better their position on the market-above all in Germany-hope to enlarge their outlets yet again, thanks to the fixing of the parity of the franc. This is a shortsighted calculation. The policy of monetary stabilisation decided by the Bonn cabinet through pressure from the banks-risks turning into a recession in Germany. And a German recession means not an expansion of French exports but a decline.
"THE WORKERS MUST PAY"
The whole stabilizing mandeure much more fragile than in Autumn 68 and 69 has basically one aim: to make the working class, especially the American and West German working class pay for the costs of the struggle against inflation. But inflation is the cause and not the consequence of wage demands, although these are taken as the privileged targets of the "stabilizers". On this point at least the Nixon administration, and the regimes of Pompidou, Heath and Professor Schiller are unanimously agreed: "The Unions must moderate their demands":
The monetary crisis combined with a serious slowing down of economic growthithree major capitalist countrias are in recession now:the USA, Great Britain and Italy, and a fourth, Japan, is drewing closerl, narrows down the room for mandeuvre of "social conciliators". Hence the open attack on the right to strike in Great Britain. Hence the scarcely veiled threats of a similar attack in the US. In Germany the social democratic leaders will go on the offensive in the next few weeks, in order to "bring to reason" the trade unionist who is caught between two fires: the "moderating" prassure from Bonn and radicalizing" pressure from the base(wildcat and token strikes in Autumn 69 and Autumn 70).
It is useful to keep in mind that the functioning of the capitalist economy is not a simple result of automatic mechanisms. The class struggle and the revolutionary struggle affect its course. The crisis is not just a result of the exhaustion of reserves or the growing Internal contradictions of the system. It also reflects the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese masses which has cost imperialism tens of thousands of millions of dollars. It also reflects the revolutionary upsurge of May 68 in France, Italy's hot autumn, the wildcat strikes in Germany and throughout much of Europe, the growing militancy of British workers throughout 1970, It reflects an economic and social system whose very foundations are challenged more and more.
The long period of neo capitalist expansion and prosperity is over. Thin cows are replacing fat ones. And if fat cows couldn't stop May 68,thin cows will have a few other surprises in store for us. "The worker will pay?" But the western working class is not prepared to pay, It's not demoralised. It hasn't suffered big defeats. The decline of the dollar opens the road ro an increase in the struggles of the working class, including the American working class. The worsening international monetary crisis is a serious invitation to oppose the international struggle of the workers to the international speculation of capital.
10 May 1971