We must apologise to our readors for returning to a thomo which wo discussed last week. As we were going to press, The Grand Council of the Federation of British Industrics was discussing a complex report by Mr. Hugh Wookes, the chairman of its pormanont economic study group, As we were putting the stamps on our envolopes, the Federation was announc= ing that it had failed, in the words of tho Financial Times, 'to find a quick mothod of regulating prices and profits.!
Mr. Weekes was not presiding over an undergraduate commission Indeed, his group was about as high-pressure a team as could bo assenb= led by all tho key omployers! associations of tho land. It included mombers of the F.B.I., tho Dritish Mmployors! Confodoration, tho Assoc= iation of Dritish Chambors of Commorco and the National Association of British Manufacturers. They had been working continuously since Jamiary, when the notion that employers should make thomsclves respons= ible for price restraint was canvassed, not for the first time, at tho N.B.D.C. Their rocommondations included 3 possible schemess for a scheme of rogistration of prices; for a variable profits tax schome; and for a mechanism for doaling with consumor complaints about prices. Mach of these alternatives was plausibly set outs and each was rejoctod on grounds which were, from the point of view of the rationality of capitalist production, equally plausible.
The Labour movemont should study these arguments, and study thom carefully. What altornative moasuros will Labour adopt to meot this problom? Harold Yilson, in an article in the Journal of the National Union of Genoral & Municipal Workors, outlines a 3-pronged attack on rising prices. This includes his policy ‘on interest rates, projected legislation to stabilise rents, and a campaign against the land racket. Timely though these measures may prove to bo, they are scarcely onough. A “fair & propor" incomes policy “related to national productivity" cannot possibly thrive on control of wages before they have been earned and profits after thoy have been garnored, and smuggled away into corners of the complicated accounts which capitalism may well try to hide in noxt two yoars or sO,
The workor in noo-capitalism has every reason to foar, not to welcome, increased productivity. This invariably rosults in tho increased power of capital to order him about, to control his movements, and ultimately, to dispossess him of his livelihood, It is not enough to call for 'retraining.' What is lacking, in this situation, even for a retrained worker, is control over his owm life and work. Cortainly we nocd more productivity: tut we mst also havo control over its the fruits of our additional offorts should be reinvested not at the whim of arbitrary rentiers and tycoons, but at our domocratic decision. Only in this way can man control the machines whose multiplication Wilson is rightly seeking. If the now Labour Government is to bogin the transit ion to socialism, then it must use the resources of its supporters as well as its fiscal oxports.
Workers! control over profit. levels is not a utopian demand in this case, but an economic and political necessity. The new era must become known as the time of the opening of tho soaled books. ‘hen the unions gain accoss to the accounts of the omployors, thoy have the koy to the future.