Industrial and Trade Associations, class organisations of the bourgeoisie that appeared in the late 18th and early 19th century and which today bring together most of the capitalists operating in individual industries, regions and countries for the purpose of opposing the working class and influencing government policy. They play an enormous role in uniting the forces of monopolies and the state in a single mechanism. Their functions and role in the system of the state of monopoly capital have grown considerably as capitalism entered the epoch of general crisis and as monopoly capitalism evolved into state-monopoly capitalism. Individual 160 industrial and trade associations deal with the specific issues involving the domination of capital in a particular sphere, and often operate as extensive cartel associations. National associations express the interests of monopoly capital as a whole as well as of individual groups of the monopoly bourgeoisie, and accordingly work to adapt monopolies to the new situations and combine current tactical and long-term strategic interests of the monopoly bourgeoisie. This ability to express the vital interests of monopoly capital and, if necessary, to subordinate to them the interests of the individual monopolies turns the industrial and trade associations into strategic centres, the headquarters of the monopolies. The most powerful of them are the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the Chamber of Commerce of the United States in the USA, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) in Britain, the National Council of French Entrepreneurs (NCFE) (or the Patronate) in France, the Japan Federation of Economic Organisations in Japan, the Confederation of Italian Industry in Italy, the Association of Austrian Industrialists in Austria, the Federal Union of German Industry (FUGI) and the Federal Association of German Employers’ Unions (FAGEU) in the FRG. FUGI, for example, unites virtually all West German industrial corporations through its 39 central sectoral and 13 provincial associations with over 400 industrial and 216 regional affiliates. The economic associations (NAM, FUGI, NCFE, CBI, and others) elaborate monopoly capital’s strategy and tactics on the main economic policy issues and the domestic and foreign policy of the capitalist countries. The social and political associations (or employers’ associations, such as the FAGEU or the Chamber of Commerce of the United States) control labour conditions, social policies and wages. They have their own functions and interact with one another. Industrial and trade associations are an extremely important lever for turning the economic might of monopolies into political power, which serves to consolidate their economic domination. They are involved in financing the state apparatus and in preparing legislation, while their executive organs and leadership are in permanent contact with the state institutions at all levels, etc. They finance up to 90 per cent of the expenses of the bourgeois parties and exert considerable influence on the ruling reformist parties. They are flooding parliaments and governments with vast amounts of proposed draft legislation, memorandums and inquiries. They play an enormous role in the struggle against the working-class and revolutionary movement through many methods, such as corrupting top trade union leaders, ideological befogging of the people and using state legislation for their own ends. They are the engineers of the arch- reactionary anti-labour laws in the capitalist countries, such as the Taft-Hartley Labor, McCarran-Wood, Landrum-Griffin and other acts in the United States, the “ extraordinary” laws and the Berufsverbot, a ban on professions in the FRG, the industrial relations act in Britain, etc. The Imperial Union of German Industry made a great contribution to the establishment of nazism in Germany. After the war, international associations were set up. Within the framework of the European Economic Community alone, there are more than 200 international sectoral associations, as well as the European Free Trade Association’s Council of European Industrial Associations, and the Council of the Entrepreneurs’ European Industrial Unions. The latter association has 27 major national associations in 18 West European countries belonging to it, plus the national industrial associations of the United States and Canada. Industrial associations are a powerful weapon of entrenching the dominance of monopoly capital.