THE TUC now favours agreement on an incomes policy With use cover lucill government has to implement a 'planned Tom Jackson, the right-wing leader of told delegates: have is a planned economy with incomes unplanned. It is a pipe-dream to believe that anywhere in the world there is a society that plans for the future, and makes no plans for incomes. But planning is not possible under capitalism:
Every system mechanism for deciding how to allocate society's resources. Under capitalism this mechanism is profit rates. with a high rate of profit attract investment, une rest are starvca.
In such a set-up there is no possibility of planning the relationship between production and people's needs. It is only after LiVeLicit iș made know whether they can sell what is produced.
Periodically, the rush of investment into particular sectors leads to a situation of that the next Economic put on short-time.
Workers. •What Congress cannot deciding resources profit.
For not this have have shown, Those sectors and that the capitalists In shis sense, overproduction of the sort we have today — where goods cannot be sold at a price capable of giving the expected return on investment. Investment therefore dries up.
activity declines, factories close, millions are thrown out of work or This is an inevitable consequence of the allocation society's according to what makes a The only 'planning' individual firms can do or want to do is that which maximises profit. The question of whether will coincide, with people's needs is left to a pious hope.
But as the last 130 years of capitalism the systematic creation of amidst plenty is an inevitable periodic feature of capitalism. Governments which administer capitalism can only alleviate the effects of crisis. They cannot force investment.
All they can do is to create the most favourable conditions for making profits.
incomes policy Coll nothing more than wage restraint.
Today a planned economy is not only within our grasp, it is vital to overcome the twin scourges of mass unemployment and
Arguments for Socialism
inflation. Workers have a whole host of unmet needs. schools, hospitals - let alone the good things of life.
But the unemployment goes hand-in-hand with a cut-back in the construction of hospitals and houses and the production of the commodities we need. But remember, it was the last Labour government, with its social contrick of wage restraint, which made all these things of the '30s respectable again which fits production to people's needs, a system based on the profit motive has to be SHANIC Only dustries only when the banks could real planning begin.
That would need dedicated to taking on and defeating the be power of the bosses. In that system wages could be planned to rise systematically in line with the cost of living and the develop ing wealth of society.
Polish workers demanded.
Socialist Challenge RIP OFF LANs roMa ThE TOd produced Challenge Communications. Articles deal of nationalised A new pamphlet has been by Socialist workers a meeting last week between management and the union representatives. The again rejected although it involved offers of lump payments delegates cabled the . TGWU headquarters, notitying their decision