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Book Reviews
380
Beyond the Casino
economy By Nicholas Costello, Jonathan Michie and
Seumas Milne Published by Verso, 1989
at £8.95
Reviewed by
Michael Roberts
This book, with a foreword by Tony Benn, represents the arguments of the 'Bennite' wing of the Labour Party. Costello, Michie and Milne - an information technology expert, economics lecturer and Guardian journalist respectively - are strongest rebutting the theories of Bryan Gould et al which accept the alleged success of modern capitalism.
They effectively refute claims of a 'British economic miracle' (p+2 44 and p77-92) and expose the deficiencies of market forces (p59-73), showing that between 1970-84 the City's financial markets made no contribution to building British industry which had to finance all its investment out of retained profits (pl20).
They proclaim, with evidence,
The Money Machine:
How The City Works
By Philip Coggan
Published by
Penguin, £4.99
Reviewed by
Mike Waddington
"People may be in chains but in the 1980s capital has become free," Coggan begins. Deregulation and 'Big Bang' have created a world system of 24-hour trading.
The book explains in simple terms how the system attempts to work. The chapters on foreign exchange and Euro-money are the most helpful. Euro-dollars are simply dollars held in banks outside the USA and consequent US restrictions. With oil priced in dollars, huge dollar surpluses are
the virtues of planning, although they have illusions that the planned economics of Eastern Europe are'socialist' and that Gorbachev's economic reforms are 'steps in the direction' of workers' self-management (p262). Indeed the book's weakness is its alternative to capitalism, which closely resembles the Labour Lefts Alternative Economic Strategy of the 1970s.
The deficiency of this programme remains: political cowardice. The authors' arguments often lead them to conclude that only public ownership and workers' control of industry and the plan can take the economy forward: "If a Labour government is to implement a long-term strategy: it would need to have powers to change the behaviour of the largest few hundred firms that dominate the British economy. Ideally that would mean the nationalisation of all of them" (p109); "The most rational and long-term solution to the problem... would be to turn those few hundred companies into democratically-owned and accountable public bodies." (p25*).
Yet as this conclusion is reached, the authors back away and look for some half-way house
held by oil rich countries. As Coggan says, "The world is now a single capital market. in which vast quantities of money shift from one country to another in search of short term gains."
The problem is what comes in can just as easily go out! The last interest rate hike in Britain came after £2bn was spent by the gorernment buying pounds that investors' didn't want. At that rate the £40bn reserves wouldn't last long, so the interest rate went up to keep the 'investors" happ!.
It is the (unstated) pursuit of profit that makes the system work and become distorted. Originally. the markets and exchanges were about providing capital for investment and trade. But with the vast amount of funds available and the low rate of profit in manufacturing, gains are made through spec-
Why! Becallie: comnion sense (!) dictates that even to carry out an extension of public ownership on the scale that the French gorernment did in 1981-2 would be an enormous political and organ- ¡sational struggle" (p109).
Thus the old formula of a radical strategy aiming at "planning what would of course be — as Neil Kinnock pointed out at the 1988 Labour Party Conference — a market or capitalist economy" (p259). The programme becomes important reforms in wages, housing etc through public ownership of one or more banks and some key in dustrial companies. coupled with exchange controls and compul sory planning agreements.
It is a programme they admit cannot really take the economy forward, and thereby mobilise the enthusiasm of the working class. and yet will nevertheless provoke i violent reaction from big business that will force a Labour government to retreat. It is dangerous political cowardice: if public ownership of the top 200 companies is the 'most rational solution' why not tell working people the truth and campaign for it?
ulating on the value of currencies and exchange rates. Nothing is produced but fortunes are made.
My favourite part of the book is about the confidence of the ruling class for the future. Companies and countries issue bonds, a promise to pay back money that is lent to them with interest. These bonds are rated AAA to D. when the bond is in default. Getting your rating depends on political factors, described in the book. The same point was illustrated in a newspaper advert from the government's Export Credit Guarantee Department: "If a revolution comes, who is going to protect your overseas investments?.. don't wait to hear the rattle and roar of approaching tanks - take cover now"! The thought of boardrooms being preoccupied with revolution is very comforting!
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Citizens By Simon Schama Published by Viking, 1989, £20 Reviewed by Peter Taaffe In last year's avalanche of literature on the 200th anniversary of revolution, Simon the French Schama's book Citizens was singied out by bourgeois reviewers. Little wonder for, as he admits. he adopts "the unfashionable top down" rather than "bottom-up" approach.
While Citizens has been praised and its author lionised, it is not a serious work. Not quite fiction, it is at best 'faction', and a not very good example of this genre. True the author admits that "what follows... is not science". On this at least we concur!
Schama's excuse is that modern history is "depersonalised, cut loose from the speech and conduct of great men". True, the output of most modern bourgeois historians is as interesting as a railway timetable. But real history, seeking to describe the objective unfolding of events, neither ig nores 'great men' nor isolates them from the objective conditions in which they operate. No bourgeois historian has explained fully the causes of the revolution, its rhythm and the role of the great figures shaped by and in turn shaping its course. Schama is no exception. However, many are at least readable in comparison to Schama. Some present accurate factual data, adding to our knowledge. Schama is not even capable of this.
Among pages of useless detail For further analysis of the Great French Revolution read The Masses Arise by Peter Taaffe. Available at a special price to MIR readers for $2.95 plus 55p postage from Fortress Books, PO Box 141 London E2 ORL.
about 'ballooning' in pre-revolut internally and externally, to mobionary France or of prisoners who the French masses. Thus there is no coherent explanation why the Parisian masses stormed the Basti- Ile. It was not to release the seven prisoners incarcerated there. Instead they beliered this Royalist stronghold was stockpiled with guns trained on Rue St Antoine, the main bastion of the revolution. Schama particularly laments the treatment of the Governor of the Bastille. Launer: He complains, "a sword was handed to Desnaux but he cast it aside and used a pocket knife to saw through de Launey's neck". This act was barbaric, but Schama ignores the 98 killed and 73 wounded because de Launey ordered the guards to fire. Is it little wonder that the besiegers of the Bastille were driven into a frenzy which resulted in the bloody execution of the Governor? In passing. Schama mentions the privations of the masses without recognising this as the spur driving the revolution forward. A similarly selective approach is adopted to the Terror. While most bourgeois historians praise 1789 - the 'good revolution' - and excoriate 1793 - 'the had revolution', Schama declares "the Terror was merely 1789 with a higher body count". This typifies the shallowand vulgar treatmentoftheebbs and flows of the revolution. History must proceed under the pacifist baton of conductor Schama. Violence. it seems, mas "the revolution's source of collective energy: It was what made the revolution revolutionary". In fact the Terror arose from the attempts of counter-revolution. MIR L39 Spring 1990 ilise the forces of feudal reaction with the bourgeois of Britain in a Book Reviews coalition to smash the revolution. Schama also goes to ludicrous lengths in his apologia of Louis XVI. Thus he writes "on July 1-* 1789 Louis's journal consisted of the one word entry 'rien' (nothing). Historians invariably find this a comic symptom of the King's hapless remoteness from political reality. But it was nothing of the sort. The journal was less diary than one of his remorselessly inn. umerated lists of kills at the hunt. Since his favourite pastime had been more or less permanently interrupted.
there could hardly have been a more negatively eloquent utterance on his predicament than 'rien'."
We are asked to believe that while a social earthquake developed under his feet it was entirely normal for the French King to concentrate his mental forces on the 'hunt. This comment says as much about Schama's method as it does about the vacuous Louis. For Schama the revolution's social achievements are a dead letter. Yet the destruction of the last remnants of feudalism. the unification of France. the acceptance of bourgeois law etc, cleared the way for the future development of capitalism. This would not have been accomplished without the great French revolution. It is a measure of the fear of bourgeois historians that they have to denigrate the revolutions of the past in order to defeat its threat today. This song is sung in many different keys. Thatcher deploys crude invective in her ignorant broadsides. Schama merely adopts a more 'crudite' approach. - THE - MASSES ARISE THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION 1799-1815 PETER
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