Socialist Organiser

The weekly of the fused Workers Socialist League, July 1981 to April 1984

Mauro' Misses

Socialist Organiser no. 51, 3 September 1981 · scan p. 4 · about 320 words

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provoke.

They, and some of the imperialist governments, whine and bleat about the brutality of their apartheid government. But no capitalist whines at the profits of this system of cheap labour.

And it is only through vicious repression and the system of migrant labour that the massive exploitation of black workers - and therefore the massive profits for the capitalists is possible.

The class which lives off and grows rich from the exploitation of workers can never be the real ally of the black workers in South Africa. It is only the working class in Britain and internationally which can ever be relied on for support.

JIM FARNHAM THE Guillotine will be scrapped. A dozen big indusrial groups plus the big private banks will be nationalised.

France's top-heavy adminstrative system will be decentralised. Work will be suspended on some nuclear power stations. Some reforms are planned for immigrant workers.

The first hundred days of the Socialist-led government have not been empty. Last Wednesday, August 26, a major programme of legislation was announced for the coming months.

But it has one big gap. Unemployment continues to rise in France, and inflation continues to cut workers' living standards. And Mitterrand's measures fail to touch those problems.

The legal minimum wage has been increased. But Mitterrand's election promise of progress towards a 35-hour week has produced no result beyond a 39 hour week.

And with all the loopholes in the law, that does not mean much. There has been a legal working week have still been doing 50 or 60 hours.

The government's other policy for jobs is... subsidies to private business.

For the present, Mitterrand and Mauroy have stocks of unexhausted credit with the French working class. And though the right wing press is screaming loudly, privately the bosses are not very worried either.

But neither side's goodwill will last forever - or even very long, in capitalism's present world crisis.

← Contents of Socialist Organiser no. 51

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