another.
Dangerous illusions would be spread if workers were made to believe that the dragon of inflation could be vanquished if finance ministers who are the "monopolies" lackeys' wete replaced by progressive" finance ministers; or if the politics of disarmament and detente" were followed through; or if profit margins were reduced.
The unpleasant truth is that there is no way of halting inflation without suppressing the capitalst system. The only conditions in which contemporary capitalism, if really pushed, could moderate inflation would be conditions disastroas for the working-class: massive unemployment and the freezing of wages. But experience has taught, that even in this case, the infernal inflation engne would only slow down, and bot come to a stop.
A particularly pernicious idea that i expounded by bourgeois experts and taken up by the reformist wing of the labour movement is that workers must be prepared to make certain sacrifices to stop inflation, an it hits them harder than any other class in society. This piece of mysfification produces concrete measures comes policies and the compulsory mitation for one made with the consent of the trade union bureaucracy) of cash wage increases, supposedly matched by a control of prices and bosses' incomes.
in practice, the bourgeoss state can only electively control wages and this only if the unions and the wotkers let them do so, No bourgeois government has so far succeedad in efectively reducing prices or profit margins. In the capitalist economy, the bourgeoisie has a thousand different ways of cooking its books, of manipulating profits and of raising prices, in spite of all the legal measures of a freeze. The scarecrow of prices and profits conttol" is only put up to cheat the workers, to push them on into exchanging their birth-right the freedom to negotiate wages with the bosses. backed by their organised force-for a mess of pottage.
Inflation is undoubtedly a sickness whose effects hit the workers. But the workers must not sacrifice their immediate interests on the altar of the fight against inflation', for that would mean becoming caught up in a redistribution of national income to the detriment of wage-earners and to the advantage of capitalist profits.
All incomes policies that claim to control at the same time", wages, prices and profits, inevitably become, under capitaliam, a meuns of policing wager, pure and rimple. Workers and unions must reject, unconditionally and without reservation, any appeal to a 'Tight agrinst inflation', because it is a weapon of capital in the class struggle against labour..
Inflation will be finally throttled when capitalism is overthrown and workers hold economic and political power. But until then, the task is not to sacrifice workers' interests in the name of an abstract principle (limitbuying power against the effects of inflation. out the world. Examples of struggles for the sliding scale, either within single firnis or branches of industry, or on a national trade level, are numerous. Experience has shown workers that the defence and protection of their huying power through use of the sliding scale represents the first (and most indispensable) means of self-defence when faced ing of prices.
a sliding scale would "defuse' the workers struggles, through removing the stimulus for a fight for wage increases, is contradicted by practice.
a sliding scale is in operation, either in whole or in part, are certainly es and other struggles is lower than that of countries where the workers do not yet enjoy a sliding scale. In reality, a sliding scale does not act as a substitute for struggles over wage increases. On the contrary, it creates the necessary conditions for such struggles. What is today, in the age of permanent inflation, called a struggle for wage increases is nine ing inflation) but of defending workers times out of ten, an attempt to catch up with the tising cost of living, that and not to increase the buying power becomes an automatic process, through contracts guaranteeing a sliding scale, then the struggle for real increases in buying power can begin, EXPERIENCE contracts, in many industries and Several countries, shows tbat in the age of permanent and accelerating sistent efforts (often succesaful) on the of wages to the cost of living is synonymous with a fall in the buying power of wage carners. The Institute of Social and Economic Studies al the very conservative University of Louvain in Belgium has calculated that Belgian workers, even though they enjoy a sliding scale, bave still lost 3% of their buying power in the Last two years, due to the fact that wage adjustments have not kept pace with the price index To be sure, an automatic adjustment of wages to prices each time the latter rise above a certain 'threshold' level is a step in the direction of a with the more and more rapid rocketThe argument according to which Countries like Italy or Belgium where not places where the number of striknegotiations. is to say, it is a struggle to re-establish of wages. When this re-establishment"
The experience of many collective Intlation, any delay in the adjastment Apart from the disgraceful policies sliding scale that musn't be dismissed But these measures do not yet repres ent an effective sliding scale properly speaking. In the first place because any price increase lower than the threshold does not lead to any wage increases, even though it of course means a loss of buying power for wage-earners. Secondly, because it constitutes a real invitation for Govern ments and the bourgeois state apparat us to manipulate the official price index, keeping it just below the threshold that would set off an automatic adjustment of wages.
A true sliding scale thus means the automatic adjustinent (say cach Increases, without the interference of E month of money wages to all price any kind of threshold limitation. In this way, the integrity of workers" buying power can be preserved, as the Belgian gas and electricity work ers have shown after their last wage However, for this integrity to be wholly safeguarded, the effects of taxation upon workers' buying power have also to be taken into account. At one time, the labour movement stood by the notion that indirect taxes hit poorer people more, whereMass meeting of Wick man's strikers in Coventry decides to continue struggle for back-dated the jailed at Shrewsbury remain in prison.
Of course there are many more problems facing the working class than can be deail with at a one-day conference: the need to campaign for the withdrawal of troops from Ireland; the fight for equal pay, the fight to protect wages trom inflation, the Act struggle against racism; the strugele for the nationalisation of the key sections of the economy.
But the conference organisers have put some of the most important questions on the agenda. On each and every one of these decisive action can and must be organised CLAY CROSS: the fight of the Clay Cross councillors served us a beacon for all chose engaged in the fight aguinst the Tory Government. The campaign to hit the surcharges and other penalties imposed on the Clay Cross counciliors must be stepped up. and must be linked lo the fight for decent housing for all, which tenants associations and squatters groups are waging across the country Local Labour parties, trades coun cils, and other working class bodies should link up with chese groups to inuediately get underway a camNALGO warkers have sought to close gap thr as direct (income) taxes tended to hit the rich. The first part of this notiog is still correct to-day but the second is less so. The growing burden of direct taxation in the last decades has above all operated through crease taxes won wages ane salaries. At present. in a lot of capitalist countries, workers not paign of demonstrations, strikes, and direct action to demand: * immediate lifting of all penalties imposed on the Clay Cross councillors *scrapping of all rent increases imposed under the Housing Finance * expropriation by direct action, with the co-operation and support of Labour councils, of all property in the hands of speculators to provide decent bousing for all those in need * a crash building programme of new council houses SHREWSBURY AND THE NIRC: the fight to free the Shrewsbury 6 and the strugale of the AUEW against the NIRC, are both attempts to reconquer the hasic rights of trade unionism which came under attaci from the Tory Government. The Labour Government has shamelessly tetreated trom this fight, in its decision to uphold Phase 3, in its refusal to free the Shrewsbury prisoners, abd in its back-down on the question of the picketing laws in the face of Tory and Liberal Parliamentary opposition
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responsible for inflation. The ruthless profiteering of the monopolies? The armaments trade? All these aspects of present day capitalism have their place and are intimately linked with one
Taxation and State benefits