OUT OF Keith Joseph collecting the Aims for Enterprise award from Margaret Thatcher at Free Enterprise Day on 1 July The prophets of mass unemplovment - who turned up in 2s chautteur ariven noiss not to mention the dag and Daimlers — had a nice lunch: mousse de saunon, selle d'agneau rotie, tarte a l'orange grand marnier avec offer available. It will pay him to spend time searching through the labour market rather than take the first job that turns up....search effort and experiments with different jobs are particularly important for young people at the start of a career, so it is not surprising that teenage 'unemployment' tends to be higher than for adults' (p33). So the most demoralising form of unemployment - going straight from school to the dole queue - isn't really an evil at all but a splendid opportunity PLENTY OF JOBS By these and other similar miraculous calcu lations, Brittan succeeds in 'proving' that in March 1972, when there were over a million on the dole, unemployment was really only As for July 1974, when there were over 600,000 on the dole, Brittan claims that there were really 'two unfilled jobs for every All this would seem merely the ravings of a madman if it were not for the fact that Brittan proposes in all seriousness that unem ployment should be calculated on this basis What is more, there is every chance that the next Tory Government will indeed adopt a method of calculating' unemployment similar to the Brittan model Sir Keith Joseph has already publicly endorsed it. In such an Alice in Wonderland world, mass unemployment will never be able to NO ANSWER Faced with the reactionary economic arguments and politics of the monetarists, the liberal and reformist economic advisers of the labour leaders have retreated in confusion.
These people never adhered to Marxism.
Instead, they preferred the 'theories of Keynes, whose essence was that the way to gress.
machine. tackle the mass unemployment of the twenties and thirties was not through wage-cutting, but through boosting the purchasing power of the mass of people - for example, through higher wages and benefits and programmes of public works, which would increase the demand for industrial production and so create jobs.
But the disease of Keynesianism is inflation. Such a policy could work in a time of continued overall expansion of the capitalist world market. None of the post-war recessions faced by individual capitalist countries turned into anything like the depression of the inter-war years, each was met by a policy of credit relaxation and increases in government spending which provided the basis for another bout of inflation-based growth. When inflation got out of hand, each country would apply its own anti-inflation policy.
But as soon as inflation accelerated simultaneously in all imperialist countries, all capitalist governments were forced to apply antiinflationary policies at the same time, leading to the present generalised world recession.
To continue to inject vast amounts of money into a capitalist economy in this changed situation can only lead to an even bigger wave of speculative and unproductive spending, causing inflation to spiral still higher The channelling of vast public funds into productive investment without inflation could only be guaranteed in a democratically planned nationalised economy - in other words, in a workers' state. And that is one thing our Keynesian labour leaders do not want.
Consequently, on the question of inflation, the monetarists - while not understanding the root causes of inflation - can knock the Keynesians all over the place. Faced with a crisis of their economic formulae, the Keynesians simply resort to witchcratt, blaming the working class for inflation and calling for This is the line of the Labour leadership. They pose this as an alternative to mass unemployment, but the reduction of living standards - whether it is initiated through mass unemployment or through incomes policy - will itself lead to further prolonged mass unemployment. That is the extent of the choice that bourgeois economics and the capitalist system offers the working class unless it imposes its own solution to the crisis.
WORKERS PLAN
Such a solution would have to include extensive measures of nationalisation under workers' control; the boosting of public spending to defend and extend the welfare services; and the protection of living standards against inflation through a sliding scale of wages. But although these and similar measures are the only way jobs and living standards can possibly be defended in the capitalist crisis, no talk of how to achieve them through the independent mobilisation of the working class will be heard at this week's Trades Union ConThis is because the leaders of the TUC, the "lefts" and the Communist Party stand in awe of the power of the capitalist class and its state A successful fight to defend jobs and living standards would bring about a confrontation for which these traitors are not willing to prepare the working class. But a the Brittans, Friedmans, Josephs and Powells come out of the cave, the choice is starkly