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p The capitalist system rests on ever more intense exploitation of the working people. Capitalist development leads to the evolution of its principal class trend: accumulation of wealth and growth of economic and political power, on the one side, and chronic insecurity, social oppression and lack of political rights, on the other.

p The inglorious social record of capitalism throughout the period of its general crisis includes mass unemployment, systematically recurring economic crises which periodically result in an absolute worsening in the condition of the working class, chronic shortage of means for securing a living wage, and increasing taxation burdens. Having occupied the commanding heights in the bourgeois state, the finance oligarchy single-mindedly seek to burden the working people with all the material costs incidental to the growing competitive struggle among the imperialists and the escalating arms race.

p The ruthless plunder in the past ten years of colonies and dependencies by the British, American, French, Belgian and Dutch bourgeoisie has relegated hundreds of millions of working people in that part of the world to a povertystricken, semi-starvation level.

p Workers in the capitalist countries are having to keep up a stubborn and desperate struggle to beat off the assault of the monopoly bourgeoisie on the material rights and interests of all exploited people.

p As world imperialism loses its former power and world socialism strides ahead, the struggle of the workers in capitalist countries exerts an unprecedented influence on the monopolies and has forced them essentially to modify their system of class exploitation and occasionally blunt their attacks on the workers’ material interests.

p Capitalist exploitation today involves a wide range of antagonistic relations between labour and capital socially, politically and economically. Only a comprehensive examination of all these factors in their totality can provide a genuine picture of the scope and degree of intensified exploitation. The very complex mechanism of class oppression allows the bourgeoisie to pursue flexible tactics. While slackening its onslaught on the rights and interests of the workers in one 125 sector, the ruling class steps up its pressure in another, thereby assuring itself of the necessary conditions for reproducing the entire system of capitalist exploitation and social inequality.

p Bourgeois and reformist distortions of the workers’ condition under capitalism have always been based on a primitive sophistry, extracting isolated aspects of this condition and turning a blind eye to the interaction and interdependence of all economic, social and political factors that shape the social condition of the working class.

p Dogmatic interpretations of present-day labour-capital relations are also at odds with the spirit of creative Marxism. Distorters of Marxism assert that every stage of capitalism meant a steady and comprehensive deterioration in the workers’ condition as expressed in a persistent decline in real wages, reduction in workers’ consumption of goods and services, curtailment in social security, and so on.

p These hackneyed schemes of the dogmatists embrace only the traditional modes and forms of capitalist pressure on workers’ rights and do not take into consideration all the new trends and methods of intensified exploitation.

p The Communist and Workers’ Parties expose the false ideas of the bourgeois-reformist and Leftist opportunist ideologists and study the laws of historical development of the exploitation system and the specifics of the modern tactics of class oppression.

p As capitalism’s general crisis worsens, the monopolies seek fresh and refined devices for securing a higher rate of exploitation. One is to step up the exploitation of wage labour directly in situ, at factory level. The scientific and technical revolution of the latter half of the 20th century has worked as a decisive and objective prerequisite of this. Natural historical development has gone in such a way that at imperialism’s most fateful moment, at the zenith of capitalism’s general crisis, the monopolies suddenly found themselves in possession of a powerful means of modifying the system of exploitation. Rapidly growing productivity and intensive use of labour have today become the major factor determining the workers’ socio-economic condition.

p The monopolies use technical progress for intensifying the exploitation of hired labour. In Western Europe, North America, Australia and Japan, large and mass batch 126 production has prevailed with the use of flow-line methods with high-speed specialised semi-automated and fully-automated machinery. Only the big capitalist monopolies have been able to afford these expensive innovations; technical progress has left the vast mass of small and medium firms out in the cold. All this has intensified competitive rivalry to the limit and increased exploitation of labour for the purpose of boosting capitalist profits.

p In these circumstances, the labour of the workingman is completely subordinated to the enforced maximum tempo to extract a much higher productivity and intensity of labour. Consequently, workers have to expend more physical and nervous energy.

p Monopoly capital has, in fact, attained substantially greater productivity. From 1953 to 1963, the hourly output per worker in manufacturing increased by 52 per cent in the U.S.A., 35 per cent in Canada, 82 per cent in France, 85 per cent in Japan, 30 per cent in Britain, 68 per cent in West Germany, and 82 per cent in Italy (1953-62).  [126•1 

p Increased output, of course, reflects higher labour productivity boosted both by new machinery and by more intensive use of labour. Nonetheless, the constantly increasing strain on labour, which is peculiar to modern capitalist production, results in increasing “wear and tear”. Anti-labour measures taken by the monopolies in forcing up labour productivity and the sweatshop are exceptionally varied in form and are, as a rule, carefully camouflaged. The notorious capitalist efficiency has an important part to play in this; it is based on the widespread introduction of the latest methods of production organisation, mainly borrowed from the U.S.A.

p In the capitalist countries, time-and-motion studies have been most widely adopted to guarantee the capitalist a high operational rate any decline in which is automatically deducted from wages. This system virtually ignores workers’ fatigue during the working day. The modern classification of labour costs relegates the time needed by the workingman for a rest break and for personal needs as non-productive or wasted time. In French firms, even worker instruction is 127 classified as time lost to production. Another popular method is to tie wages to maximum output and labour intensity. Many countries have recently begun to practise the method of spotchecks so as to increase time effectively spent in the packed working day to the maximum.

p Labour is also intensified in sectors with new automated equipment and highly-skilled personnel—operators, programmers, checkers, machine-tool setters—because physical pressure gives way to high mental strain.

p An inevitable consequence of this tremendous labour intensification is a rise in industrial accidents, occupational disease and premature loss of working ability. In some circumstances this has reached the proportions of a mass disaster.

p Workingmen over 40 years old frequently become incapacitated or cannot keep up with the frantic pace. A U.S. survey shows that the percentage of redundant men over 45 exceeded the percentage taken on for work, and among the jobless this age group accounted for more than two-fifths of the total. Another survey, conducted by the Paris Public Opinion Institute, found a direct connection between the growth in premature loss of working ability and the growing intensity of labour. More than a third of the white- and bluecollar workers interviewed said the “excessively high work rate" was the cause of premature retirement, another third said it was the “exceptional nervous strain”, and 19 per cent spoke of “exhausting physical effort”.

p Notwithstanding the improved safety measures and fewer manual jobs, increasing intensity of labour has brought, in the economically advanced capitalist states, an increase in industrial injuries. According to U.S. researchers, there is an average of one injury every 11 seconds. West Germany possesses the unenviable distinction of heading the table in industrial injuries with 8,000 industrial accidents a day, 16 of them fatal.

Under the present system of capitalist exploitation the interconnection and interdependence between the workers’ burden of labour and the existence of an industrial reserve army come out in a particularly bold relief. Rationalisation and automation invariably lead to mass redundancies of white- and blue-collar workers, while the availability of free hands enable the employers to force those with jobs to put in 128 more physical and nervous energy under pain of being fired. Capitalist development has convincingly demonstrated that mass unemployment is a permanent feature of capitalist production. During the world economic crisis in the 1930s, unemployment took on disastrous proportions. In the U.S.A. official data put the total number of jobless at 13,200,000, in Germany at 5,500,000, and in Britain at 3,000,000. Unemployment does not completely fade away even during economic booms, as the official figures below indicate.

Table 24 Unemployment in the Major Capitalist Countries (1,000) 1929 1948 1958 1963 1964 1965 1966 1 1967 1968 1969 USA 1 550 2 205 4 681 4,070 3 786 3,366 2,875 2,975 2,817 2,831 1 262 338 5U1 612 413 360 391 599 601 597 10 78 93 97 97 141 147 193 254 223 West Germany . . Italy 301 1 742 683 1,759 176 504* 157 549 139 721 154 769 445 689 314 694 173 661 Japan ........ 369 240 560 400 370 390 440 500 590 570 *New system, old system estimated 1,200,000 jobless. Source: Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, September 1960, pp. 13-16; May 19C8, pp. 13-15; May 1970, pp. 17-20.

p These figures only partially reflect the real state of affairs, since official statistics do not include the vast numbers of partially unemployed. In the U.S.A., for instance, official figures do not include people who have worked only one hour a week; the British figures omit unemployed married women; other countries regard as unemployed only insured trade unionists and omit jobless school-leavers and bankrupt small retailers and craftsmen. If these are considered, the official U.S. unemployment figures of 4,200,000 for 1963 must be increased by the 2,600,000 part-time industrial workers and the several million farm-hands.

p Evidence of the incomplete statistics provided by bourgeois government agencies is the change in the system of calculating unemployment in Italy. The old system put unemployed in the country for 1962 at 1,311,000, yet the figures calculated under the new system give only 611,000. A similar tendency to play down the jobless figures is evident in other countries. Nevertheless, even according to official data, the number of unemployed since the last war has in certain years exceeded the 1929 level in absolute terms.

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p Unemployment has been an especially heavy burden on the working people in the economically underdeveloped countries, which are plagued by immense agrarian overpopulation. Economists have put the agrarian overpopulation in India at 60-65 million, Indonesia at 10-15 million, and Pakistan at 25-30 per cent of the agricultural population.

p Structural shifts in industry allied to the introduction of new technology and automation cause a rise in structural, technological and other types of unemployment.

p Within the capitalist economic system, even in countries with some labour shortage over a number of years (West Germany, France and Sweden), unemployment has not entirely disappeared. In West Germany, for example, employers have hired cheap labour from Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey in the mid-60s despite the mass redundancies in a number of domestic industries, like coal, textiles and metallurgy.

p For a long time monopoly capital and bourgeois governments ignored problems of unemployment and vocational training and retraining. They are now obliged to take a different attitude by events in the socialist countries, where unemployment has been eliminated and a thorough system of vocational training and retraining devised. Structural and technological unemployment are unknown in the Soviet Union, despite rapid scientific and technological progress and the changing industrial structure.

p Under pressure of public opinion and primarily of workers’ demands, the governments of some capitalist states have been taking steps to alleviate the worst effects of unemployment. In the U.S.A., where automation has been breeding mass unemployment, the administration began to introduce in 1962 a programme of trade retraining. The British Government, too, passed a law on employment allocating funds for training labour in economically depressed areas. The limited nature of these palliatives is palpably obvious. By the beginning of 1965, no more than 100,000 people had been covered by the U.S. plans for job retraining while total jobless figures stood at 3,500,000. In Britain the employment act has provided jobs for no more than 10 per cent of all unemployed.

p Real wages are a most important indicator of the workers’ condition. The dynamics of wages, the cost of living, 130 social benefits and tax deductions directly determine the workers’ standard of living. The monopoly bourgeoisie have been doing all they can to depress or freeze real wages.

p Economic crises, the arms race, competitive strife and other concomitants of capitalism systematically press down real wages, thereby periodically bringing about an absolute deterioration in the workers’ condition. During the 1929-33 crisis, the drop in real wages in the U.S.A., the leading capitalist country, amounted to more than 25 per cent as compared with the pre-crisis period. Sharp drops in real wages also occurred during the Second World War in France, Italy, Japan and several other countries.

p The financial oligarchy has kept up its two-pronged attack on real wages: it has restrained wage increases for white- and blue-collar workers and has steadily pushed up prices; the latter largely swallow up any wage rises the workers may gain.

p The depreciation of workers’ incomes through inflation is common to a number of capitalist countries. Between 1958 and 1965, the cost of living index rose 18 per cent in West Germany, 21 per cent in Britain, 29 per cent in Italy, 9 per cent in the U.S.A., 11 per cent in Canada, 42 per cent in Japan and 20 per cent in Australia.  [130•1  Meanwhile, in recent years the cost of living in West Germany, Italy and the Netherlands has increased far more rapidly than in the 1957- 60 period. Prices have spiralled in the U.S.A., Britain, Canada and elsewhere.

p Nevertheless, in a number of advanced countries the last years have seen real wages rises for both industrial workers and office employees in spite of the efforts of the monopolies to devalue labour power by means of inflation or stabilisation of cash incomes.

p Between 1953 and 1963, official statistics indicate that the level of real wages rose by 18.5 per cent in the U.S.A., 29.7 per cent in Britain, 61.6 per cent in West Germany, 23.8 per cent in Italy, 48.8 per cent in Japan and 13.2 per cent in France. True, these calculations do not reproduce very accurately the dynamics of workers’ reaJ wages. The nominal wage index for several countries includes income changes for 131 other wage workers and industrial workers, with bourgeois statistics often classing as industrial workers foremen and heads of offices and design offices, to say nothing of highlypaid board members, members of supervisory councils and managers, who belong to the big bourgeoisie.

p The official figures on workers’ money wages mean gross wages, from which substantial tax and social payments are deducted. The deliberately overstated figure of money incomes is compared with the understated cost of living index, thus exaggerating any actual growth in real wages.

p In West Germany and Japan, higher real wages must be seen in the light of the exceedingly low wages level immediately after the last war when most workers subsisted on the brink of poverty and chronic starvation.

p The fact of higher real wages is not altogether unexpected for any Marxist-Leninist student of modern capitalism. It would be a mistake to generalise about the power of finance capital to lower or restrain real wages, whose dynamics are by no means determined by the whim of the capitalist or the bounds of his greed. Certainly, the imperialist bourgeoisie has been doing all it can to depress real wages, but it has to contend with certain objective and subjective forces.

p One of the most important factors benefiting wages in some countries has been the persistent working-class effort to secure higher wages, as the positions of world imperialism have weakened, and the strength and prestige of world socialism have grown. This was bound to have a decisive influence on the workers’ economic struggle and on wages.

p Today, more than at any time in the past, the words of Lenin ring true. He said that Marx “spoke of the growth of poverty, degradation, etc., indicating at the same time the counteracting tendency and the real social forces that alone could give rise to this tendency".  [131•1 

p Value underlies the price of labour power. The law of value of this specific commodity is realised in the class struggle. In the capitalist countries, the working class has used the favourable conditions and has managed to sell its labour power at a price much closer to its growing value.

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p Modern living and working conditions in the advanced capitalist countries cause a rapid growth in the requirements of the workers, whose satisfaction is necessary for reproducing the workers’ labour power. This process is accelerated by the greatly increasing intensification of labour, which demands substantial material means for restoring the worker’s physical and nerve energy. The process is further stepped up by the growing demands of modern production on the technical and general educational training of the labour force, and consequently, by the rise in the costs of training and, finally, by the increasing urbanisation resulting in larger outlays on communal services, cultural and transport facilities, and so on.

p Over the past 70 years radical changes have occurred in the workers’ social and everyday way of life in the advanced capitalist countries. Some aspects of the workingman’s material and cultural life—clothing, housing, household amenities and services, cultural and educational opportunities —have on the whole improved. Some of the most highly-paid workers are now able to acquire luxury consumer goods that but yesterday were accessible only to the rich.

p Some Western sociologists view the desire of workers to acquire these goods either as heralding an era of universal affluence, or as a status-seeking urge on the part of workers.

p In fact, there are objective causes behind these changes. Thus, workers in Western Europe, the U.S.A., Canada and Australia obtain cars, mainly on hire purchase, largely because they are obliged to work some distance away from their homes. Capitalist development causes a substantial change in the traditional structure of industrial production, and many workers have to transfer from one factory to another, from a stagnating sector (e.g., coal) to a buoyant one (e.g., chemicals). And this causes workers to seek work at factories even farther away from their homes. Emergence of new industries and factories which are forced into the countryside by the high price of urban land means that more and more workers are being scattered over a wide area of housing estates and dormitory communities on the periphery or away from the main industrial urban centres.

p When one considers, too, the high cost of railway and bus travel and the unreliability of public transport on the 133 majority of estates, it is hardly surprising that cars have become a necessity.

p Since many workers are more or less tied to their place of residence by the difficulties of acquiring a reasonably-priced flat or by their own house, they may be obliged to take work at a nearby factory where working conditions and wages are often worse than at factories in remote areas. The problem is solved by owning a car. Labour mobility is, therefore, extremely important in obtaining a better price for labour power. A West German sociologist says: “The mobility of the workingman, who is already largely motorised, to a differing degree, it is true, depending on his trade and income, means that he is not compelled as before to find employment in the immediate vicinity of his flat and to keep his job there whatever happens."  [133•1 

p In all the advanced capitalist countries more and more women have to work. Between 1910 and 1959, the proportion of women in the U.S. labour force grew from 24 to 36 per cent. In Britain, the number of working women grew by 10 per cent between 1960 and 1962, to over 8 million today. Half of them are married. One-third of the West German labour force is female. “Many of them,” the weekly Stern has noted, “bear a double burden, doing trade and housework at the cost of immense strain on their health."  [133•2  In this situation, it is absolutely essential for working families to have at their disposal household appliances like refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and so on.  [133•3 

p The workingman increasingly needs not only the means to sustain himself and his family (food, home, clothing), but also “the satisfaction of certain wants springing from the social conditions in which people are placed and reared up”.  [133•4  These words of Marx are today especially relevant in determining the socio-historical element of the value of labour power. The demands made by modern industry imply the 134 worker’s great expenditure on his technical and general education.

p The mounting complexity of social and political living conditions also leads to a growth in the worker’s needs. Clearly, the value of labour power should include more than the value of the means going into the reproduction of the working class as an element of the productive force of capitalist society. There is also the value of the means the working class needs to reproduce itself as a socio-political force. One vital aspect of this is the need to satisfy the cultural requirements of the working class and enlarge its political and cultural outlook. Today that is impossible without the ability to acquire books, periodicals, radio and television sets and so on. All this increases the number of components that make up the socio-historical element of labour power value, thereby producing the need to raise the working people’s traditional standard of living.

p Meanwhile, the present wage level of many workers remains quite inadequate for satisfying their basic needs. The average index of real wages obscures the extreme insecurity of existence of the many millions of people who receive the bare minimum wage. In the mid-1960s there were in France, for example, some 2 million families earning a third of the living wage, and in Britain 2,500,000 people were living on national assistance. In the U.S.A., former President Johnson admitted, 35 million Americans were living in chronic poverty.

p The working people’s growing debt through hire purchase payments with the concomitant high interest rates imposed by banks, building societies, insurance companies, etc., is fresh confirmation of the inadequacy of many incomes to cover vital needs. A survey among West German householders owning refrigerators found that only 20 per cent had been bought outright.

p The dynamics of the value of labour power, while objectively affecting the level of and changes in wages, have in turn been largely influenced by these changes which are a direct or indirect result of the class struggle.

p Marx made this clear when he wrote: “...the number and extent of his so-called necessary wants, as also the modes of satisfying them, are themselves the product of historical development, and depend therefore to a great extent on the 135 degree of civilisation of a country, more particularly on the conditions under which, and consequently on the habits and degree of comfort in which, the class of free labourers has been formed."  [135•1 

p These needs and vital demands have been changing and expanding over a period of time, once again being realised in class struggle which is the real mainspring behind the upward movement of the socio-historical element of labour power value. Only after they have been won in fierce struggle with the capitalists^ do the new demands of the workers become an integral part of their normal standard of living, thereby raising the value of labour power. The socio-historical element of the value of labour power would never have increased unless the price of labour power (level of real wages) had not for some time exceeded the earlier level of this element of value of labour power.

p With world imperialism losing ground and world socialism gaining in strength, this episodic feature of capitalism will evidently become more frequent since the mounting international revolutionary movement is all the time creating favourable conditions for successful struggle for real wage increases, thereby helping to develop the trend towards a higher value of labour power.

p It would be just as wrong, however, to overstate as to understate the importance of this trend. First, the more favourable social conditions for the workers’ struggle do not exclude the possibility of the specific situation in a single country or even most countries taking a turn for the worse, either as a result of a decline in the economic outlook, or on the heels of political changes. Political events in France in the ten years from 1958 to 1968, the 1964-65 slump in Italy, and the 1967 recession in West Germany, are merely three examples of deterioration in the condition of the workers’ economic struggle. Second, and this is most important, this trend has a limit imposed by the social system. With all the changes in the distribution of the national income between profit and wages, with all the fluctuations in the price of labour power around its value, even at the most favourable moments for the workers, profit remains at a level which 136 assures reproduction of the whole system of capitalist exploitation and social inequality.

p It stands to reason that in fighting for higher real wages the working class essentially improves the conditions for selling its labour power. But in its analysis of the wage issue Marxism-Leninism has never turned a blind eye to the dynamics of relative wages, i.e., changes in the ratio of wages to capitalist profit. As Marx pointed out, “If capital is growing rapidly, wages may rise; the profit of capital rises incomparably more rapidly."  [136•1 

p The increasing rate of exploitation, expressed in the ratio of capitalist profit to wages, is an important index of the relative deterioration of the condition of the working class. The gap between growing labour productivity and real wages, evident in all capitalist countries, has resulted from an intensification of capitalist exploitation. The relative price for labour has been falling, i.e., the share of paid labour has been falling in comparison with surplus labour. Despite the forced wage concessions to workers, this cheapening of labour leads to a higher rate of surplus value and a greater mass of surplus value. The statistics show that the profits of the monopoly bourgeoisie have been growing much faster than workers’ wages. During the past 30 years, the profits of U.S. corporations have increased 4.6 times, while the wage bill has increased by less than 4 times. In Britain, profits have risen 5.6-fold, and wages 4.6-fold. Between 1952 and I960, the profits of Japanese capitalists increased 350 per cent and wages only 120 per cent. A similar picture obtains for other capitalist countries.  [136•2 

p We find, therefore, that a further relative deterioration in the position of the workers, a constant concomitant of contemporary capitalism, occurs even while real wages are actually rising.

p Modern reformist apologists for capitalism make out that the bourgeois state’s fiscal measures and closely related social legislation are important instruments of social progress. They also maintain that progressive taxation to an increasing extent 137 tends to adjust the distribution of the national income in favour of the working people, while budgetary payments for social needs produce general “affluence” and result in an “incomes revolution”.

p Actually, the finance oligarchy draws off a large part of workers’ incomes through the budgetary and fiscal system and redistributes it in the interests of the ruling class. This causes a further rise in the rate of exploitation, since the surplus value appropriated by the capitalists in the initial distribution of the newly-created product is supplemented by the government by a large part of variable capital taken from the working people in the form of direct taxes, deductions from wages for social purposes and various indirect levies. The inflated military budgets in the U.S.A., West Germany, Britain and elsewhere, in addition to more and more resources for maintaining the bureaucratic state machine, steadily increase the tax burden.

p In the vast majority of capitalist countries, the government annually extracts through the tax system from 40 to 50 per cent of the national income. It is characteristic of capitalist fiscal policy that the working people have to bear an increasing burden (chiefly through indirect taxes) and that direct progressive taxation of profits and capitalist property is being reduced in every possible way.

p The higher indirect taxes impose a heavy burden on the working people. Since the last war, indirect taxation in West Germany, France, Italy and other countries has increased 3-4-fold. Although expansion of indirect taxation is a favourite method of tax exploitation, it is nevertheless restricted by the size of wages. Tax exploitation has, therefore, been increasing through direct taxation and legallyenforced deductions from wages for social purposes. By the beginning of the 1960s these deductions in Britain had increased 4-fold in comparison with the pre-war period, and 2.5-fold in Austria. The proportion of compulsory direct deductions from gross wages (taxes and social deductions) amount to 17 per cent in the U.S.A., 16 per cent in West Germany, and 12 per cent in Britain. While accumulating large amounts in the treasury, the monopoly bourgeoisie tries to reduce the “sacrifices” periodically cutting back the social items of the budget and shifting a large part of social expenditure onto the working people themselves.

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p Events of recent years expose the demagogic claims about government benevolence and fiscal policy as a reliable stabiliser of social progress. Certainly, the present state of these problems is incomparable with what it was at the turn of the century. The undeniable social attainments of the socialist countries have given an impetus to the working people’s struggle in the capitalist world and have forced the authorities to extend social legislation.

p Before the October 1917 Revolution, social insurance existed only in a handful of European countries; today, 38 capitalist states have old-age insurance, 74 have accident insurance, and 20 have unemployment insurance. After the last war, Britain and Sweden introduced a partially-free health service, France, West Germany and several other countries established or increased family allowances, and the U.S.A., Italy, France and Austria improved their pension schemes. In order to alleviate acute manifestations of class antagonisms, the bourgeois state compels employers to make contributions to social insurance funds. True, the burden of such payments is not very great. These contributions are charged as necessary costs of production and may be passed on to wholesale and, consequently, also to retail prices. With prices rapidly rising, the employers pass on to the consumer the costs incurred in compulsory social contributions.

p The monopolies, however, cannot compensate themselves for all the compulsory payments to the working people by increasing prices on mass consumption goods. Some of these goods will be needed by the bourgeoisie themselves. Moreover, fierce competition does not permit the monopolies to cover all of their social payments in the consumer goods price without jeopardising their own interests.

p The legally-enforced payments by employers into the unemployment fund, accident insurance, holiday funds, etc., are important gains for the workers. The scope of these gains, however, should not be overestimated. They only alleviate certain aspects of social discrimination against the workers. Capitalism has still to solve such vitally important problems as education opportunity, adequate medical service and housing, timely and adequate pensions and so on.

p Within the U.S.A., schools lack 130,000 or more classrooms, and one million children of school age do not go to school at all. In Southern Italy, 40 per cent of the 139 population is illiterate. Although the number of students is generally on the increase, the proportion from working-class families has not altered from what it was a decade ago, a mere 5-6 per cent. The main reason for this is the high cost of education and the paucity of government subsidies for higher education (in West Germany the figure is one-sixth the figure for the German Democratic Republic). The pensionable age in most countries is high (65 on the average for men, 60 for women), and the size of pensions is small (18-25 per cent of average wages). Many millions of elderly people receive no government aid whatever (in the U.S.A. they make up over 30 per cent of those over 65); this condemns many people to a miserable existence in their old age.

p There is no doubt that the outward signs of social deprivation among workers so graphically described by Dickens and Zola have disappeared for most of the working class in the industrialised capitalist countries, but this provides no foundation for bourgeois economists and sociologists to maintain that the capitalist West has advanced to an age of class equality. Events in recent years demonstrate that class inequality and oppression of the workers are being reproduced on a new level and in new forms. About that there is no doubt at all.

p The growth of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism has given special significance to the political status of the working class. Expansion of capitalist reproduction has always accelerated the reproduction of all social relations since it is not only the economic power of the monopoly bourgeoisie, but also its political supremacy that is reproduced on the basis of centralisation and concentration of capital. The strengthening of the political dictatorship of the monopolies over society in turn inevitably engenders a further reinforcement of their economic supremacy and provides them with supplementary means for economic exploitation of the working class and oppression of the labouring people. Statemonopoly capitalism has brought all the levers of socioeconomic exploitation and political repression into a single mechanism of class oppression of the proletariat.

p The development of state-monopoly capitalism invariably involves the further entrenchment of the class dictatorship of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the extensive introduction of reactionary methods in internal politics. The part played 140 by the bourgeois state in the economic and social oppression of the working people has reached unprecedented proportions, and the interference of imperialist governments in relations between labour and capital is becoming increasingly direct, as witnessed by recent anti-labour legislation in the U.S.A., France and West Germany, compulsory government arbitration, etc. Bourgeois parliaments are being emasculated, and the corridors of power are being effectively insulated from public influence, especially from working-class influence. Legislative initiative passes to the executive power. Political power is fast becoming unrestricted and independent of the will of the electorate. In some parliaments there is not a single representative of the working class. Other countries have voting systems that bar from parliament Communists, who represent the workers’ interests. The restrictions and bans on Communist Parties in some countries make it much harder for the workers to organise in defence of their socio-economic interests.

p The direct links between monopoly capital and executive power are increasingly clear-cut and influential. The workers are becoming socially more powerless and estranged from economic power, which is being concentrated in the hands of an increasingly small circle of financial magnates. This makes the task of the bourgeoisie much easier in encroaching on the interests of the working people.

p Today, when the monopolies merger with the state apparatus has spread beyond the national boundaries, as the Common Market imperialist integration in Western Europe indicates, it is obvious that political issues are of prime importance to the workers. Imperialist integration shows that the financial oligarchy is attempting to establish supranational associations, while barring the working people’s access to legislative and executive power in these international organisations. There is not a single representative of the working class on the administrative councils of the Common Market (Council of Ministers and the Commission), and this in effect puts decisions on all economic and social issues beyond any conceivable control by the working people.

p The workers have to combine their purely economic interests with far-going socio-political reforms. How is it possible, for example, to solve the problem of unemployment without radically restricting the arbitrary methods used by 141 employers in modernising and automating production ? How is it possible to increase state spending on social needs without substantially reducing the subsidies going to the monopolies and the arms race, i.e., without the working people having some say in domestic and foreign policy? The socio-economic position of the workers very much depends on their political and economic rights at all levels, from the factory to government.

The social development of capitalism offers convincing enough evidence that the exploitation of the workers by modern monopoly capital is an extremely complex system. The finance oligarchy tries to pursue a flexible policy, somewhat toning down its assault on workers’ wages, while simultaneously stepping up exploitation of labour directly in production and attacking the socio-political rights of the working class.