WE ARE VERY PLEASED to mark this improvement in American-Soviet rel. I mean Anglo-Soviet relations. With this rather undiplomatic blun der, the Soviet Communist Party Secretary, Leonid Brezhner, made dear his real pre-occupation during the five days of playing host to Wil sos and Callaghan.
For the British Labour leaders, the loudly heralded visit marked the end of an era of cold war relations between Britain and the USSR. The most widely publicised outcome of the talks (the provision of El billion of credits for Soviet imports from Britain) did not fail to arouse some piteful suggestions that Wilson had pot a lousy deal for British capital. bat no one has suggested that Wilson has done anything other than being Whitehall's 'eastern policy" into line with those of the other major imperialist countries.
Not that the famous "detente"
topes imperialism and the Soviet mocracy has been going all that soothly. Wilson's visit coincided with the first appearance of Brezhear after more than six weeks abence, tecovering from a US Trade Ball that offered a paltry $300 million credits, whilst attempting to directly regulate Soviet emigraton policy. Apparently, the Kremlin has now decided that it has no alternative but to continuc trying to lonce US imperialism into a 'co-optrative frame of mind.
PROBLEMS The problems facing the Soviet economy are real cnough, and will sutprise only those who believed the claim of some years ago that the "democratic world market' centred on the Soviet Union was about to assert its independence from the world economy and achieve a astry.
The 1970 workers" uprising in the Polish Baltic ports against an increase in food prices threw the burcaucratic regimes of Eastern Europe into a panic. They were suddenly taced with a popular demand to make good their promises of a rise in the living standards of the masses.
The importance of 'detente in Soviet coonomic policy really dates from a basic rethinking that took place around this time. able to hide from the world coonomy, the Brezhner leadership set out to restructure Soviet industry through collaboration with the technologically advanced capitalist countries, principally the United States. Of course, the building of such links does not in itself weaken the foundations of the Soviet workers state, and any attempt to retreat into isolation would only make However, the closer the links become, the greater il the direct, day-to-day pressure of the one system on the other. Contrary to the imag inings of Brezhnes, the "defente is not a step forward in the process of co-operațion between nations, but one particular phase in the struggle between imperialism and the planned economy. The US credits needed for the expansion of trade threaten more and more to come with all sorts of strings attached. Just before Wilson left for Moscow, it was reported that the creation of SovietWestern joint business ventures was under discussion for the first time, and an increased penetration of the Soviet coonomy seems to be one of the major aims of US imperialism in future negotiations. cat live year plan, and it already seems clear that many of the orig inal targets will not be met, particularly in the field of consumer goodi. For the first time, the next plan will be drawn up on the basis of the expected availability of cap ital From the West. But it is still possible that the colossal Siberian energy project will have to be abandoned. In any case, the key role of US capital is clear on all sides, and explains that slip of the tongue No longer •of Brezhnew, the most striking proof of the inpossibility of budding socialism in one country, or in one "bloc, What the Soviet buremucracy has concludneed for all-round links with the world capitalist economy, which it At the same time, it extends the hand of collaboration with US politics Such an offer will no doubt be taken up in Ford's hour of need, only to be turned against the Soviet Union itself at a later stage.
that no isolated portion of the world can contain the productive forces of modern technology. At every point, however, they also express the basic antagonism between the two world systems. Only plan for the whole worid will be capable of organising production harmoniously on an international scale. But to reach that coal requires entering the road of struggle to break down the partition of Europe and to realise its socialist anification. Such a unification 1975 is the last year of the cunThe development of 'detente' is ed froas this, however, is merely the the Kremlin.
presents as a panaces for present ills imperialisen into the sphere of world US-Soviet links express the fact the working out of a single socialist would relieve the countries of Eastem Europe from their isolation, but would also challenge the privileges and power of the present bureaucratie rulers of the workers states and will therefore be firmly resisted by them and by those Communist parties throughout the world that are faithful to them.
Against the fake unity of capiealist Europe, the socialists must insist on the need for a United Soo ialist States of Burope. The workers of Eastern Europe belong in the front line of that struggle, which has been abandosed and sabotaged by their leaders. They will not find any inspiration for that struggle in the new erd" of friendship proclaimed by Wilson and Brezhner from
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Maudling returns to Tory front bench I'VE GOT A KNACK FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS