oeuvres by British and foreign companies on trade and finance.
The answer to the problem of trade and payments is a state monopoly of foreign trade. This is both easily enforceable - not merely are the docks and airports easily dealt with, but a mere 100 firms account for 50 per cent of all exports and it would also ensure the control necessary to carry through domestic economic policies. ufacturing industry, are perfectly realisable in terms of resources proposals put forward in the labour movement suffer from three fatal weaknesses.
Firstly, they do not spell out clearly that real control can only finally be achieved through the nationalisation of the decisive sectors of industry of the 250-300 firms which dominate the British economy.
Secondly, the plans are not drawn up under the control of workers representatives but by bureaucratic machines in Whitehall. control of individual factories is excellent, but it comes to nothing if it is not linked to workers' control of the central economic decisions.
Thirdly, the present plans are simply not enforceable by the means which are proposed, and will simply be flouted by the capitalists..
In order to overcome these fatal weaknesses, and move towards read economic planning, at least the following steps are vital:
(a) Establishment of a central planing organisation of the trade unions and labour moveHowever the present Comic plan.
Workers'
trol of the finance system through its nationalisation is a number one priority for any econ(c) Open the books and place industry un- movement. der workers' control: Within the labour movement workers' control is far too often treated as some sort of 'optional extra' which can be added on as a 'luxury' after nationalisation and the establishment of a planned economy. The reality, however, is that there is no possibility of extensive nationalisation or plan ning without first securing workers control.
SABOTAGE
The reason for this is very simply: every historical example of a left-wing government - whether Chile under Allende or Portugal today - shows that radical socialist measures in the economy met with economic sabotage by the capitalists. Even such a compalauvely small measure as nationalisation of the steel industry in 1950-51 was met with capitalist sabotage in Britain. Certainly any attempt today to carry out any form economic planning or radical measures of nationalisation will can smash the state resistence with which, as in Chile, the ruling class will threaten the labour NO SUBSTITUTE Many of the proposals we have put forward - for example the sliding scale of wages, smashing of the Healey wage cuts, nationalisation of firms creating redundancy - can and must must be fought for as aims in the present trade union struggles; while others require the constitution of a government acting in the interests of the working class. But all must be fought for in the understanding that to put forward a generalised economic policy is not a substitute for the struggle here and now, but is an indispensable means of strengthening and giving direction to the day-to-day struggles It will be the ability to connect the general line of advance to the massive struggles of the working class which will take place against the capitalist crisis and the Healey measures that will be the vital test for socialists in the coming months. A struggle without a general pol-