Under Lord McGowan, the present head of I.C.I., the combine has fulfilled the anticipations of the writer quoted above. Lord McGowan, rebutting a charge made in U.S.A. that I.C.I. and the American chemical combine, Du Pont’s, had instructed their representatives in South America to continue co-operation with representatives of a German corporation in Chile and Bolivia after the outbreak of the war, issued a statement in January, 1944, in which he said that “for over 40 years I.C.I. (or its predecessor companies) have pursued a policy of co-operating with the great American chemical firm Messrs. E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co. . . . “ (quoted in Labour Research Dept. Fact Service 14 January, 1944), while the Observer (23 January, 1944) stated that close association between I.C.I. and the German combine I.G. Farbenindustrie A.. existed before the war.

It is a far cry from the late Sir Alfred Mond’s eulogy of competition to his successor Lord McGowan’s statement to the company in May, 1944, attacking what he called competition “carried to extremes.” The Times (13 May, 1944) said, of this statement :– “He has lost none of his mistrust of competition ‘carried to extremes’” ; but The Times went on to say that inquiry is warranted “into what is meant” by that phrase. The Manchester Guardian of the same date quotes Lord McGowan as having declared his belief in international agreements with private groups abroad “as instruments of world rationalisation of industry”, and as having expressed the fear that without such co-ordination this industry would “suffer the economic anarchy of cut-throat competition.”

Lord Melchett, director of I.C.I. and son of the late Sir Alfred Mond, had likewise repudiated his father’s declared belief in competition, for in 1935 he introduced into the House of Lords the “Industrial Re-organisation (Enabling) Bill” (which however was not passed). The object of the Bill was to give the majority of owners in any industry the legal power to force re-organisation on the industry notwithstanding the opposition of a minority with the object, among others, of “eliminating wasteful competition”.

In short when capitalists used to attack Socialism for being against competition, they held that competition was “the breath and soul of human endeavour” ; but when, in the course of the natural capitalist development towards monopoly, these same capitalists have done their utmost to eliminate competition they denounce it as “cut-throat” and as “economic anarchy”.

An interesting sidelight on the I.C.I. is that when, in 1892, Frederick Engels wrote about the early trend towards monopoly, in his Socialism Utopian and Scientific, he referred to the formation in 1890 of United Alkali, a merger of 48 English alkali concerns (Allen & Unwin edition, pp. 68-69). The capital of United Alkali was £6,000,000, a very large amount in those days, but United Alkali was one of the companies which in 1926 merged into I.C.I. and that company now has an increased capital of £74,000,000, owned by 180,000 shareholders, and employs 100,000 workers in its home factories alone (Manchester Guardian, 13 May, 1944).