Europe: The Radical Challenge, by Hugh Thomas (Quartet Books, 50p)/Pauline Ryan When the ruling class makes a major change of orientation and policy it is not unusual for the subservient intelligentsia to fall over one another with eagerness to provide the necessary ideological backing. Britain sjoining the Common Market is no exception.
Professor Hugh Thomas's book is undoubtedly only the first in a coming deluge of works all enthusiastically extolling the virtues of the prostitution of intellectual faculties, the result is a masterpicce of superticiality.
SOCIAL FORCES Thomas has divided his book into three basic paris dealing with the political, social, and understand social forces and the historical backdrop against which they operate comes. out here much more clearly than in has earber work The Spanish Civil Wor, where this failing was somewhat obscured by the meticulous attention to detail.
This failing comes out particularly clearly u the first section on the political position which although making up nearly half the book - never once rises above a tedious discussion of whether strengthening chis or that committee would increase democracy? in the EEC. Nor is the second section on the social position any more inspiring. It amounts lo a Tew asides on the question of racial discriminaRed Weekly 6 July 1973 Page B tion and sex discrimination, which the good professor of course deplores, but Tails to offer anything but pious hopes that merging with the EBC will bring about a change in attitudes! The final part is an eclectic jumble of subjects including an economic analysis of three whole pages which is a mixture of unsubstantiaNowhere in the book does Thomas take up any of the key questions of the Common Market. What is its purpose? How does it work! Why has Britain suddenly become so desperate to join? What are the objective forces behind the Common Market? What attitude should we take to it?
It is on these questions that the shallowness of the book becomes so very apparent, Decisions, to do things, or to delay things, are seen by Thomas not as the product of interelating and conflictine socil forces but as decioons taken by this statesman or that. In this short review, we don't have time to take up all these points but we can deal with a few, Let us first consider the question of why British capital wants to join the Common Market.
END OF BOOM With the end of the long capitalist boom in the sixties the demands of increased international competition meant more state intervention in the economy. For capital the ques tion then became: which institutions should it national power institutions. compurable with that of the US. ATTITUDE rely on for protection? The answer was that it could rely on national state institutions, or begin the formation of European supraThere are in this situation two contradictory forces at work. Economic interests tend to push big capital towards unity. But the political disadvantage is that this strengthening tends to take place at the expense of the allegiance of social layers which may he indispensable to the maintenance of big capital's political power in the face of a powerful workers" movement, When the EEC was formed, British capilal opted out, so what has changed since then? The answer of course lies in the extremely low profitability of British capitalism, and the realisation by big capital that if it stayed out it could get crushed in between Europe, the US and Japan. Inside the Market, however, it could strengthen ilself through Europe wide mergers and of course it would also have a much bigeer internal market, The other question is what attitude we should take to the Common Market. The tirst thing to state is that we emphatically dissociate our selves both from those clements like Professor Thomas, who support the EEC because it wit promole economic well-being for the big bourgeoisie, and from the arrow chauvinistic anti-marketeer elements witch have emerged in It is only the European proletariat which can give the answer to the fundamental questions of Europe's future. To the capitalist EEC and also to labour's petty chauvinist ramblings the Fourth Internationai counters with the slogan of For the United Socialist States of Europe.? This is no abstract slogan. On the contrary, the USSE will only be built in the course of constant struggle with Europe-wide and international capital.
tow Availab Critique No: T A new left wink iournel of Soviet studies and socialist theory Advisory Editorial Board:
Ernest Mander, Peter Seogwick, Paul Sweery Convener Editorial Board: H H Tickin No. conta ns artic es on Workers Chirol in Crechoslovakia/ Towards a Politica Economy of the UIS5 /Histonography ol the Russian Revolution PLUS revers, survey of current events end original translations Annual Subscription 5 ngle issoc Critique 31 Cleveden Road Glasgow G12 OPH, Scotland
ment representatives, and the next day a mass area, etc. Also vital is the organisation of