualties which these sections find unacceptable.

Socialist Worker, (confused by the Tory Party in the same way as the SWP is confused by most developments in the class struggle) falls precisely into this trap.

The What We Think' column of February 11 states:

"Callaghan and Healey have shoved the Labour government so far to the right that the Tories have no real quarrel with any of its policies. They have got to invent stunts to catch votes" faced by these economies.

The growth rate of national income in 1977 varied between 4½% in Czechoslovakia and about 8% in Hungary and even more in Romania.

Industrial growth was higher than this in nearly all the countries-from nearly 6% in Czechoslovakia to over 12% in Hungary.

But the variations are not only in the growth rates themselves but in how much they fulfilled the economic plans.

Hungary and Romania grew faster than planned. But in both Poland and Czechoslovakia actual The Tories have not reverted to 'stunts' and neither have their Fleet Street mouthpieces.

The task for the Tories is not to catch votes to win an election but to feed and tap a source of reaction which will make it possible to dispense with the Labour Party, the Lib-Lab coalition and the TUC bureaucracy as managers of capital.

The Tory press is stating clearly that the Tories do not want to come back to power on the policies of Heath and Peter Walker.

They need the savagery of Thatcher and Joseph, because the forthcoming struggles of the working class demand that response.

Hence the populist outburst aimed not just at the election but beyond it. The Daily Express concluded:

"It would be funny if it was not so tragic. Because the stark truth is that, behind the bluff and the bluster, we are in danger of losing still more of our [!] treasured rights.

"Come Election Day, the public must remember that in this country we [!] rule by consent and by law-NOT by coercion and blackmail". growth in the economy lagged behind planned growth.

In Poland this gap was only marginal in relation to the overall growth of the economy; but the growth of exports and imports were far from what had been Worsened The balance of trade, especially with the capitalist countries, worsened sharply and unexpectedly.

And this pattern seems to have been repeated in the other countries, including Hungary where overall growth looked very healthy.

A declining proportion of the trade of the Comecon countries is being done with each other.

This seems to be a self generating process.

Imports from the capitalist countries have expanded to compensate for absence of goods of the requisite type or quality in the Comecon countries themselves.

In order to get the hard convertible currency needed to pay for imports from capitalist countries, the Comecon countries have diverted their highest quality exports from Eastern European to capitalist markets.

And that means an even greater shortage of quality goods from Comecon sources and so the process is reinforced.

Dependence

At the same time the other way of covering the deficit with the capitalist world is to get loans from either banks or capitalist governments.

Attempts, therefore, to escape from some of the consequences of the bureaucratically managed Comecon economies have increased the dependence of these economies on world capitalism.

This is the kind of problem which cannot be solved without the liberation of the full productive potential of these economies.

This will only be possible with the full democratic management of production by the working class.

And that in turn will require the political overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy by the working class under the political leadership of Trotskyist parties.

Meanwhile, despite the obvious achievements, the resources of the Comecon countries will continue to be put by the Stalinist bureaucrats to distorted and irrational uses which prejudice the continued existence of socialised property relations.

That state of affairs will continue as long as resources are used to solve the problems not of the mass of workers but of a parasitic bureaucracy.

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PHOTO: Mike Tomlinson, IFL They have bullied,