Let’s have common ownership, not Common Market
A pathetic spectacle provided by the reformist parties and their satellites as they work themselves into a lather over the issues thrown up by capitalism. They fall for it every time. Whether it be the balance of payments, export-chasing, or gold reserves, at the drop of a hat they form up into positions and start to do battle for the capitalist class, whose interests alone are involved.
Capitalism has always provided plenty of distractions to take working class attention away from the real issue, and every time the self-styled leaders of the workers have proclaimed them as vital issues that will lastingly effect the future course of history.
The Common Market is just another distraction. The arguments for and against joining are equally irrelevant. One thing is certain, that the real issue has not been and is not being debated by the pundits of the “left” and “right”.
Capitalism often produces strange bedfellows, but when the mutual commitment to capitalism of both “left” and “right” wing groups is understood, it is not surprising to find the so-called Communist Party and National Front in the same camp, and the Trotskyists trailing along as usual behind the Tribune set, with Enoch Powell thrown in for good measure. The Labour Party front bench, which maintained a precarious unity while in power, have gone their different ways. Wilson complains loudly about “knives” and “hatchets”, but is not listened to by Roy Jenkins, Michael Stewart or Lord George Brown. The petty demagogues line up in a power struggle inside the Labour Party, as Michael Foot seeks to purge pro-market members from the shadow cabinet.
The two sides bicker incessantly about the “terms”, about New Zealand, and the possibility of better pickings for British capitalism elsewhere. None of these things is of the least concern to the working class. And, by working class, we do not mean the wage-slaves of just Britain and Europe, but of the entire world. What then is the real issue?
Throughout the world the means of production are concentrated in the hands of an owning minority — the capitalist class. This means that the vast majority own nothing but their physical and mental abilities to work. They must sell these abilities for wages or salaries in order to live. This vast non-owning majority is the working class. There is an antagonism of interests between the capitalist class owners and the working class non-owners since the fundamental relationship of capitalism, that of employer to employee, rests upon exploitation. The interest of the capitalist class is to maximise their profits and accumulate capital through the exploitation of wage-labour. To serve this interest, the whole world has been turned into a market for the profitable disposal of commodities (or wealth produced by wage-labour under conditions of private property and exploitation). The entire globe is the hunting ground for minerals and other resources to feed the hungry machines of industry, to keep up the flood of commodities and expand profits. The rivalry between national and international capitalists promotes their military power and fashions their alliances. War, like poverty, unemployment, slums and hunger, is inseparable from capitalism.
Both the pro- and anti-marketeers work on the same false assumptions, namely, that the market economy is indispensable, and, that there, is a unified national or European interest which workers and capitalists have in common. Socialists totally reject these assumptions. The interest of the working class is to end the system that exploits them; to abolish the employer-to-employee relationship; to do away with commodity production and get rid of the markets profits mad-house. This will mean the abolition of the wages-system and of buying and selling. In short, the interest of the working class, is to get rid of capitalism. The real issue is one of ownership. The workers in the six countries which at present belong to the EEC own none of the vast industrial or other resources of those countries. They are wage-slaves, just like the workers in Britain.
The only market that awaits British workers, like their European fellow-workers, is the labour-market, and the dictum “hired when it pays, fired when it doesn’t” will remain in force.
Instead of accepting the bogus arguments being trotted out by both sides, for and against joining, workers should be asking questions like: In or out of the Common Market, will wealth continue to accumulate in the hands of a few and will food still be destroyed while people starve? In or out of the Common Market, will poverty and insecurity continue to blight the lives of many millions ,both here in Britain and throughout the world? In or out of the Common Market, will H-Bombs remain both within Europe and outside to threaten the existence of mankind? In or out of the Common Market, will the massive power blocs, America, Russia, China, Japan and Europe, continue to struggle for advantage with war as their last desperate card?
These are questions which put the Common Market in its real capitalist perspective.
There are those who oppose entry because they fear loss of national identity. The workers have always been taught to be proud of their master’s country. If the barriers of nationalism are weakened through the EEC, this would not be a harmful effect, though there is little sign of it happening. All that is taking place is a grouping together of States, which has happened before, in earlier stages of capitalism, in America, Germany and Italy except that the EEC has yet to go for full political union.
Modern capitalism operates with such massive plant and investment levels that grouping together is the only way to stay in the big league. The military strategy of modern capitalism, and the costly technology of modern warfare, also dictate the coming together of groups of nations. If nationalism on the old scale diminishes, a continental scale of nationalism will develop as the rivalry between the emerging groups grows hotter.
What is really relevant to the world context in which we live today, is not new groupings, but a society without frontiers. Not bigger markets and fatter profits, but an end to all markets and all profits. Not the concentration of ever greater wealth into fewer hands, but the common ownership of the Earth and all its resources. This is the real issue which faces the workers of the world.
H.B.