3y Martin Thomas

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of total industrial output. It now receives only one-third of all industrial investment.

Today's investment is tomorrow's production. So what has "tomorrow" perenially brought for British bosses? Between 1955 and 1965 capacity grew by 3.5% and from 1965 te 1975 by 2.5%. Today it is well under 2%.

These realities represent a time bomb under Thatcher's bed. For there is now a real capacity limit to growth if the economy did start to expand: over a broad range of products, the plant and machinery (and soon even the skills) will not be there to meet So the crisis of UK capitalism is a crisis of underproduction -not as the Tories tell us - a crisis of overmanning.

The story of BL during 1970s is confirmation of this.

Twelve years ago, the motor industry employed 500,000 people directly and indirectly, and say, four times that number in supplier firms.

The UK built over two million vehicles. (1.6 million cars) and exported 827,000 of them. Imports were around 20%. The total UK build was a quarter of the EEC six's 7.9 million and ran a European third after Germany reign at BL, is the recent application for area development status for the West Midlands!

Indeed it has been this goal of "de-manning/increasing productivity per man" that has underpinned the whole gamut of formulae from the Participation Committees of Ryder to the Corporate Plan of Edwardes, that has been thrown at the BL workSteel The same story also holds true for the steel and shipbuilding sectors. In 1948 the UK made two-thirds as much steel as the original EEC six - 15 million tonnes.

Thirty five years later the UK was still making 15 million tonnes - but the EEC six were making 108 million tonnes with Germany contributing 41 million.

The Tories say there is gross overcapacity in the industry -but capitalist investment starvation has demolished the manufacturing base that should be the source of demand for steel. The evaporation of Britain's shipyards is another classic case of this.

In 1950 Britain had 25% of the world market. Indeed in the following 25 years, annual gross world tonnage grew from five million to 35 million yet Britain's market share dwindled to 4%.

In 1981 the UK turned out Britain's). "The world recession' does not just operate through impersonal forces. It means governments and employers across the world carrying out attacks in their countries like the Tories' and the bosses' in Britain.

The answer is to change the world - to get rid of the Tories, their counterparts in other countries, and the system they represent.

In the meantime?

We can start on changing the world by changing Britain. Anyway, although a workers' government in Britain alone • would be severely limited by the world economy, it could deal with unemployment.

Massive resources are wasted by unemployment itself, or remain in the hands of speculators, profiteers, and financiers. They can be mobilised and redirected to planned reconstruction, development of new industries, retraining, and expansion of public services -on condition that the bulk of industry and the banks is in the hands of the workers' government.

How can you put faith in nationalisation to solve unemployment, when you look at the jobs cut in nationalised steel, car, coal, and rail indus. tries?

There's a difference between state-capitalist nationalisation and socialist nationalisation. In steel, BL, coal, and rail, nationalisation meant the state bailing out failing capitalists, taking over the job of ruthless rationalisation and running these basic industries on behalf of the capitalist class as a whole.

What we need is to extend nationalisation into the profitable sectors, win workers' control, and develop the industries within an integrated workers' plan.

What about new technology? When one silicon chip can replace a dozen workers, isn't unemployment inevitable?

Not at all. New technology creates unemployment only because of the capitalist way in which it is used - as an instrument to make a reduced workforce work even harder while growing dole queues increase the capitalist's power over employed workers.

In a socialist economy, new technology would mean more wealth produced with less effort and shorter work hours, and more resources free for services like éducation and health.

How do we get from Tory Britain 1983 to • a socialist economy?

The first step is to mobilise the Labour vote on June 9. Not because a Labour government would introduce socialism: special unemployed associations. Unorganised, the unemployed get demoralised and split up, and can be used by employers against employed workers. Organised, they can be a tremendous force fighting together with employed workers to maintain existing jobs and win new ones.

If properly organised, the unemployed could also bust up the government's attempts to fob them off and exploit them with cheap labour schemes, and instead force it to create proper public projects and expanded public services at trade union rates of pay.

What about import controls as an immediate measure. Wouldn't they help?

No. At best import controls are an attempt to export unemployment to workers in other countries, and usually they don't succeed even in doing that.

We live in a world economy today. Protectionism is an attempt to turn the clock back. It's not an alternative to capitalist crisis, only a way of making it worse.

For workers facing moves by employers and the government to cut their jobs, the call for import controls is a blind alley. It diverts them away from struggle against the people who are cutting their jobs, to unity with those people against an unidentified foreign enemy. And it cuts across the international workers' unity which is more and more essential this age of the multinationals.