Callaghan's worldwide whitewash assignment

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Why is Callaghan spending much time on a mission around the capitalist world?

His travels found him last week in the USA talking to Carter and a few days earlier in West Germany with Helmut Schmidt.

If Callaghan's public relations people and his own increasingly syrupy and avuncular press conferences are to be believed it is because he is on a one-man mission to save the world from economic disaster.

Callaghan's message is very simple: all the capitalist economies have high unemployment; world trade is expanding more and more slowly if at all; and the promised boom has not arrived.

New explosion If the government of any single country pursues expansionary economic policies in these circumstances it will suffer a new explosion of inflation and balance of payments crisis.

So, says Callaghan, all the main capitalist countries must try to expand simultaneously and so then the slump can be ended smoothly without any one economy suffering inordinately!

In particular, Callaghan is demanding major expansionary policies from the West German and Japanese governments.

That is the ostensible purpose of Callaghan's crusade. How does it relate to reality?

First, of course, there is no doubt about the acuteness of the economic crisis.

This shows up dramatically in the sharp reversal of the upswing in capitalist industrial production which occurred in the middle of 1977.

Profound crisis

Industrial production is now lower in every major country except for West Germany, Japan and the USA.

This sharp industrial slump is new proot of the continued existence of a profound capitalist crisis.

It is also the result of the emergency "austerity" measures taken by capitalist governments in their desperate search for a cure to the crisis.

Callaghan's "theory" doesn't, of course, take into account that the policies which produce the gathering slump throughout the capitalist world are the necessary policies to raise productivity, "rationalise" capital and hold down wages which are demanded everywhere by capital. 15% Ti WORLD - PERCENTAGE CHANGE SAME QUARTER IN PREVIOUS YEAR 1964 '66 '68 '76 '78 SOURCE: LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL They are being loyally introduced by almost every capitalist government including the one which Callaghan himself leads.

In fact, Callaghan's "theory" is a deliberate cover-up for the responsibilities of his pro-capitalist coalition government.

Callaghan and the Labour leadership claim conveniently that Perc Britain Italy West Ge Holland Belgium change +33 +22 +29 +23 +20 rising unemployment (which has doubled since Wilson's government took office in 1974) and falling living standards of the last two years are simply the consequence of the depressed state of the world economy.

In this way they try to draw a protective veil over their own direct responsibility for unemployment and falling living standards. available montł PHOTO: Chris Davies, Report Callaghan and Healey luction, Compared Compared 1970 with one year ago These are in fact the direct result of the anti-working class policies pursued by the so-called Labour government.

They result, as Callaghan knows, from public spending cuts and wage control.

It is not, as Callaghan would fraudulently like to imply, the West German and Japanese governments which are to blame for the present economic situation of British workers.

It is his own squalid Tory policies-his refusal to resolve the for