which are available show, as we point out below, how easy it is in economic terms Ministry of Industry, would show a thousand times more clearly what is possible. The opening of the capitalist books would reveal hundreds of thousands of sources of wealth which capitalism cannot or will not develop. Unfortunately the labour leaders don't even allocate one thousandth of their resources to this.
There is of course a reason why the trade unions and Benn do not allocate even a tiny part of their resources to exposing the utter irrationality and anarchy of capitalism and producing concrete alternatives. That reason is because they have no intention whatever of really fighting to end capitalism in Britain. Instead of fighting for socialism they put forward reactionary and absurd ideas, such as that Britain should leave the EEC and remain a capitalist economy protected by import controlswith perhaps just a little bit of tinkering around with private industry through a National Enterprise Board.
The Labour right has no trouble whatever in showing that this would bring on a collapse of investment, soaring unemployment, inflation going through the roof and an economic crisis rivalling that of the 1930s. All that the Labour left can say is that the working class should accept a massive cut in its standard of living in order to defend the idea of national sovereignty'. Not unnaturally, the working class is not attracted by this prospect. It is for this reason, because only a socialist alternative can actually win on 5 June, that the Labour left has so far been knocked from pillar to post in the referendum campaign.
But in fact it is relatively easy to show a socialist alternative. The International Marxist Group has already argued many times for the chief immediate measures which must be taken -automatic compensation of wages for increases in inflation, automatic increases in public expenditure to compensate for rising prices, work-sharing with no loss of pay, and a campaign of public works to eliminate unemployment. We have collected together here just the simplest and most striking figures on how this can be financed. Naturally these figures cannot be taken as exactly what could be achieved; in most cases they are under-estimates, but many other factors-such as sabotage of a large section of the economy by the capitalists, or foreign blockades-could intervene. Nevertheless they do show clearly how there exists even an economic alternative to capitalism and the EEC-and of course the case for socialism is not just economic- which, if campaigned for, would send the Labour right and the capitalist class reeling.
• BRITAIN AND THE • WORLD ECONOMY A British withdrawal from the EEC of course could not mean withdrawing from the international economy. Britain is deeply linked to the world economy in a thousand ways and senses.
In the immediate term, the danger for a socialist Britain is tnat a capitalist boycott could drive the economy down to far lower levels of output than at present. But there are several reasons to think that this is not at all inevitable as a capitalist response. Firstly, Britain is a major economic power and the ending of trade would hurt the boycotters far more than a boycott of a country such as Chile or Cuba.
Secondly, while a capitalist boycott could do damage, it could not wreck the economy when Britain would meet gigantic political resistance from the working class of all countries.
Apart from the political impact, which would be gigantic, even Britain's imperial heritage could be used here. The simple act of giving up all foreign capital investments and total military withdrawal from abroad would generate huge enthusiasm in the working class of the How would the trade which is necessary for a planned economy in Britain be financed? Despite all the protestations of Roy Jenkins, this poses no insuperahle problem at all. Very interesting calculations have been done by the Cambridge economist Bob Rowthorne showing how abandonment of the international role of the City of London and loss of all the revenues from foreign investment would amount to about £880 million a year. This is not a small sum. But it is only just a little larger than exports of goods in a fortnight and only equivalent to about 14% of the economy. It could be entirely financed, in a way to everybody's benefit, by reducing unemployment by about 400,000 and selling the additional output abroad:
In fact the loss would be much less, since offset against this loss of revenue must be put the savings of a Britain which had broken from capitalism. Abandoning all military bases abroad would by itself save £200 million. Pulling out of the EEC would also lead to a considerable saving the official Treasury estimate, which is almost certainly an underestimate, is that by 1980 the annual contribution of Britain to the EEC budget will be f400 million. If you subtract these two savings from the other losses. it means only a cost of about £280 milliononly 1½% of total exports, and equivalent to the output of only 100,000 workers out of a workforce of over 20 million.
Of course it is hard to be exact on all these calculations. If, for example, the capitalist powers were to destroy large sections of the merchant navy, which accounts for four times as much export income as the City, then things would be much worse. If, as is more likely, a socialist Britain emerged as part of a tremendous international revolutionary wave in which other workers' states developed in Europe, then the entire problem of international economy would be solved at one stroke. But in any case even the figures here show that there is no real international economic problem about a socialist alternative for Britain.
And it is in the international economy that the real obstacles arise. The problems here would be amply compensated for by what could be achieved even in economic terms through the elimination of the anarchic and irrational economic system of capitalism.
• NO TO CAPITALIST WASTE • The inequalities and waste of capitalism are well known. Some of them are absurd and others positively obscene. For example the investiture of the Prince of Wales cost £1 million with £30,000 going on temporary toilets alone. Yet in Wales neatly a third of the houses are over 80 years old and there are 37,000 houses with no inside toilets.
Other absurdities of capitalism are less well load of hogwash-there is no shortage of oil whatever, and the high prices are almost entirely due to the vast increases in profits gained by the oil companies in the last year.
Yet at the same time as it carries on this hullabaloo, capitalism utilises the supposedly scarce and expensive oil in projects which from 1 any rational point of view are virtually complete waste. For example, well over 10 per cent of all oil consumption in the United States is calculated to be on military projects and another 15½ per cent on advertising, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and business services whose sole reason for existing is to service a specifically private ownership based economy. In short, if the real problem was lack or cost of oil then consumption could be cut by anything up to a quarter by the simple expedient of getting rid of these capitalist needs. The elimination of these absurdities and inequalities of capitalism is justifiable on any moral system whatever. However, in itself the mere elimination of these inequalities would not be a sufficient reason for overthrowing capitalism. It is not worth going through all the upheaval of a socialist revolution just to stop capitalists having cigars or Rolls;Royces. It is the real effects of capitalism in unemployment, fascism, war and its other forms of barbarism which is the justification for ending the rule of the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, having decided to remove capitalism, there is no doubt that vast economic resources can be released by ending the parasitic role of the ruling class and its hangers on.
• WASTE • The waste represented by luxury spending by the ruling class is colossal in every capitalist country. For example, the famous American economist Kuznets calculated even for the year 1948 that the 5 per cent of Americans who declared the highest incomes received 18 per cent of the entire revenue of the United States. This sum came to 40,000 million dollars. Their average income was five times that of the average income of ordinary American taxpayers If that five times had been reduced to only three times as much as the average then that. would have released 22,000 million dollars for productive consumption in the United States.
In Britain the situation is, if anything, even more unequal. If really tough measures were taken-for example, the elimination of all incomes of over £75 a week-this would save £2,400 million a year for use in other ways. It would be more than sufficient to double house building or would allow pensions to be increased by three quarters. Even if much less drastic measures were adopted, and higher pay was allowed for highly trained specialists and for workers such as miners who did dangerous jobs, then this would still allow £1,400 million to be saved. Even if only the absolutely very richest are considered we still find that in 1970 there were 8,926 people with incomes exceeding £20,000 a year and getting between them a grand total of t275 million. This was considerably more than the total expenditure of "ll the loon authoritiee in the countrv on The second colossal cost imposed by capitalism is military expenditure. Of course a workers state in Britain would need to spend money on defence against imperialist attacks But absolutely gigantic savings are possible compared with capitalism and its imperialist requirements-and above all from an army whi can't defend anybody except the capitalists.
• MILITARY EXPENDITURE• The defence budget at present is £4,000 million a year. This goes to keep armed force of 370,000 people whose sole real role is to repress the Irish, bolster up the imperialist military alliance of NATO in West Germany, garrison foreign bases in Cyprus, Singapore, Malta, Hong Kong etc. and supply weapons a men to the utterly reactionary Sheiks of the Arab Gulf. The cost of all this is gigantic. Since the Second World War Britain has spent over £80,000 million on arms-well over £5,6 for every family of four.
E HONELESS PEOPLE
UNEMPLOVED BUILDERS SOMEBODY IS MAD !!