But faced with the Juarter of 197 cholee between the devil and the deep JAPAN UNITED STATES BRITAIN WEST GERMANY The present recession is a gigantic FRANCE social crisis as well as an economic one. CANADA education and housing is occurring at - 1969. real wages. The number of new hous eight months. post-wat boom.
insoluble.
ndustrial Production in the Fourt JAPAN BRITAIN FRANCE to adequate sewage facilities as late For the countries of the so-called "Third World' the coat of the crisis is measured in life itself. It is calculated that to prevent mass starvation in India, Bangladesh, Tanzania, and the countries of the Sahel desert strip in Africa, eight million tons of wheat are needed in the next According to the Warhington Post (21 October 1974) if, during the period: 1969-32, the United States, Argentina, Australia and Canada had simply maintained a constant level of cultivation, the extra production of wheat would have been approxImately ninety million tons. But such a policy was not in the interests of the great capitalist cereal farmers and exporters: by cutting back production they were able to keep up their prices and profits.
It is not at all an exagseration to say that the millions of human beings who are threatened with scarvation in he coming months will have been murdered by the prott laws of the market economy - the same cconomy which produces the miseries of unemployment rampant inflation und crumbling welfare services in the West. BLOW TO REFORMISTS This generalised recession is dealing hammer blows to all reformist and gradualist illusions about the allegedly infinite capacities of adapcion' of the capitalist system. It confirins what revolutionury Marxists have proc aimed, even at the height of the The leopard has not changed his spots. Capitalism is still capitalism. Its internal contradictions remain If a return to unemployment, to graver and graver recessions. to galloping intation, to lamine throughout the world, to misery that can reappear on a grand scale even in the imperialist countries is to be Ancost Hates of Consumer Price Incrense According t6 Gificial Statinies in Thire Quarter of 1974 23.4% 70.83 UNITED STATES WEST GERMANY become more and more explosive - ther it is possible that the imperinlist bourgeoisie during the next lew years may for a second Lime have recourse to the 'remedies' with which it 'resolved" the crisis of the 1930s Capitalism will then seek to inflict a very heavy defeat on the working class, to raise the rate of profit through super-exploitation of the workers, and to stabilise this system through a *strong state' or even through a feracious dictatorship. It would once uguin take the course of war.
These would be remedies infinitel more catastrophic during the epoch of nuclear and biological weapons than they were during the epoch of Hitler, Thus, the genernlised recession also recalls the timelessness of the burning alternative: socialism or barbariss.
ITE GENLRABZED
RECESON OTHE INTERNATIONAL CATERIST ECONONY E4 tor 1 year irom: INPRECOR, 97 Cale danian Roed, Landon, N.1.
Current issue 45p tine. pipl from Red Books, B7 Caledonian Road, London, N.1
----- pull-quotes -----
SUBSCRIBE TO inprecor