TEXTILE BOLTON DISTRICT ces up prices. So if there were a temporary increase in brusn producaon, creating more jobs, it would be paid for entirely by consumers - which is only another word for the working class. Import controls are just another capitalist method of making workers pay for the crisis - in this case by putting up prices and thus pushing down real wages.
The increase in prices also has another effect - and one which rapidly cancels out any jobs "saved' through import controls. Increasing prices, in a situation where wages are held down, simply mean that the working class is able to buy less. If workers are forced to pay more for buying British motorbikes instead of Japanese ones, and clothes made with British textiles instead of Pakistan ones, then this means that they will have less money to buy food or transport or televisions or any other goods, and workers will be laid off in these industries instead. JOBS NOT SAVED Jobs saved' in one industry are lost in another - which is another reason why the trade union bureaucrats favour import controls. They would much rather have motorbike workers save their jobs at the expense of food workers, or textile workers at the expense of electronics workers, than have them all saving their jobs at the expense of the employers! Import controls therefore do not directly "save' jobs at all - at best' they merely determine that workers in one industry rather than another lose their jobs.
The sophisticated argument for import controls, beyond the simple and completely false one that they directly save jobs, is that they create conditions in which the Government can 'reflate' the economy - that is, pump in huge quantities of money which increase demand for goods and therefore increase production, investment and employment. It is argued that without import controls such reflation is impossible, as it would intities of imports and make the balance of payments collapse. With import controls, however, the crisis of the balance of payments would be avoided, retlation could be carried out, and unemploynent would be reduced. Import controls, it is argued, would therefore indirectly save jobs. This argument, however, is just as full of holes as the one about import controls directly saving jobs UNEMPLOYMENT Firstly, what is reflation of the economy anyway? It is simply stoking up the rate of inflation still further in order to cut unemployment a bit. Not merely is this a policy which is in no way adequate to the needs of the working class - a 25 per cent rate of inflation is bad enough without cranking it up even further - but raging inflation leads anyway to an economic collapse and mass unemployment.
Secondly, serious reflation of the British economy today is impossible anyway. The crisis of capitalist profits, and financing of industry, is now so great that virtually no amoun of pumping money into the economy could bring about an increase in investment and therefore a serious expansion in production and employment.
Thirdly, the 'reflation" argument for import controls totally leaves out of account the question of retaliation by other capitalist states. If 'Britain' is going to keep out Japanese goods, then why won't they return the compliment and exclude British goods?
FALSE ARGUMENTS It is argued by the supporters of import controls that this would not occur. They point to the fact that no retaliation has taken place against small controls, such as that on Italian wine imposed by France, and that the last Labour Government got away with impos ing a 15 per cent import surcharge
ctober 1975 INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP SAYS • 35 HOUR WEEK - NO LOSS OF PAY • Nationalise all firms creating redundancies • Full pay for the unemployed The strike and occupation by 360 workers in the tools packing department of the private right to work 7 Photo: JOHN STURROCK (Report