Crisis and Corruption

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The economic crisis in the USA continues to deepen. Statistics issued last week showed the situation to be worse than previously thought.

National output is now falling at an annual rate of 11.3% as compared with 9% last year. Inflation continues to increase - now standing at an annual rate of 8%. Finally, profits showed a record rate of decline falling at an annual rate of 22%.

As in Europe the depth of the crisis is most clearly revealed in leading sectors like the motor industry. US car sales have fallen 21% over the last year for all the big car firms. Ford has, in the words of its chairman, "written the 1975 model year off" , giving little hope of reemployment to the 20,000 Ford workers now on indefinite lay-off.

Meanwhile at Chryslers unsold stocks of vehicles are already twice the normal level for this time of year and the company is considering closing four out of its six US plants for at least six weeks during the summer.

The deepening economic crisis has brought forth a bout of gloomy prognostications concerning the future of the American political system. As leading industrialist Fletcher Byron put it bluntly last week, "Our political system just won't allow corporations to make the profits they need". • Such comments reflect the increasing inadequacy of the existing methods to deal effectively with the rising work ing class resistance to inflation and unemployment.

This crisis of confidence by the bourgeoisie in 'liberal democracy' has been over the last couple of years enormously increased by the Watergate revelations and the massive defeats in Indo-China. Currently it is being further magnified by a new series of revelations, a by-product of earlier Watergate investigations concerning bribery and corruption in big business. Watergate investigators are now beginning to uncover a new 'Business Watergate'. It transpires that the Gulf Oi Company paid last year a total of $5m in bribes to government officials in South Korea and Bolivia. Further revelations to be imminent.

It is against this background that President Ford arrived in Europe, armed only with thi pathetic Mayaguez affair to boo his credibility, to urge his NA" • allies to continue to give him ther support. Just as he cannot defend the capitalist classes of Western Europe against the massive movements of the working class now represented by the struggles in Portugal, the existence of American capital itself becomes more and more clearly dependant on the reformist leadership of the American working class.

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WORKERS SOCIALIST Thursday, May, WHAT IS THIE